‘Well, duh-huh, that’s just plain stoopid!’

He smiled. The unit’s speech patterns were a result of his hacking as well.

‘It is stupid, Bubba. There was a time when we could have turned things around. Saved the earth from overheating, but I suppose it seemed like too much hard work at the time. So we didn’t bother.’

‘Well, duh,’ squawked SpongeBubba again.

Rashim smiled. Exactly… duh.

He led the way down the passageway. The blast door clanked as it closed behind them and motion-sensitive lights in the passageway flickered on. A fading sign on the concrete wall informed him that they were now entering a security level three zone. Lining the wall either side of the sign were old framed photographs of past US presidents: Bush, Obama, Palin, Schwarzenegger, Vasquez, Esquerra.

This installation, carved deep into the side of Cheyenne Mountain, had once upon a time been known as NORAD. It had been kept in a state of ‘warm standby’ until the mid-2040s then finally closed down after the first Oil War. America’s old rival, Russia, was having as much trouble as America with its own internal problems to no longer be a global nuclear threat.

Now it was simply referred to as ‘Facility 29H-Colorado’.

‘I suppose my grandfather’s generation… my parents’ generation even, were too busy wanting all the nice things: the big shiny holo-TV, real meat three times a week, the latest digi-fashions. Too busy with all that to notice the sea slowly rising, taking coastlines and cities with it.’

‘Did the big floodings happen after the Oil Wars, Rashim?’

‘That’s right.’ He shrugged. ‘It might have been better for us if we’d run out of oil and all the other fossil fuels a lot sooner than we did. Maybe we’d still have polar ice caps.’

Rashim’s childhood, like everyone else his age, had been one lived in a world shifting with constant migration. Millions — billions — of people on the move, retreating from land that itself was retreating before rising tides of polluted water.