I decided to use one of the prompts from The Writing Network today - they're the people who are hosting the 31 Stories challenge, and they are putting up two prompts per day, to be used (or not) as one sees fit. Today, I used the prompt: Neighbors meet with a visiting geologist that provides facts proving their island is sinking. So please enjoy draft zero of Sinking Island.
HOA meetings were the bane of my existence, as they were for any right-thinking person, but they were part of the cost of living on one of the most remote, resourceful, and technologically-enhanced islands in the world. You paid your 7000 credits per annum, you followed the rules put in place that are partially for protection but mostly to make sure everything and everybody looks the same, and you attend the mandatory meetings every lunar cycle. Considering we were one of the last remaining outposts in this hemisphere, it wasn't that much of a price to pay, but good grief, it was boring.
I had the window for the video meeting open on my main screen, with a small window in the corner showing me the most recent episode of the latest iteration of Baking Show. (I refused to use the term "Great British Baking Show," even though all the ads still referred to it as such, because Great Britain has sunk beneath the waves some eighty years before I was born. Nostalgia's one thing, but that was just taking branding a bit too far.) The contestants had just revealed the technical challenge, which would be to make a form of steamed bun and hoisin sauce - a tricky feat, considering they were competing from a bubble in which open flame and liquid water were prohibited. I had heard that the challenges hadn't been quite so grueling in the older seasons, but I didn't see how they could compare.
I had the video on mute with captions, of course, because I had to keep the volume of the meeting turned up in case anyone asked a question and required a response. I had learned the hard way early on in my residence in Riozona that not responding when someone asked a question was equivalent to telling the entire HOA that you hadn't, in fact, been paying the slightest bit of attention to the mandatory meeting, and thus you owed them an additional 3000 credits. The lesson I took away was that I needed to be better about not getting caught; actually paying complete attention to everything being said during these day-long meetings was simply out of the question.
I had enough of an ear out to the meeting that I was able to tell when the tone of the president's voice changed, and the other residents also shifted in their level of participation. I paused my video and put the meeting in full-screen so I could see if anything was being shared.
President Jacobs had their hands up in a conciliatory fashion, as though they were able to push the people on the screen away. "Residents, I assure you, we don't know anything for certain," they were saying, their voice just panicked enough on the edges to take away any sense of tranquility they might have been going for. "This is why we want to bring in Dr. Segovia, who is an expert in environmental matters and will be able to answer all of your questions. It will mean another meeting next week, but that will be optional, I assure you."
"An optional meeting? You want to make the meeting in which we meet with an environmental specialist who will tell us if Riozona is going to sink like all the other land masses optional?" My next-door neighbor Bruce was getting a little hot under the collar, and I could hear his voice through both the computer speakers and through the open window in my office. He rarely spoke above a library voice, so to hear him shout was enough to shock me out of any kind of complacency I might still have been in.
I wasn't the only one who had this reaction. I saw several other faces on the screen with their mouths moving, but none of their voices were audible - even Bruce's voice had been silenced. It appeared that President Jacobs, or more likely one of their assistants, had muted everyone to make sure no one else could interrupt the call. It was a big mistake, in my mind, because all that would do was tick people off even more, but I'm not the one in charge. Thank God.
"I understand your concern, and in the interest of not taking up too much of your time, I move that we close this meeting now and will continue discussing this particular topic at next week's optional meeting. All other business of the HOA will be moved to next month's mandatory meeting. Do I have a second? All in favor? Wonderful, it's unanimous, see you next week." President Jacobs ended the call without allowing a single one of us to respond to any of their calls for second or a vote. I sat back in my chair, blinking foolishly. The President had a tattoo of a QR code to the most current version of Robert's Rules of Order on their wrist - they knew what they just did was completely out of line. Things had to be BAD.
One week later, I was back in the video meeting with the HOA, along with everyone else in Riozona. Evidently, just because the meeting was considered optional, it didn't mean that any of the residents were willing to miss the opportunity to hear from a specialist who might be able to tell us if our island was the next to disappear. President Jacobs looked more disgruntled with every new face joining the meeting, but there was nothing they could do - too many people were on the call to allow them to end it and pretend it was an error.
In another screen that had been pinned in the window, a middle-aged woman sat in what looked to be a lab environment, wearing a lab coat. She was fiddling with her glasses nervously, her hands moving quickly between her glasses, her hair, and something on the table in front of her - notes, perhaps, or something on her computer. She quickly looked at and away from the camera multiple times, a nervous smile on her face, and I felt myself giving in to compassion for her. She did not want to be here, and she did not want to have to talk to us. I felt badly for her, until I realized that if she didn't want to talk to us, it could only mean that the things she was going to talk about were not going to be things we liked.
About one minute after the meeting was scheduled to start, President Jacobs cleared their throat and got everyone's attention. "I'm sure you're all very eager to hear from our special guest, so I will simply introduce her to get things started. Dr. Segovia is a leading environmental scientist out of the former United States. She currently works out of a lab in Central Kansas, where she has been studying the ongoing effects of climate change to the coastal regions of Western Europe and eastern North America. She came to me with information that I thought...well, why don't you start, Dr. Segovia?"
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly before she began speaking. Her voice was much lower in tone than I had imagined, and there was a great deal of sorrow in it. "Thank you, President Jacobs, and good afternoon, residents of Riozona. I regret to inform you that the island you are currently inhabiting will not remain large enough to sustain life in its current structure. The waters are rising, and the land itself is sinking. The combination of effects is speeding up the process of reclamation of land, and means that before the end of the next solar cycle, your island will be completely uninhabitable."
Silence followed her pronouncement, and she fiddled with something on her desk as she looked at the camera, then at her screen, off to the side, or anywhere else. No one on the meeting was saying anything, not even President Jacobs - judging by their stunned expression, I didn't think they had been fully briefed before the meeting. We were all just...stunned. How do you even respond to that?
Finally, Dr. Segovia broke the silence. "Um, if there aren't any questions...?" She looked at the camera again, then off-screen, and I realized that she was trying to figure out if she could just leave. She'd done her job, after all. When no one spoke up, she added, "President Jacobs has my contact information if you think of anything. Again, I'm very sorry." And with that, she hung up.
A few seconds later, President Jacobs ended the call. They never said anything, either - what was there to say, exactly? "Sorry you scrimped and saved all of your credits so you could move to an island paradise that's going to be gone in a year? No refunds?" There were lots of questions, but none that Dr. Segovia would be able to answer. Where would we go? What would happen to our homes, our things, our people? Was there room for us somewhere else on the planet? What if we couldn't leave?
Those were tomorrow's questions; no answers were coming right now. Tonight, we just needed to figure out how we were going to say goodbye.
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