https://everythingspeakstome.com/files/original/da1a80e7986be83e497f5b82ae1f2261.png a9d9f1393056c06aaa97a871b7be605c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource After The Rise ... Description An account of the resource Using elevations and water level projected on EyesOnTheRise.com, these speculative fictions explore the world that was Miami after sea levels rise 6 or more feet. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Administrator Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Please post your written submission in this field. The images you would like to include should be posted as attachments below. Mornings were always peaceful, save for the alarm blasting in Evelyn’s ears to remind her that she had to get ready for work. Still, she felt calm as she got ready despite having two teenagers under her roof. Walking out of the bathroom, she saw her two sleepy kids making her and themselves a small breakfast. Anthony and Michelle, lovingly dubbed Ant and Elle, looked up at her as if she had hung the stars. Those looks always brightened those mornings as she sat down to enjoy a quick meal with them. For a little bit, the only sound in the dining room was the clink of their utensils on their ceramic plates. Then, Anthony spoke up. “Hey, Mom. I was thinking I could go out on the boat today to grab lunch from one of the neighborhood’s rooftop shops. Y’know, I have my boating license now, and I thought it’d be a nice way to start this boring week of online school.” Eve shot him that motherly look that told him to slow his damn horses. He paused, knowing when to quit. Ant still had a tiny pout on his face, and part of her wanted to pinch it off his cheeks. “Okay,” she said after a few seconds of their unspoken staring competition. “Will you be safe? And will you be back before your lunch break ends?” Ant beamed and nodded enthusiastically. “Of course! In fact, I’ll wear that silly life vest and be back with 10 minutes to spare before class!” Evelyn frowned at her son’s words. “The cute life vest I designed for you isn’t silly,” she mumbled. “I mean silly in a good way, Mom!” he responded. “I’m gonna pretend you mean that,” she said, reaching over to yank one of his ears. He protested aloud, and Michelle laughed at her other side. “I’m cool watching the house as long as you bring me back cookies,” Elle told him, and he stuck his tongue out in response. “Yeah, sure. I’ll just be eating some of those cookies,” Ant said. To that, Elle scoffed. “Save some for me, or you’re gonna die.” Evelyn shook her head at her kids’ antics, standing up to wash her dish in the sink. With the noise of her kids playfully bickering, she could only barely hear a strange creek come from the house. Her hands froze with the towel and plate still clutched between her fingers, and she looked around to pinpoint what she could’ve heard. Placing everything down, she turned to see Ant and Elle’s banter had become more relaxed, but they seemed unaware of any strange sounds. So, Evelyn shrugged it off, wiping her hands off on her pants. She walked over to her kids and gave them both kisses on the foreheads. They both gleefully accepted them and gave her a kiss on the cheek in return. Her heart full, she decided then was as good a time as any to head out to work. Grabbing her boat keys and opening the door, she turned back to smile at her kids a final time. “Later, kiddos!” she called out before closing the door behind her. – Mondays were typically dull in the station. Nothing ever happened; kids were too busy with online school to get into any trouble. So, as Officer Evelyn Bennett of Water Rescue strapped on her wetsuit and gear for the day, she was convinced she wouldn’t need it all. “You’re here a little late. Something keep you?” her coworker, Reese, said as they entered the changing room to put on their own gear. “Boat traffic in Homestead was rough today. You’d think it was another dolphin clog with how packed it was,” Eve replied, putting her hair up into a ponytail to get it out of the way. “I still don’t know why you still live in Homestead. I don’t trust those structures on top of the flooded buildings.” Reese’s frown captured their disapproval. Eve couldn’t help but snort. “It’s been my family’s home since before the 40’s. The rooftop extension has been safe for more than forty years. And I can’t exactly afford houses outside of Homestead Sea yet. So Anthony, Michelle, and I are stuck with that place for now.” Anthony and Michelle—siblings that had been orphaned because of Hurricane Edgar in 2098—had come to love the place, anyways. Eve still remembers the first time she saw the then 5-year-old and 3-year-old kids. They instantly captured her heart, and she couldn’t help but adopt them. She initially wondered if they would prefer a house on the mainland, but they took a liking to the house when she brought them there for the first time, and she didn’t want to switch up their situation again so early in their lives. Hurricane Edgar itself had been a tough thing for Florida to get over. Thousands of lives had been lost, drowning being a major cause. Even the Water Rescue division, established in 2067, couldn’t help everyone. The storm had flooded the state with ease because said state had already succumbed to the rising sea. Still, Evelyn maintained that her rooftop extension in Homestead was as safe as can be. It had survived Hurricane Edgar’s whipping winds and treacherous flooding and water pressure, much to the surprise of the residents back then. The event had just given Eve confidence in its structural stability. “If you say so,” Reese told her. “But if something ever happens, remember that you’re always welcome at my place. You and your kids, Eve.” Eve smiled at that. She took Reese’s hand in hers and squeezed it through their wetsuits. Reese smiled back, their characteristic dimples appearing next to their mouth. It was an endearing sight, so Evelyn had to look away to hide her burning cheeks. She cleared her throat. “Thanks, Reese. I’ll keep your offer in mind. Nothing’s gonna happen, though.” “Maybe not today,” they replied. “It is Monday, after all. The offer is always open.” Eve chuckled and finished getting her gear on. She gestured towards the exit door that led back to the station. Reese nodded at the implicit question. The two walked out together, and they saw that the station was as dead as they’d both predicted. Fellow first responders slumped on their chairs or desperately chased down their tiredness with cup after cup of coffee. “Man, I love this job,” droned Evelyn, the contagious energy of the dead room affecting her. Reese scoffed. “You do love this job. You love saving people. We just don’t do much of that on school days.” “Well shit, that’s four days of the week, Reese.” “Isn’t a quiet day a good thing? That means people are safe, Eve.” “You’re right. It’s selfish. I just wish something would happen.” As if on cue, an alert practically woke up one of the phone operators. He picked up the call; Evelyn and Reese could only hear their coworker’s side of the conversation, but it didn’t sound good. “Water Rescue, what is your emergency?” he began. “Slow down, miss. What’s going on? Your building collapsed? How many people were inside? Two, including yourself, okay. Are you two in a safe position? No. What’s the address? Uh-huh, got it,” the man wrote something down on paper and held it out for Reese to take. “Help is on the way. Stay on the line with me, miss.” Reese and Eve, along with two other members of their team hurried out to their speedboat and turned on their waterproof communication devices. They hopped on, sitting in their seats and checking their equipment to work out any possible kinks. Reese—their designated pilot—studied the paper they were given, and Eve stopped and tuned everything out to scrutinize the shocked expression her coworker had on their face. Luckily, she didn’t have to guess anymore when they showed her the paper. Evelyn’s heart dropped. Her own home address. It was then that the operator spoke in her ear again. “What’s your name? Michelle Bennett? Okay Michelle, who else is in the house with you? Your brother. Do you know where he is? No? No, no, that’s okay. They’ll find him.” Eve began to hyperventilate. Her dear Elle was calling for help because their building had collapsed. She didn’t know where Ant was. He could be dead for all she knew, and Elle could be next. Every fear a mother could have kicked in, and she struggled to breathe. She could barely hear the muffled sounds of Reese explaining something to her team. It was as if a wave had collapsed on top of her, dragging her into the depths of the suffocating water. She felt every bone in her body freeze as her muscles clenched. Hurt and fear extended to the tips of her fingers, making them feel tingly—like blood hadn’t been flowing to them at all. Most of all, she felt shell shocked and stuck in place. Her shaky eyes didn’t leave the stupid, miniscule piece of paper that mocked her with its familiar numbers and words. She hadn’t even realized she stopped breathing. Suddenly, Eve felt a hand on her shoulder. Another member of her team, Kevin Lopez tried to coax her to relax and breathe. The touch was welcome, but it didn’t stop her from being frantic with worry. “It’s okay if you want to sit this one out, Bennett. It’s personal, and we understand,” Lopez told her. “He’s right. It’s okay if you can’t,” teammate Gloria Maldonado spoke up. Her eyes held the sympathy of a fellow mother. “No,” Eve finally choked out. “This is personal, but that’s all the more reason for me to go. I have to be there. I have to save them.” Despite sharing hesitant looks, they nodded at her, and Reese continued to steer their boat towards her home. The home she had known her entire childhood and the home her sweet children had come to know. She swore to them that it was safe. She supposed she shouldn’t have trusted such a recent form of architecture so blindly. Now, her children were suffering from that mistake. Arriving at her family home was like walking into a parallel dimension. It looked like a sight from her worst nightmares—there were wood panels floating in the sea beside the dining table they just ate at and family portraits that featured her face and her kids’ faces, there was a collapsed wall that left only a door that was close to tumbling too, there was holes in the floor that led to the abandoned, flooded house below, and—worst of all—there was Michelle, wearing her brother’s life vest, clinging to a door frame for dear life. The winds were quite strong today, but Eve never would have guessed they would be strong enough to cause such cataclysm. No, there had to have been something else. Perhaps the sound she had heard earlier was a warning. Perhaps she should’ve taken it more seriously. The absence of Anthony also drove a stake through the woman’s heart. They had to jump into action—they had to find him. It was her priority before letting the horrific damages to her home truly sink in. Despite Reese’s protests to wait until they safely parked the boat, Evelyn jumped into the water, the insulation from her wet suit doing a good job protecting her from the biting cold of the sea. She swam a few feet away to the stairs, broken from the fall of debris. She climbed over fallen walls, the bookcase that held Michelle and Anthony’s adoption records, and other pieces of furniture until she could make it to Michelle. Though none of the debris stopped her, she still felt like sobbing. The water had torn through every good memory she’d had. But she wasn’t about to let it take away any future memories with her children. She pushed away those thoughts and the thoughts of guilt that came from even thinking of material possessions over Michelle and Anthony for a second. In the distance, she heard Reese, Lopez, and Maldonado springing into action. Lopez followed her path to help save Michelle, while Reese and Maldonado began their search for Anthony. After what felt like arduous hours, she finally made it to Michelle. The girl looked nothing like she did in the morning. Bright, cheerful smiles became clenched teeth and tightly-shut eyes; untamed yet adorable hair became wet and cold mops; teasing giggles became weeps of misery. The strong urge to protect her from any and all danger forced every bone in her body into action. “Elle, honey. It’s Mom, you can get up.” she said to her shivering daughter, touching her on the shoulder. Michelle looked up from where she was huddled with a phone still to her ear. Tears were already present in her eyes, but seeing her mother made them flood out. She hugged her mom tightly, and it shattered Eve’s heart to feel her shaking. “Mom, Anthony! He was going to take the boat out to grab the food at the rooftop shop two blocks away. I stopped him before he left to give him his life vest, but we started feeling the floor trembling,” Michelle paused to take a deep breath at the request of her mother. “I rushed to hold on to this, but I think I saw Ant fall when the floor collapsed.” Evelyn’s fears were confirmed, and it took everything in her not to scream out loud. She tried to keep cool in front of her child, nodding at her words. She kissed her cheek and helped her to her feet. “Ant’s gonna be just fine,” she said, reassuring both Elle and herself. “I’m gonna go help Reese—you remember Reese—and Gloria look for him down there. My coworker, Kevin, is gonna get you outta here.” Her tone was rushed and panicked, but Elle nodded anyway, sniffing as she gave her mother another hug. Evelyn squeezed back like her life depended on it. Then, she handed her off to Lopez, who also gave her a hug. “Hey, kid. You’re okay. Let’s get you on the boat where it’s warm, huh?” Lopez told Elle, who smiled. He supported her as he walked to the boat, dodging debris and being careful where to step. Eve looked at her feet to see the opening that her daughter was talking about. It was gaping, and the water below it was hard to see through. It was dark, despite the sun beating down above it and her. She carefully lowered herself down. Under the sea, she saw the bright light of Reese and Maldonado’s suits and equipment that helped her locate them. They both held an underwater flashlight that illuminated the murky waters; it would help them find her son. It also gave Evelyn her first glance at her family’s original home, the one passed down years before Homestead became known as a sea. It felt like walking into a museum, her family’s pictures, clutter, and wall hangings decorated the waters like curated exhibits. Water pressure had worn down any furniture that remained when it was too late to remove it from the premises. She made a signal at Reese, who responded by returning a signal that told her they hadn’t found him yet. Evelyn divided the rooms of the underwater cavern to the three of them, and swam off to the hall that had a bathroom and the master bedroom. She couldn’t tell what color the paint on the wall was. Whatever it was, it had faded from the many years it had been flooded. She wondered what it was like for her ancestors from the 20’s to wander these halls when they were above the surface. It was hard to think of that lost perspective, especially when she hadn’t been close to being a part of it. She continued to make her way to the master bedroom. As soon as she entered, she could tell it belonged to her grandparents. Her grandmother, Missy, had a particular style to the room she decorated. String lights furnished the walls of the master bedroom, and fake plants floated around her. A weighted blanket surrounded the bed frame as if the room was still being lived in. She shone her flashlight around the room. Upon not seeing Ant, she was about to turn and leave. Suddenly, though, the blanket moved. Evelyn was about to credit ghosts, and say that her suspicions about the room being lived in was true, when she noticed a familiar shoe poking out of the blanket. She rushed over and unwrapped it to find her son. Feelings of panic and relief swarmed her in seconds, and she scanned his face for any signs of life. His eyes remained closed, almost as if this wasn’t a flooded area, and he was just napping. Eve figured the currents must’ve pushed Anthony toward the room, where he then got tangled in the blanket while trying to find a way out. She grabbed him and swam quickly out of the room, where she passed by Reese and Maldonado, who were in the middle of reporting back to each other. Their faces brightened when they saw Evelyn holding her son. She shot them a thumbs up, and the group paddled upwards. Lopez had already set up a rope to make extraction easier, and Eve went first with Ant clutched at her side. She took a deep breath once she was out of the water, removing the gear from her face and crying at her son’s blank face. Her body was overcome with shudders, so Reese did their best to help her and Anthony out of the water and onto the boat. Once they set Ant down on the boat, Evelyn took a deep breath to steel herself, and she began to perform CPR with the aid of Maldonado. Michelle watched in horror, barely breathing as she waited for her older brother to do so first. Reese held Elle closely, rubbing her shoulder up and down to comfort her. “He’ll be okay,” Reese told her. Nothing could stop her from burying her head into their shoulder to sob, though. “Come on, Ant, it’s your mom,” Evelyn chanted at the same time, working on chest compressions to get his breath back. It was hard to have her child’s life in her hands. She worried that she had completely forgotten how to resuscitate someone and was going to be the cause of her son’s death. It was the anxiety of the day speaking, but it proved a slight hindrance to her confidence in the task. Eve almost had Reese or Lopez take over for her, but at long last, Anthony coughed up water and started taking in deep breaths. “That’s it, kid, breathe. You’re safe. It’s okay, you’re okay.” Anthony looked up with glassy eyes at his mother, and he began to cry, just like Elle. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t do anything! The floor, it!” Evelyn shushed him, gently rubbing his cheek with her thumb. It was a small comfort to finally have both her kids safe and with her. To be able to touch Anthony’s cheek again without it feeling cold was all she needed for that moment. “Don’t apologize. It’s my fault,” she said, guilt bubbling in her throat again. “I never should’ve stayed here. Heaven knows, this neighborhood is in a huge danger zone. Our neighbors were right to get outta here.” Maldonado wrapped a towel around Anthony and took his vitals to make sure he was doing okay. Eve finally let herself rest, leaning onto Reese’s arm with a sigh. She closed her eyes, wishing silently that it could’ve been another dull Monday. It wasn’t, though, Evelyn reminded herself as her eyes opened again to catch one of the family portraits from earlier float away from them. Water had already slightly blurred the image. She wondered if her entire life was going to become an exhibit, just as her ancestors’ lives had. “What are we gonna do now?” Michelle piped up. It was a valid question. But Eve was still wondering about it herself. She looked up at the wreckage of her family home with remorse. It finally settled in: she was homeless. Her kids had nowhere to call home again, and she was at a loss for words. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she reached up to wipe them before anyone could notice. Her eyes remained glued to her home as the last of it fell apart. “I don’t know,” was all she could say. “You’re always welcome at my house,” Reese whispered, rubbing her arm in an attempt at comfort. Evelyn smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. It would help, but it wouldn’t repair the pieces of her broken home and heart. A temporary solution to a life-altering problem. Anthony and Michelle held hands with their mother as they were pulled away from their lives, a bitter parallel to what happened when the sea levels began to rise. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Just Another Monday Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephanie Acosta Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 04/19/2023