The Second Life

Humans need change. Humans crave change. What would it be like if we were all the same?

We would hate it.

We would destroy it.

We would change because that is the law of the universe.
Nothing stays the same and if it does stay the same for long enough people will fight their way out of sameness.

Part 1. The Family.

Sheylin Lee and her husband Kian Lee with their 2 kids Cora Lee and Sun Lee.

Sheylin Lee was an Indian woman from New Delhi and her husband Kian Lee was a Chinese man from the diminished country of China. Sheylin's daughter, Cora, was from a previous marriage to a man who died. Sheylin met Kian were set up to marry each other, 5 years ago by the elders. Kian and Sheylin had their boy, Sun together. They were living in India. A small interracial family of settlers from a world that is so very different from yours. 

Global warming has ruined earth and the terraforming Earth back into a habitable place is slow going. Most people live in the mountains in the winter and in the ocean in summer. 

During the winter, the waters recede and land is available to farm animals and food on. During the summer, most of the earth is covered in water. Everyone lives in large submersible ships carrying everything needed to live. Everything for a family to survive the summer in. There is talk that there are places where the water never recedes, its also said that certain factions, governments refuse access to it and have placed a wall around it. The Lee family is searching for this place as are many of the farming families. But nothing is known of this place. In the meantime living in the submersible vehicle that could fly in the air as well, for half a year, on a mountainside doing farming in winter. Winters are warm enough to grow food, and most people do not dare to exit a submersible many times in summer because of the extreme heat. The meteorologists said a once in a lifetime 2 year summer was coming. Everyone on the island farming was warned to make extra food for the long summer.

Kian Lee is the father of two kids, Cora, age 7 and Sun, age 5. Cora is a bright girl who knows how to swim and grow potatoes. Her younger brother Sun, knows how to raise chickens like his father. Sun, doesn't yet know how to swim. Many farmers tow a submersible with chicken livestock in frozen animation and all of the vegetable crops with soil to wait until they can be released onto the ground in the winter. Kian, (age 24) has been married to widow Sheylin, (age 38) for 5 years. 

Sheylin has taught her kids math, reading and what little history and agriculture she knew, during the summers while submerged below the heat. This year is so very different, the worry was palpable between the farmers and families. No one was sure they would survive such a summer.

Its dreadful to live at sea half of the year with little contact from the other farming families. People were told to go into suspended animation while they floated the seas the next two years, since food would be stretched thin.

There were terrible dangers in that, though.

The androids aboard the ship would navigate while they slept. They would lock down the entire ship in an effort to have safe time in the sea, but there were always pirates around the seas who would rob and kill people in submersibles that weren't armed well enough. People weighed the idea of staying awake to stay free of pirates and going into suspended animation to save on food. Neither was a true answer and the farmers feared being at sea. Anything could happen to them.

Today was the final day on land for the Lee family for a long time.

Kian produced the medicine to consume for his family. A family with a fear of death by pirate, hunger from being awake and any other possibilities of going wrong, altogether.