Are you up for the challenge? Are you ready? Here goes....

Chapter 1: The Flood

The extremely wet, fluid water poured in a streaming cataract of tempestuous liquidity, mercilessly and cruelly inundating everything visible as far as the eye could see. Jake Tillington clung grimly to the rail that circumscribed the perimeter of the upper observation deck on his luxury penthouse apartment and reminded himself for the umpteenth time that they had all been warned! Yes, many warnings had been issued by many prophets, pundits, climate-control experts, and janitorial staff as to the inexorable and unavoidable changes that were occuring in the world and which would alter forever more the casual tenor of our times, these times in which we all live and conduct our day to day lives. But who had listened, cocked an ear, given a serious measure of quality time, payed heed, and been receptive to those warnings? Who among us had had the wit, the presence of mind, the maturity, and the sang froid to bear down, bite the bullet, and face the inevitable and inescapable truth? These were the thoughts that passed through Jake's mind, rather like half-empty buses passing through an overcrowded intersection, shouldering aside for a moment the lesser vehicles around them as a giant pachyderm shoulders aside a herd of wildebeest before it is lost in the approaching denoument of darkness and of night.