The Deluge

by Stephen Markley

Corey made a small, unamused sound. He set the knife down and sat up. “Okay, Tony. Level with me then. We’ve got sunny day flooding at high tide that’s swamping our projects. Obviously, the cemetery incident was a bit of a black eye. But is this sea level rise—is this thing going to be real?” Tony just stared at him, blinking. “Are you fucking mad? Corey, I’ve been telling you this for twenty-five goddamn years. I wrote an entire fucking book about it.” “Yeah, but what are we talking here? Like a foot, maybe a couple feet—that’s manageable. But then you’ve got doomsayers going around telling people it’s going to be six feet. Six feet? How’s that even possible?” Tony slapped his forehead without even thinking of how theatrical it might look. “Corey, you’ll be lucky as hell if it’s only six. Do you know what the Thwaites Glacier is? Or the Pine Island Glacier? That’s the whole reason I’m down here. That was my whole presentation to the city.”