The Levee's Gonna Break

Dystopian Literary Fiction:
Fast forward to the present in Sprawn City. Enter into the human internal milieu the eastern renavirus, relatively fresh from its genetic jump from a desert tortoise, alien enough to generate no alarm from molecular defenses and thus able to
make shattering inroads, whether gauged by infections or mortality.

"Rachel was not a hydrologist, but intuitively the startling fall in the "mother of all reservoirs" seemed unexplainable by any of the usual mechanisms, even when the new Renavirus-related behaviors were factored in.

"When in doubt, document!
She turned away from the binoculars to attach the camera to the spotting scope. As no notice had ever been taken of the rote reports she had to file after every lookout session, Rachel had no expectations of any official interest in her primitive visual documentation of water level snapped from kilometers distant, but she had plenty of both boredom and curiosity to motivate her.

"The 4 fold advantage in magnification affirmed her concerns. Dark liquid sloshed in the forebay, but its surface line fell over a meter below the obviously fresh high watermark.

"Just a map and some basic geometry and I'll quickly calculate loss...", Rachel thought.

"Later. For now just get the photos...". The camera clicked.