The old man walked out his cave and looked over the landscape. The water had risen so high that only the tops of the skyscrapers could be seen. The skyline of what was once a great city was now invisible unless you could breathe underwater. He could still remember what it looked like in the time that existed before the banks crashed, before the riots and global wars began. It seemed like a different lifetime but in reality, it had only been a dozen years or so. Time itself had been tough to keep track of as his days were mostly spent trying to find clean water and food to eat.

He thought about how it all started. The wars in the Middle East escalated so quickly it seemed almost like it happened over night. Russia's declaration of war over the installation of a no fly zone was something the USA wasn't ready for, and it turned out Putin wasn't bluffing. The war was bad enough, bad enough that people weren't paying attention to the warning signs that global economy was about to crash just when people were beginning to trust it again. This time, the crash was worse than 2008, costing people much more than it had then as all 6 banks crumbled one after the other like dominoes engraved with giant dollar signs. That's when the riots started.

"They should have started sooner," the man thought. "Maybe there still would have been time." Instead as more and more companies pulled out of the health insurance exchange driving up premiums, and the cost of living continued to rise, people had less and less every day. And people waited. They waited for the government to fix clean the water supply. They waited for the promise of jobs that never came. They waited for their governments to do something, anything except tell the people, "we hear you and we are working on it." Nothing changed.

Even when people began marching on the capital, they were ignored despite the record number of arrests. The people went home under the illusion their voices had been heard but in reality it was just another placebo pill the officials fed the public to keep them quiet while they made their fund raising phone calls.

They often say life can often imitate art, and when the war escalated to nuclear proportions, that's exactly what happened. "Dr. Strangelove is more of a documentary now than a piece of social commentary," the man thought, "though unlikely anyone will ever see it again." The days of going to movies were long gone. Books were even hard to find thanks to kindles and tablets all but being rendered useless unless you needed a flat surface to eat from.

It wasn't long after the both sides starting nuclear weapons, that the floods began. We'd been warned that Miami and parts of the Florida coast were shrinking, but it's funny what global war, a crashing economy, and not having clean water can distract you from. Suddenly, the oceans were rising 3 inches a day. "It's temporary," he remembered the government saying. "It will subside soon."

The scientists argued about what caused it. They debated about what to do about it, but the politicians didn't listen. It never stopped. The ice caps are gone. Any city within 180 miles of a coastline was underwater. Millions were dead. For years, the ocean water smelled of death and disease. The man sometimes wondered if it really did stop smelling, or if he'd just gotten used to it the way you get used to how your house smells. No one really knew for sure.

The old man noticed that the sun was about to set, and it was time to get back inside before the bears and the wolves came out to hunt. "At least they thrived," he thought. "Who would think that it's now humans that are endangered, O. Henry would be laughing."

He noticed the boy sitting silent just a few feet from him and had been so wrapped up in his own thoughts, he had no idea how long the boy had been there. "What were you thinking about?" the boy asked.

"I was thinking about what caused all of this and what could have stopped it."

"Why didn't anyone say anything to get people to try?"

"Someone did."

"Who?"

"His name was Bernie Sanders."