SEA NOW E-Book

Eva Meijer

• Herausgeber: Peirene Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 276

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The country is flooding. Every day the sea claims another kilometre of land. The prime minister holds a daily press conference. Scientists try to find an explanation, without success. Sheep drown in the fields, weighed down by their waterlogged fleeces. The museums are emptied of their valuable works. Some people stay. Most leave. Once the evacuation is complete, and the rest of the world is already moving on, a climate activist, a young poet and an oceanographer voyage across the new sea. They are drawn back into the heart of a changed nation, seeking what they have lost in the deluge.

Leseprobe

123

SEA NOW

Eva Meijer

Translated from the Dutch by Anne Thompson Melo

4

5

SEA NOW

6

7

Rippling. Buffeting. Crashing. Bellowing.

Rippling, rippling, buffeting.

Buffeting.

Crashing, crashing, bellowing.

Bellowing!

Bellowing! Crashing!

Buffeting, buffeting, buffeting, buffeting, crashing, buffeting.

Rippling.

Rippling.

Whispering. Ever so softly.8

9

PART I10

11

1

It took a while for people to wake up to what was happening.

To be fair, that first day it wasn’t really clear anything much was happening. Some days the sea comes further up the beach than others, and besides, the dykes were high and wide enough. The odd beachcomber had a feeling that something wasn’t quite right. But what? By the time they got home, they’d forgotten all about it.

The second day, the tideline almost reached the dunes at several points along the coast. The mayors of various seaside towns called in the experts from the government water agency, men with cases who turned up in pairs, took their readings and left again. They couldn’t comment on the situation: the readings needed to be analysed first. In the meantime, people began to talk that second afternoon about an unusual natural phenomenon – because that’s what they called it at the start: an unusual natural phenomenon. A restaurant owner in Scheveningen took a photo and posted it online. A metal detectorist in Domburg did the same. Had high tide ever lasted this long before? Was this the rising sea level they kept hearing about? 12

It’s a little too early in our story to start examining the sea’s motives, but perhaps a brief character sketch wouldn’t go amiss here. To anyone standing on the beach, the sea appears to go on for ever. Yes, there’s a horizon, but that shifts as we change position, it’s just an optical demarcation. The sea is not alive, but it’s not dead either, a state most people find hard to get their head around, however accustomed they may be to its presence. The sea is made up of water, just like people are, only it has no skin. Its colour and shape are determined by what surrounds it: the sun, the clouds, the wind. People are shaped by the weather and the landscape too, but they are not quite so inclined to transform with their fluctuating surroundings. At any rate, not the people of the Netherlands, who are at the heart of this book.

The sea doesn’t think or feel, at least not in a way that people are able to recognize with their own thoughts and feelings, which are inevitably limited by the bounds of their physicality and their capacity for imagination. A poet would point here to the polyphony and fluid nature of feelings, a philosopher to the importance of recognizing the materiality of human existence, but that wouldn’t bring us any closer to the sea. Anyway, as intimated, more of the sea later.

When first light broke on the third day, sweeping aside the night, it was apparent that the sea had advanced a kilometre further inland. A handful of cycle paths and a main road were flooded. The wind had ramped up too, and it was cold for February in the second decade of the 13twenty-first century. That day and the days that followed, the temperature hovered around freezing. Surging waves broke off sections of the snow-dusted dunes, carried away wooden fences, dragged off the odd bike that had been left behind or stolen, and submerged posts, low walls and pavements. Here and there, the seawater even began to creep its way up the side of buildings.

At half nine that morning, the water agency sent staff to all the coastal provinces. Their mission: to establish the nature of the problem. At around the same time, the fire services were called out to deal with a fish stall the waves were threatening to wash away, an older man who’d attempted to cycle through the water, couldn’t cycle back against the current and was now standing stranded on a bench – luckily, he’d had his phone on him – and several Highland cows who had sought safety on a dune and were now surrounded by water.

Meanwhile, hordes of people flocked to the coast to take pictures, which they shared with the world on Facebook, X and Instagram. #hightide, #monsterflood, #risingsealevel, #climatechange, #climate, #dutchweather, #fakenews, #authorities, #leftwinglobby, #huh?. The first reporters were sent out to cover the story: it’s cold out there, so wrap up warm.

At ten o’clock, the mayor of The Hague (inevitably a member of the conservative-liberal VVD party) called the Ministry of Infrastructure & Water Management.

Could I speak to the minister, please?

Can I ask what it’s concerning? 14

The sea.

What about the sea?

There’s no low tide any more.

Right. Wouldn’t you be better off speaking to a scientist about that?

The city’s going to be flooded before long.

Oh come on now, surely it won’t come to that.

Best to err on the side of caution. If I could speak to the minister please?

I’ll just check for you.

A Beatles number without the vocals. Elevator music, they used to call it. The mayor put the receiver down on his desk and got up to look out of the window. The people in the square were walking briskly, huddled in their jackets. They reminded him of pigeons, perhaps because of the hunched-up shoulders. Just imagine, he said out loud, if all this ended up underwater. He’d once seen a documentary claiming that the Netherlands isn’t nearly as safe as you’d like to think.

The music stopped and the minister picked up. The two men knew each other well enough to be on first-name terms.

Jan, we have a problem.

My people are on it. It’s the same story all over the Netherlands. I’ve just been in touch with the Belgians. They’re insisting nothing’s changed there, but, who knows, maybe it’s a case of them not having cottoned on yet. The scientists are thinking it could be some sort of unusual current, something to do with shifting tectonic plates. But look, the tide will turn back again of its own accord, of 15course. The best policy seems to be to wait it out, and keep a cool head.

The mayor nodded into the receiver. We’ll wait it out. After he’d hung up, he ambled back to the window. Sleet was falling on the square. The street lamps were on.

Meanwhile, hydrologists, climatologists, engineers, ecologists, technologists, marine biologists and all kinds of other authorities on matters sea-related were heading to the scene, whether by choice or at the minister’s behest. Accompanied by their postgrads and their specialist interns (Water Management, Ocean Technology, Geography, Oceanology, Water and Technology, Climate Adaptation, Aquatic Ecology, Marine Living, Aquaculture, Marine Resource Ecology, Marine Governance, Water Quality Management), they arrived on trains and in cars, on cycles and motorbikes, trudging through the dunes and onto the beach to take their photos, log their readings, gather their data. This was an opportunity to gain a better understanding of the world. Perhaps it would even make people more aware of the risks of climate change.

Professor Paula van der Steen from Wageningen University & Research lived in the coastal town of Wassenaar, and as soon as she read the news, she hopped on her bike and set off to see for herself what was happening. Major changes in the weather had rearranged the Dutch coastline many, many times in the past, but she couldn’t remember the tides ever refusing to cooperate. It wasn’t even as if the weather was particularly bad, just a little cold and with a fresh 16breeze. The dunes were a lot busier than usual, mainly with older men brandishing binoculars, phones and cameras, eager to capture what was happening.

Alongside the dunes, the beach was a narrow ribbon of sand. Steen walked down to the shoreline and took off her gloves to test the water, which was warmer than the air. She licked her finger. Salty. As salty as ever.

At 11 a.m., a concerned journalist published an article on nos.nl under the headline whatever happened to low tide?, prompting reporters from newspapers that hadn’t, until then, considered it much of a story to head to the coast – all except the ones in the east of the country and hilly Limburg, who didn’t feel that this unusual natural phenomenon was the sort of thing that would interest their readers. The magazine show Heart of the Netherlands sent regional reporters to cover the story. NOS squeezed in a brief mention at the end of its midday bulletin, following items on a stabbing in central Amsterdam, the murder of a Russian journalist, the latest diplomatic musings of the US president, and a major department store’s disappointing sales figures. We’re getting reports of an unusual natural phenomenon at the coast. Storms or shifting tectonic plates have caused the sea to come further inland than we are used to. Scientists and the water agency are investigating.

Not unusual, Steen thought. Unique. Unprecedented. When she got home, she rang the Ministry of Infrastructure & Water Management and asked for the minister. She was put through to four different people before she finally got to speak to his assistant. 17

The minister’s in a meeting.

It’s important.

There are a lot of important matters to discuss this morning, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate.

But I know the literature. I’m a geological oceanographer. And this has never happened before.

The literature.

The scientific literature. This isn’t an unusual phenomenon. It’s unique.

We don’t need literature right now. What we need is to stop the flood from spreading and make sure people stay calm.

If you don’t know what’s happening, you’re not going to be able to stop the flood from spreading.

We know perfectly well what’s happening. The sea is advancing. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got another twenty-nine callers waiting.

A distinctly mediocre, relatively unknown right-wing politician from a minor seaside resort in the province of Zuid-Holland injected a touch of alarm into proceedings that afternoon. He found a photo online of a woman being swept along by the waves and posted it on social media with the caption TERROR TIDE. Is anything being done to stop it????? It was reposted by a prominent member of his party. A journalist instantly pointed out that the photo was actually of the massive 2004 tsunami in Asia, but no one seemed to care much, it was the thought that counted. The mayors were slated for their ‘namby-pamby’ stance, 18the minister for Infrastructure & Water Management was roundly ridiculed, and Photoshopped pictures appeared – one showing police officers and other officials up to their knees in the water, and another the PM with a snorkel and diving mask, sitting on a pink inflatable flamingo amid ferocious waves. Greetings from The Hague.

A gaggle of journalists were waiting outside the Binnenhof, among them a face the minister for Infrastructure & Water Management knew well.

Good morning! Fred Vogel here for RTL News, reporting from the heart of our political system. We’ve all heard the story: the sea seems to be, shall we say, all at sea right now. I’m standing here with the minister for Infrastructure & Water Management. Minister, what the absolute heck is going on?

Yes, Fred, this is certainly unfamiliar territory. What we’re looking at here is a very unusual natural phenomenon. It has to do with shifting tectonic plates, a sort of underwater earthquake if you will. Apparently an exceptionally rare event. Investigators are hoping to get back to us with more information over the next few days, and in the meantime, of course, we’ll be making sure that everyone who needs help is able to access that help, so (here the minister turned and looked straight to camera) no need to worry, we’re on top of it.

Good to hear. Happily, we know a thing or two about dealing with water here in the Netherlands. And now back to Dinie in the studio. She’s with opinion pollster Martien de Bont, who’s going to bring us up to speed on the latest 19developments and, essentially, look at what we can do to tackle the rising water.

Fred turned to thank his interviewee and shake his hand, but the minister had already walked off into the drizzle, his coat billowing about him like a tent.

In a little attic room in a terraced house in Almere, Willow Vermeer was sitting at her computer. She was fourteen and fed up, which came with the territory – all those things they still make you do, all those things that aren’t allowed yet – and she was writing about the sea. It was a good thing that the sea was coming, it would shake things up. People would finally understand that they couldn’t go on like this. Plus she wouldn’t have to go to school any more.

The sea as custodian of thoughts:

Under the water you’ll find all the thoughts that have no place in people’s heads. Thoughts that have been thought-out, thoughts that have still to be thought, thoughts that may yet be thought, thoughts that shall never be thought again. Loyal, treacherous, kind, destructive, long-lost thoughts. The water washes them, sifts them, gathers them together. Pick up a shell from the beach, and you can hear them.

Willeke.

Willow rubbed her face.

Willeke!

What is it, Mum? 20

Willow’s real name was Willeke, a tribute to her mother’s grandma, who had raised her mother single-handedly, but at her new school she’d introduced herself as Willow – it sounded much nicer as a name and wasn’t so laden with assumptions. She headed to the top of the stairs.

Lunch is nearly ready. Can you set the table?

Just a few more words.

Her mother muttered something that Willow took to be her blessing.

She sat back down at her keyboard. The sea as lover, as role model, as movement. The fluidity of it. Human, animal, seaweed, sea.

In the late afternoon, the PM rang the minister for Infrastructure & Water Management.

Any news?

I’ve asked the water agency people to investigate as a matter of urgency. They’ve taken readings and those are being analysed now. The scientists are on it too. It might be a few weeks before we’ve got a proper handle on the situation.

We need to avoid panic.

I’m with you there.

We need to have a good explanation ready.

The PM waited. It was his fourth term in office, and he’d survived worse. The country’s tax authorities had been branded institutionally racist after they were deemed to have discriminated against certain demographics. Then there had been the major virus outbreak in intensive pigsties 21in Noord-Brabant that had resulted in the deaths of large numbers of animals and several humans and had led to the province being sealed off from the rest of the country for seven months. The second oil crisis. Flight MH17. He was known for his pragmatic stance, a stance that had led some people to describe him as a manager rather than a moral leader. None of it kept him awake at night: he did exactly what was expected of him. To the extent that it sometimes felt as if he and the country were one. What was happening now, though, didn’t feel entirely right. There was something ominous about it. Perhaps because it had to do with nature. Nature was unpredictable.

Shifting tectonic plates, said the minister. That’s neutral. Or a mini tsunami. A storm surge.

Tsunami, hm, not great optics. Storm surge maybe, but they’ll just end up calling it a tsunami anyway. Or they’ll start harping on about the 1953 flood disaster. Let’s stick with tectonic plates. You can’t see them and they’re a long way underwater. Sounds fairly innocuous.

And what if the water keeps on rising?

Then we’ll send in the army with sandbags. And we’ll set up a hotline for anyone who’s affected or anyone who has questions about financial compensation. Perhaps Defence can start thinking about that.

At the end of the call, the minister for Infrastructure & Water Management remained seated at his desk for a while. His father, grandfathers and great-grandfathers had all been fishermen. Not one of them had died at sea. It was as if there had been an invisible hand keeping his family safe. They’d 22survived storms, his father had even been shipwrecked – twice – but that hand had always been there to pick him up and gently carry him ashore. The same couldn’t be said of his school friends’ families. His parents hadn’t been happy when he broke with family tradition and chose a different profession. But at the same time they’d been relieved that he wouldn’t turn out to be the first to have been born without the invisible hand. You can never tell who will be lucky and who won’t. Sometimes you think, looking back, that there were signs and portents, but that’s only afterwards, when it always feels as if it was preordained.

His assistant came in to tell him that things had calmed down on social media and that the crowds that had flocked to the beach had headed home. It was too cold and too grey and there had been nothing to see but the sea. The investigators had also finished their readings for the day and were all back at their computers, many with a takeaway delivery already on their desk.

The minister asked his assistant if he would call him a taxi. The official car was likely to attract too much attention.

The beach, thank you.

The taxi driver was an older man of North African extraction. Moroccan, thought the minister. This place is swarming with Moroccans.

Which beach?

Scheveningen. South. Just drop me by the tram stop.

This is something, eh? said the taxi driver in a thick local accent. 23

Indeed.

What you planning on doing about it then?

Just having a look for now.

A few spots of rain appeared. Timid at first, tentative, but within moments the heavens abandoned all pretence of politeness or tact and, in true Dutch fashion, it began chucking it down.

The minister asked the taxi driver to wait. Beads of rain trickled over his bald patch, momentarily hanging in the vestiges of hair at the back of his neck, before dripping down inside the collar of his classic beige raincoat. He turned up the collar and hurried across the number 11 tram platform to the path through the dunes that would take him to the beach. There was no one around, just a lone dog in the distance. They sometimes ran on ahead like that. He was rather afraid of dogs and very much hoped this one wouldn’t come too close. Naturally, the animal made straight for him. The minister dried the lenses of his glasses on his handkerchief so he could at least get a proper look at his impending attacker. A strange-looking dog. Ah, not in fact a dog but a fox. The fox stood there, a metre away from him. I’ve got nothing for you, the minister said. The creature gave him a hard stare then darted off, away from the sea, and the minister continued on his course, more wary now. This was a warning, that much was clear, but he felt it was his duty, his responsibility, to witness what was happening with his own eyes.

The sea was grey, a little darker than the sky, and the waves were crested with thick, white foam. The minister 24dried his glasses again and put them back on. The water was almost up to the beach entrance. He couldn’t remember whether that had ever happened before. To be fair, he hadn’t actually been here that often. A few times when the children were young, of course, on summer days that seemed idyllic looking back but at the time had always been too hot, too crowded, marred by too much whining, too many expectations. And always the obligatory visit to one of these beachside eateries. Schnitzel, chips, salad. A sudden gust slapped salt spray in his face, and a shudder ran down his spine. He turned on his heels and hurried back to the taxi.

That night, all the foxes from the dunes scuttled through the dark streets, heading for the city’s parks and the hinterland beyond. The oldest fox brought up the rear. He had a limp in his hind leg, and the others waited for him at each corner. An art student working as a night porter saw them pass and thought: so human. Perhaps they’d been humans in a previous life, he mused, perhaps we all become foxes. In daylight, this might have struck him as a bizarre thought, but that night it seemed to make perfect sense. Room 317 called down for a bottle of wine, and as he stood there in the lift, he felt naked, furless.

The sea as dreamcatcher:

Under the water languish all the dreams ever dreamed and all the dreams yet to be dreamed. And the dreams that will never be dreamed languish there too, and just as people in their dreams don’t know what will and what won’t happen25to them, often don’t even know they are dreaming, the dreams don’t know if they will ever be dreamed or have already been dreamed, don’t know they exist. Walk into the water and you’ll feel them brush against your legs like seaweed.

On the fourth day, NOS started a live blog.

By first light, it was clear that the sea had advanced another kilometre inland. The morning papers and current affairs websites brandished the news in their top left-hand corner, accompanied by alarming pictorial evidence. The early-morning phone calls began. Ministers were woken by their assistants. Professors were woken by their students, and vice versa. The heads of the police and the fire services and the armed forces were woken by their underlings, all wanting to know what to do. People who lived on the coast were woken by anxious family and friends. Farmers were woken by worried relatives and colleagues and got up to bring in their livestock from the floodplains (sheep had already drowned, weighed down by their waterlogged fleeces, they hadn’t stood a chance).

The prime minister was also woken by a call from his assistant.

Sorry to ring so early, but the country’s flooding.

The PM checked the alarm clock on his bedside table. 5.30 in big red digits. The country was flooding.

His assistant, a young woman with long, dark hair and a pragmatic, slightly intellectual demeanour that possibly 26owed a lot to the glasses she wore, began to sum up where the shit had already hit the fan and where it was likely to hit next. At the current rate, the whole city would be underwater in a matter of days. By the whole city, she meant the city where they both lived, The Hague, the centre of peace and justice. Amsterdam was fine as far as tourism and parades were concerned, but they both considered The Hague to be the country’s true capital.

The PM got up and, still in his dark blue pyjamas, made his way through to the living room, where he looked out over the dark, shimmering street. There was no one in sight. Even the pigeons weren’t awake yet. A gentle drizzle was falling. The army would have to be called in. There would have to be a press conference, that morning, with ministers and a top scientist.

His assistant took notes. When she hung up, she momentarily felt a cold wave of despair wash over her and shivered. Then she made herself an oat cappuccino and opened her laptop.

While his assistant set to work simultaneously mailing and phoning other ministers’ assistants, the PM called the minister of Defence, one of the two women in his cabinet. He knew her from their student days back in Leiden. She was two years younger and had finished two years earlier. Very capable.

They would need to deploy the army, but in a way that wouldn’t trigger unrest.

He could count on her, she said. And indeed that seemed to be the case. Within half an hour, the trucks were on their 27way, carrying sandbags (always mysteriously on hand in times of need), soldiers in green camouflage, and a supply of life jackets (because you never know). They were ready to get stuck in, the troops, eager to roll up their sleeves, enjoying the sense of purpose and the camaraderie, the feeling they were serving their country. They made sure to take plenty of selfies.

Members of the Marine Corps’ Sea-based Support Group were sent to different coastal towns to provide assistance. Frogmen were also called up, although it was a little unclear why, as there had been no talk of a secret recce or of any other kind of operation they’d been trained for. They set up an observation post.

Outside The Hague, the army and the navy joined forces to construct an emergency dyke using a new material, an extremely lightweight plastic that was supposed to be very strong. It had been developed by a student at Delft University of Technology. He’d won a prize for it. A more permanent solution would need time. A huddle of old men gathered near the troops, the same men who peer through the gaps in hoardings to watch people working on the roads or the railway tracks because it’s a way of killing time, of meeting up with one another, because it’s nice to watch people working, because it makes you feel like you’re doing your bit.

By this stage, the Maasvlakte area of the Port of Rotterdam had fallen prey to the water. There hadn’t been anyone around, but the material damage ran into hundreds of thousands of euros. A holiday park in Zeeland had 28flooded. The people holidaying there had been transported to safety just in time. The mayors of the Frisian Islands issued a joint statement, disclosing that they still had no plans to evacuate their islands: we’ve survived worse. A man was missing in IJmuiden. He’d set out on his mobility scooter to go and look at the water. Military personnel, police dog handlers and members of the public were all looking for him. A scientist appeared on NPO 1’s current affairs show to provide some background on extreme weather conditions as a consequence of climate change. The prime minister of Belgium and the minister-president of the German state of Nordrhein-Westfalen offered their help. A committee of experts was set up to advise the government. The height of the dykes needed to be increased, the minister for Infrastructure & Water Management admitted, but they couldn’t simply plough ahead with something like that, they would need to run the proposals through a cost/benefit analysis and free up funding from elsewhere. And so it went on, messages cascaded back and forth, and anyone who had slept in – because they worked in a bar, for example, or suffered from insomnia – woke up to a new world.

Hey Murad:

Underwater here. Wild. Best place on earth and now this water. Haha. Shop shut and Uncle Rid already packed. Going with him if we have to leave. Wild. Tell Mama it’s good. All good, no worries. News is always made up. But this is real! Tell Mama will send money next week. 29

The prime minister was being brought up to speed on the ins and outs of dyke maintenance by an expert from the water agency. The sea dykes, like the river dykes, had been excellently maintained, the man said, as if this was a presentation for a funding body. He grabbed his iPad and showed the PM a diagram.

People always think that the main danger when it comes to sea dykes is that they’re not high enough, he continued. But the real risk is that they’re not sturdy enough. The water can lap away at the outer berm for so long that hollows begin to appear, or weeds begin to colonize it. Their roots start out as ultra-fine threads, but they become stronger and stronger until they end up prising the whole thing apart. So that’s where the maintenance work is focused. Normally. But what we’re talking about now isn’t normal. Now we urgently need to raise the height of the whole construction with sandbags, with stone where we can, but stone on stone lets water through, and some of the breeze blocks have already been swept away by the water.

The man swiped his screen to bring up a new image.

In river areas we have the watchmen and the sleepers. The watchmen are the new dykes, the sleepers are the old ones that have been left in place as a backup. We even have a few dreamers, a third line of defence against the smallest of waves. But the sea dykes are all heavy-duty, new constructions. These watchmen don’t have sleepers, don’t need them.

There was pride in the expert’s voice, as if he’d built them himself. He clapped his iPad shut. The PM took a sip of his coffee, which had gone cold. 30

In the meantime, the sleeperless watchmen were proving no match for the task in hand, weren’t tall enough, weren’t wide enough, may as well not have been there. The sea simply washed over them, carrying off the sandbags as if they were weightless. Not that it bothered the dykes, who know neither pain nor regret, who are versed only in the language of the water, in the language of time.

Though what of the flood defence designers and dyke builders, what of their regret had they known about this storm, that they hadn’t made the dykes higher, hadn’t made them wider, had thought it would all be fine. Well, luckily they were already dead, and their children had other things on their minds.

The sea began to surge.

Now on special offer at Action: 4 life jackets for the price of 3!

Good morning. As you will be aware, an unusual natural phenomenon has been causing disruption in our coastal provinces. The water level is extremely high at present, and we don’t know when it will begin to fall. This is worrying, particularly for those of you who live or work on the coast. Sadly, there have also been reports of localized damage. To keep damage levels under control, I, and my colleagues at both Defence and Infrastructure & Water Management, have tasked the army with raising the height of the dykes and providing assistance where needed. Our fire services and police are on standby to help in other parts of the country. 31I’d like to assure you that we are doing everything we can to establish the nature of this phenomenon. Our scientists are working overtime – a twitch of a smile here – and we will use their findings as a basis to determine any action we should take. I will keep you informed of the developments myself. And now I’m going to hand over to my colleague from Infrastructure & Water Management, who will outline the practical details.

As the minister for Infrastructure & Water Management began speaking about compensation, payouts and scientific evidence, the dune rabbits all chose the same moment to up and leave, as if it was something they’d agreed on beforehand. It was like a cartoon, all those little coatlets, brown and grey, the odd spotted or black one, a white one in their midst, everyone heading east. Later that day, the sight of them would result in a multiple pile-up on the A9 and a bloodbath on the A44, but that was still to come; right now, it felt like a fairy tale, all those rabbits, who had more common sense than the ministers, or at least more gumption. And all the troops who saw them stopped lugging sandbags around to stand and watch.

After the press conference, there was a meeting of the main ministers concerned: Interior, Defence, Infrastructure & Water Management and the PM. Their assistants had all prepared PowerPoint presentations showing where things currently stood. It was a stand-up meeting, a concept that had been introduced three months back – sitting was the new smoking. In truth every one of them would have been 32glad to sit down, it was just more relaxed that way, but no one wanted to make the first move.

They all agreed that the most important thing right now was to avoid panic at all costs. There had already been reports of people hamstering toilet paper and canned food. Hamstering had been an issue during the Brabant epidemic, and footage of one sign language interpreter’s particularly enthusiastic rendition of the term had gone viral at the time. Now, as the PM showed them, someone had posted a GIF of the interpreter in a video of the sea. They laughed. The only one who appeared worried was the minister of Defence. She was getting reports every few minutes from her team on the coast, and things weren’t looking good there. The sea didn’t seem to be overly concerned by the sandbags, or the little figures piling them up as if this was some kind of computer game.

We need a plan, she said. If we don’t keep ahead of the sea, there are going to be casualties.