The Global Flood destroyed our planet 242 years ago. Year Zero—the start of our current calendar, Post Inundationem: the years after the Global Flood. Prior to that the world had been on the brink of war, a huge arms race was building up between the Eurasian and American continents. Then there had been the terrorist attack on the White House; the explosion during the attempted peace talks left three of the world’s leaders dead. Suddenly ballistic missiles had started arcing between East and West. But the real tragedy struck in the South, where a submarine of one of the competing powers lay in wait, ready to turn the war nuclear. Ten of its nuclear warheads smashed into Antarctica. They blamed it on faulty guidance systems. Nobody owned up to it. The Americas blamed the Eurasians. The Eurasians blamed each other. Not that it mattered in the end. Because that was the day the world changed. Irreparably. Forever. The day the waters rose.

The war ended there, but the catastrophe had only begun. The southern ice cap was vaporized. Those who had denied the very existence of global warming now saw it happen a hundred times faster than climate-change experts had predicted. The oceans grew wild with hurricanes, sending unstoppable tsunamis to every point on the compass. Sixty-foot waves thrashed the coasts. But it wasn’t only islands that sunk. Major capitals were swallowed up by the sea, too. Of the cities most affected by the destruction of war—New York, London, Moscow, Shanghai—nothing remained but charred remnants of skyscrapers, rising from the sea like weird twisted coral.

Attempts were made to stop the waters rising, of course. Flood protection booms were dropped far out at sea, concrete walls were hastily thrown up along the coasts. But the sea tossed aside the booms, gushed over the concrete walls—and people scrambled for high ground.

Anyone rich enough secured properties and construction materials in mountainous areas and built new homes. The rest were forced to fend for themselves in cheap coastal shelters. Society split into the Masses and the Elites. It didn’t take long for the dictatorships to follow. There was no place for democracy in a world where only the most powerful survived.

Until that day of destruction, Mom said, everyone had lived on the low-lying plains. Now 90 percent of these inhabited areas were gone. Large swathes of the Americas, of Eurasia, and of Africa were claimed by the oceans; Australia had become nothing more than scattered islands. Factories, airports, industries, power plants, and oil pipelines were all swallowed by the water. Resources ran low and were hoarded by the rich. Although the past and the social divide are forbidden topics, I’ve heard the hushed whispers circulating behind cupped hands. Horror stories about the mainland, about Masses being enslaved, killed due to the lack of resources, even instances of cannibalism.

When I was a child these were just rumors. We were safe in the Valley on Cape Harmony, a headland in the outlying regions of the former US West Coast. All the evil from the mainland was far away and unreal. I remember the Blue Outs when Mom and I sat by candlelight. I’d cuddle up close to her because I was scared. She would comfort me and tell me that my father had picked Cape Harmony because it was safe. Because it had strong flood barriers. And because it had resources . . .