Steve’s shorts: End Game…
[Scientific fact: The same rules now in place for COVID-19 also work to slow down climate change, as recent evidence shows. The virus is our immediate enemy; climate change is the long-term one that will affect all our descendants. I debated posting this little sci-fi story, but it seemed like a good time to do so. Neither likely presidential candidate has a clear environmental policy. People and politicians need to get smart to be safe and do their jobs of protecting society. And they need to think both short-term and long-term. The future of human beings on planet Earth isn’t guaranteed by any means. We haven’t been here very long in the grand scheme of things, and our time here could be shorter than many people realize.]
End Game
Copyright 2020, Steven M. Moore
Raging waters in front of them, roaring flames in back—Dave hugged his wife and girls. What can I say now? To his wife, maybe “I thought they were wrong”? To his girls, “You have no future”?
A Coast Guard helicopter was busy rescuing some families. Their turn would come if they didn’t drown or burn to a crisp first.
“How could this happen?” his wife Barbara asked.
He could hardly hear her question over the wind’s roar. It increased the storm surge and fanned the flames.
He had no answer, so he considered it a rhetorical question. If anything, she was asking it of the Universe, or their tiny piece of it, once a paradise but now threatening and foreboding.
He’d gone along with the other climate change deniers of his party. Industries came first; so did economic prosperity. He’d even believed that climate change was a hoax—didn’t the president say so?—just something liberals dreamed up to take away their economic good times.
Many things were like that. Guns don’t kill; certain crazies just used them to kill. Why waste money on saving lives of patients with fourth-stage cancer? And don’t we have to take care of our own before all those people seeking asylum from corrupt governments run amok?
His internal dialogue went on and on. He’d bought the party line. Why not? With the redistricting, he’d always be returned to Congress, just like the tenure those leftist professors had allowing them to brainwash college students.
He looked back at the flames and then at the approaching waters. Maybe the water will save us from the flames?
He looked skyward and heard the thump-thump of the helicopter. He waved as the searchlight bathed his family.
His mood started to change. They would be saved, but they wouldn’t be going home. The house had either become smoldering cinders or was underwater. But they would survive.
They had passed the tipping point long ago. That’s what the liberal media said. He doubted it. That’s just another one of their lies! He began planning his next speech to his constituents.
***
Comments are always welcome!
Mind Games. This is A.B. Carolan’s third book in the “ABC Sci-Fi Mysteries” series. Androids with psi powers? What could go wrong? Della returns to her home in the Dark Domes on the planet Sanctuary to find her adopted father murdered. All her life he has told her to keep her psi powers hidden, but now she must hone her skills to find his murderer. Her quest takes her to Earth and then New Haven, planets in different star systems. She acquires many friends on those journeys and battles many enemies. Set in my ITUIP (“Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets”), this novel is available in print and ebook (.mobi for Kindles) format on Amazon, and in all ebook formats on Smashwords and at its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lending and library services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Thompson, Gardners, etc.).
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
