I dug my toes into the warm sand as the tide slowly covered my feet, oozing back to it’s rightful place seconds later. Where were the doomsayers that said that this would all be underwater. A cool breeze washed over my body. I lifted my face to the sun and drank in the warmth, delighted in the fact that we had survived global warming, life was paradise all thanks to one man.
Gideon Rhinehart’s invention had saved us. Shut all the naysayers up once and for all. They preached, proselytized day in, day out, until they were blue in the face. Scientists bombarded the world’s leaders with statistics that only they understood. They warned that we were at the point of no return. If changes were not made, the earth’s climate would become unlivable. Violent storms, the like of which we had never seen before, would become almost a daily occurrence.
Then as if from nowhere came our saviour. Gideon Rhinehart. His miraculous invention changed all our lives. A bark startled me, and I turned to see a dingo ambling along the shore. A species that was supposed to become extinct, now thriving. Flying overhead a flock of Red Crested Cockatoos brought a smile to my face. To think that we could have lost all of this.
I dived into the waves. I had never felt so alive. Floating on my back I studied the clouds, forming them into various shapes and forms. There, an elephant sat on a piano as clear as day.
Suddenly everything went black. The only sounds a low humming and the trickling of water. As I sat up the cord from the proboscis pulled me up short. I reached behind my neck and extracted it from the jack. The humming stopped as Rhinehart’s “Dreamer” unit shut down. I had spent a week’s wage cleaning the CO2 scrubbers to pay for my half hour.
The sound of trickling water became louder exiting the kiosk. Water trickled down the sides of the moss-covered concrete walls. Everyday the water level seemed to have risen a little in the tunnels we lived in under the sea. One of my shoes filled with water as I stepped in a puddle, but nothing could dampen my mood. And we all owed our happiness to the dreamers and our saviour Gideon Rhinehart.