018 — When the World Begins to Drown | Talon Z. Gray

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When the world begins to drown, we prescribe martial law.
Our neighborly becomes our brotherly—subject to change.

Soon, they’ll be begging for cash just to keep funding their little adventure.

These beaches turn into ghost towns.
No tourists. No buzz.

Just overpriced sand and a broke city
that can’t even afford to pump the water out from underneath.

Then, everyone dumps their VRBOs.
Fire-sale listings.
Panic-mode Airbnbs.
The market floods—and dilutes.
Real estate crashes.
And burns.

But here’s what people don’t get:
Climate change doesn’t arrive like an elegant ocean rise creeping in from the edge.
It’s relentless.
Saturating rain—day after day.

It doesn’t care if you have a home,
or a lack of policy.

Flood zones expand like bruises.
Areas that never flooded? Now they do. Heavily.

And not because of the sea.
Because the sky won’t shut up.
“I’m singing in the rain, just singing in the rain!”

If you had to live there, you’d feel it:
You’d be 100% uncomfortable
before a single wave overtops a sand dune.

The real threat is the atmosphere—
humid, wet, thick, broken.

People hunting people.
Evictions disguised as favors.
They’re acting like lifeguards, warning of troubled waters.

And when it won’t stop raining,
and the city can’t afford to keep the pumps running?

They call in help.
More resources.
“Help us, the beach matters!”

And how do they show it matters?

They send in a hundred resources—
to protect a sinking playground.
To keep people out
of the place they say needs people.

Millions spent
to defend this illusion.

And the solution?
A no-solution.
The façade of an answer.
A perpetual business opportunity
for the vastly connected.

Do the pumps purify the water while pushing it?
Can they counterbalance the water coming back in?
Force water to fight itself—a duel in every direction.
After the battle: quarantine.

Cornering the water creates lakes,
places it can pool collectively.

And in its depth, it practices to plunge,
to douse,
to drown those pumps.

Those pumps are failing today.
It’s only a matter of time.

Water does not choose its consequences.
It will clean you.
Change you.
Rearrange.

While we sleep,
a hurricane is brewing.