Annals of Semiramide: A Capsule Update

Unlike her sister planet Terra, the watery world of Semiramide rotated in a clockwise sense, and thus its deserts occupied the western shores of oceans. Sprawn City, Broneese’s home since he fled the malarial West Coast during the Mississippian squalls, was a huge conurbation on the semitropical shore of the Eastern Ocean, in a place no sane futurologist would ever predict the fourth most populous city of the Associated Republic would rise. Average total annual rainfall 13.5 cm, yet 8.1 million people scrabbling for a living from the sandy soil.

Fast forward to the present in Sprawn City. Fished out of the flood to die of thirst... Broneese’s new home was as spectacularly dry as the West Coast had been sickeningly wet, but actual thirst pathologies or water rationing had not yet entered the picture. Unfortunately, the eastern renavirus made its move into the human internal milieu with timing so synchronized with Broneese’s bicoastal transfer that if it were written in a book no one would believe it. This virus was fresh from its genetic jump from a desert tortoise to genus Homo, thus still alien enough to generate no alarm from human molecular defenses and able to make shattering inroads, whether gauged by infections or mortality.

Many of the “Sprawners'' that comprised Broneese’s new friends and colleagues were fellow refugees from the climatic crises of the Second Adjustment, which some years ago had hit the Republic’s West Coast heartland with saturating monsoons that made the bone-dry East seem a paradise. The saturated weather systems came in waves, the period of which measured in many months. A particularly drenching series near the end of the adjustment was known as the “Mississippian squalls,” due to its waterlogged similarity to a fictional geologic epoch in a work of popular science fiction. With the crowning blow that was the Mississippian reverberating, those residents of hard-hit Kronin, the Associated Republic’s capital, who were well-connected enough to obtain the coveted relocation passes flocked to the opposite coast like spiders in a sink, surprised by the circling tsunami from the faucet, scurrying in a vain attempt to outrun the tightening noose of the silently gliding wave. The past few months of the always-dry East Coast had some dislocated veterans of the “Great Sog'' actually nostalgic, for although the flooding, ponding and pooling of the bad old days in their left coast homeland had nurtured abundant mosquitoes and thus an efflorescence of malaria the likes of which had never been seen, the disease itself was generally treatable with time-tested methods of one or another degree of safety. The less medically knowledgeable transplants, or those notably adept at denial, viewed the prognosis of Eastern Renavirus as similar, and to be in the midst of what they thought or hoped was a relatively benign pandemic made them feel right at home.

A parched throat brought Broneese out of his brown study. He no longer carried a water bottle, as the pre-filled type had been impossible to find since a “run on water” caused by the rumor that “medical hyperhydration” would protect against the Renavirus. Reaching into his lab coat’s embroidered (“Bob Broneese, Drug Technician”) breast pocket he popped a mint out of its tin.

The “click!” brought Diane’s gaze to meet his, and Broneese was as startled by the black mouse-mouth-Mickey -mask beneath her dark eyes as when he first entered the pharmacy that morning. The arc of the mask’s black mouth-corners slashed impossibly high up each cheek, ending in orthogonal crescents that denoted dimples.

The grinning death’s head effect was transformed to “cute” by the pink of the lolling tongue in its oral pocket.

With an effort, Broneese wrenched his attention away from his pharmacist’s bizarre mouth gear and focused on her speech.“Darn, I forgot mine,” Diane complained. “Oh well, guess I’ll have to wait till the break… I’m so thirsty these days!”

“I’ll go out and get you some. You can manage without me for a few minutes…“ After a pause he added wryly, “… or probably for the rest of your career!“

“You know I depend on you. Yes, please get me some mints, but don’t you dare not come back! It’s dangerous out there!”