The Lost Cities

Nana Hendrics was a plump old woman, who mostly laid in bed these days, or watched the news. Sometimes, she’d sit and make clothes for her children when the lights worked. Nowadays, the lights rarely worked. Most things in Atlantis did not work much anymore. Nana Hendricks was one of the few who recalled life before the sea took it all and swallowed the world whole. She recalled the sun on her face and sand between her toes at the beach. She remembered snow, and the chill in the air during fall. She remembered, and she told her daughter the stories of those last few years. Of memories long gone and mostly removed from the aquatic world they now lived in. She sat in her favorite chair, staring out the window to see the glass. They were one of the lucky ones; They had a house close to the walls and could see the seemingly endless deep blue of the ocean. They saw fish and sea life pass near them each day. When she was a girl, she'd been so enamored with it. She'd sit there for hours and stare at it all, watching the animals she could name.

She was tired, for she was turning 89 this year. The wrinkles on her face made her feel older though. She told her child that often. Her daughter was 53, and her granddaughter only 16. Her daughter was named Maggie, and she was a news reporter, she was never home these days. Not after her husband had died. He'd gotten sick with cancer. It was sad, but they just did not speak of it. Her granddaughter was named Beth. Beth spent a good deal of time with her grandmother, she loved the stories she told. After school, she came home to dim lighting and settled on the sofa next to her grandmother’s chair. The news was on, and they could both see Maggie on the dim screen. Despite her age, Maggie could have easily passed for 30. Nana Hendrics gave a grunt of dissatisfaction, and a hand moved to her collar where a very old locket lay.

It was silver and shaped like a heart. Inside the locket was a photo of Nana Hendrics as a girl, sporting a sundress, and her mother and father standing behind her, also sharply dressed. They looked happy, but that photo was before Atlantis . Wrinkled and aged hands fiddled with the item, a habit of anxiety. Beth felt a pang of worry in her stomach, twisting her own insides up like noodles from last week's dinner. She knew why Nana was worried. On the news, Maggie was covering an ongoing debate. The debate proposed a new law. If passed, those who could no longer contribute to the growth of Atlantis wouldn’t be allowed to keep enjoying the scarce resources, but it was just a nicer way of saying, kill the elderly.

“It will never pass, Nana,” Beth said warmly.

Nana hummed, then got a decorative walking stick, using it to hoist herself up. “Politicians,” she said, like the word tasted nasty in her mouth. “They never change. The whole world has changed, but they never do.Come, sit with me outside. We have time.”

Beth nodded, grabbing a thin blanket from the sofa to toss around herself. The backyard was not much of a yard. There was no grass. Just concrete slabs that lead to the edge of the glass. They walked to it and sat down right next to the thick glass — Nana using an old chair that she'd brought out there many years beforehand. She sat and stared into the deep blue abyss for a while. Beth sat quietly, unsure of what to say, before she was presented with a notebook and a fine ball point pen. These items had been in the seat before Nana sat down. Writing in notebooks had not been allowed since Beth was 6. It had made school terribly hard — to not have notes — but she managed.

“Nana?” she asked quietly. Her eyes flicked up in time to see a pod of dolphins, swimming close, before they launched themselves up higher. They're going to leave the water, Beth thought to herself.

Her thoughts were cut short by a grunt. “Beth, my dear, do you remember what I've told you?”

“About what?”

“Before...” she said softly, “Before all of this mess, before there was no more dry land?”

“In parts.” Beth said honestly.

Nana nodded. “Start writing.”

“Why?”

“So people don't forget, girl.”

Beth nodded, and she clicked her pen. It was oddly satisfying; she hadn't been able to hear that sound in years. She looked to her grandmother. The sun was gone from this area, and the ocean was dark. Due to limited energy hours, the lights that were on were very dim, but Beth was more used to the dark than Nana Hendrics was.

“When I was a girl,” said Nana after a moment, her hand going to the silver locket and fiddling away with it again, “I lived in America with my parents. The year was…” she licked her lips, trying to find the words again — the time again — but it was there. “The year was 2668. I was born at the end of times, and my mother was called awful names for having a child when the world knew what was happening. Still, they kept us all mostly normal. We had freedoms and were told the cities would be fine, that the water rising would not be so bad, because the cities would work.”

“Was the water rising already?”

“It had been rising for hundreds of years, and the world got smaller and smaller. The once huge mounds of land were slowly submerged, but people moved more and more inland, until they were already living on top of one another.”

Beth gave a slow nod and kept writing.

“I was ten when we moved into this fish bowl.” She knew Beth would not understand the fish bowl comment. “They were working on the top.” She pointed upwards where, way, way up, the top of the dome just barely poked out of the water. Just enough that people could see the waves splash over it when it was stormy. Just enough to see the sun for a few short hours on calm days. “It was not so bad at first. When we came, they asked us not to bring too many personal items, or things that would take up space, for we did not know how long we'd be here. So I had very little, but my momma made sure I kept this necklace, and for that I'm grateful to her each day. You could not talk about religion either. We were supposed to pretend we did not have any. I think most people kept theirs, in secret, but it was illegal to talk about it. That rule a lotta people hated, but they didn't want people fighting. We're all stuck in this glass cage, so we need to get along. Back then it wasn't so hard, just scary.

Each year, we watched the water rise more and more. But we had full contact with all the other cities from all over the world. We all had food, plenty of it. There were not so many rules, just the basics: don't steal, don’t kill or hurt anyone. Killing, that was the only way to die by the judges back then. We were still mostly free, and when the lights were on, they were much brighter than they are now. They've gotten duller as the years go on. The restriction to energy happened years later.” Nana rubbed her face. “Food wasn't always so hard to come by, or so expensive. We had crop failures, a lot. And there isn't much room to grow food in other places. Then the animals started to die….” She mumbled, “ I was 36, your mother was just born. That's when it happened. We used to have another city we could see on bright nights.” She pointed outward, as if Beth would be able to see the lost city.

“My husband went there for work. They used to take submarines and go between the cities. Then one day, the glass broke. It was destroyed. We don't know what happened. We still don't. But no one survived. A few years later we lost contact with the other cities, too — they were just gone. No more radios worked. They sent a few submarines out, with supplies, to try and reach another city that was further away. They never came back.”

Beth swallowed, hand trembling when she wrote that part down.

“The rules got stricter. You stole a bit of bread for your family, you were hung. You became a problem, you hung. You got sick and the —” Nana stopped; She could see Beth did not want to hear the end of that. “When your mother was young, that's when it got harder. They went door-to-door and made sure to take anything that could cause envy in others: flags, expensive jewelry, old memorabilia from before we sank. I hid my locket in my shoe when they came.”

Beth smirked a little. “So rebellious.”

Nana smirked, too. “Yes, back then I was. My momma and papa had just passed from old age before this. They'd have died anyway, seeing how strict this place got. Then the curfews happened. We did not need to go to bed before 8 pm. That was a new rule.”

“Why do you think they added more rules, Nana?”

“People kept having babies. It wasn't like there was much else to do. When the radios went down, we lost the internet, and lost most of the media we'd managed to bring with us from the old world. Then books were all confiscated and sent to libraries, but so many people wanted to borrow them that they put a limit on that, too.”

Beth did not tell her grandmother that the library was closed now. Too many issues with people fighting over books. She knew it would break the older woman's heart.

Nana sighed a little. “Art supplies. We had those in my time, but not anymore. They don't let you kids be creative or have too much fun. Say it'll cause jealousy, or supply loss. Any job that they deem unneeded were removed. There used to be hundreds of jobs you could do, but then they took away entertainment as a job, and writing. How many jobs are there now, anyway?”

Beth counted. “Ten. We can choose between ten jobs when we turn 18.”

“We used to have heat. This whole place would be warm,” Nana mumbled, having a hard time keeping the memories in order, but not wanting one to be missed.

Beth looked up at that. In Atlantis, it was tolerable in the summer, but in the long winter months, it was freezing. People had to wear so many layers of clothes to keep warm, and even still, they would bundle together for heat.

Nana continued. “ More people used to get a say on what happened with our laws, but then riots happened. So, we can't help make choices anymore, we just listen to what they say, or else.”

Beth shifted and stood, blanket still wrapped around her. The alarm sang. It was now 6pm; All non-working individuals needed to be in their homes. Nana sat there for a long moment. Beth wondered if she was distracted by the whales that were swimming past, or if she was still looking for that lost city. Soon, she started to stand. The two hobbled inside where the lights were a good bit dimmer than the ones outside.

“We used to be able to decide when lights were on or not, too,'' Nana mumbled.

They settled back on the sofa in time to see Maggie's expression turn grim on the TV.

“The bill has passed.” Maggie said.