The prompt this week is this lovely fall scene picture. Beautiful, isn’t it? Inspiring, romantic, even…yeah…I went a different way.

Unfortunately, as with the last picture prompt, Deep Fried Sweethearts can’t be the story…since that’s a Valentine’s story and there’s no lovely fall scenes there. So, instead I’m bringing a new story.

I’m calling it a sci-fi, but it’s a loose description for now since I’m not fully sure where I’m going with it. This was inspired by some show I saw on NatGeo when my kid was in the hospital and it’s been rolling around in my head since. So, I give you the start of a new story that has yet to be named. The place filler name for now is Ice Age.

 

The beginning of the end came on a beautiful autumn day. I remember clearly. My mother predicted everything that happened before and after. Even if she hadn’t taught me everything before her death during the asteroidal panic, she left me with all of the information on her data discs.

Before the year 2050 all glaciers had melted, leaving the world alarmed as political heads ranted about the predicted greenhouse effect and the loss of species they would later forget about. The loss of the glaciers wasn’t fast and scientists had sworn they could fix it, but they never did, and neither did all of the green-living speeches of the millennial humans.

For the more level-headed scientists, the changes did more than drown Florida, New York City and most coastlines, leaving them to become massive marine playgrounds. It brought about another ecological shift; and right under the panicked politicians noses the new Ice Age began.

Like the melting of the glaciers, the re-appearance happened slow.

In 2119 my grandfather happily began to track the forming of the glaciers, because they meant hope for the rebirth of the earth. While most of the world worried about what a renewed ice age would do to the landscape and billions of humans, scientists once again reassured they could handle it.

After all, glaciers move slow.

Of course they do, until you add in an asteroid tumbling toward earth. An asteroid that the powers that be not-so-wisely decided to blow to smithereens in my eighth year of life.

That was the day my mother took me for one last autumn ride through the rolling hills of Indiana. She told me to take in every aspect, the bright yellows and reds, the smell of crisp autumn air.

“Everything changes tonight,” she predicted.

She was right.

 

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