The end of creation was simple and arithmetic: _finishing in 3s_.

There was the **First Disaster**, of course. Well, everyone knows about _The Sinking_.

For centuries, sea levels inched higher, taller until stretches of prospering vegetation were swallowed whole by waves so monstrous they kissed the sky.

Brown cattle and silver planes and green foliage and busy-bodied people were swept away by a merciless festering Blue.

Gone.

To many, it was biblical.

Blue represented the end of times -- a harbinger flood to wash away humanity's sins. It was necessary.

It was prophecy.

But really, many parts of society had already advanced to preparing for that first disaster.

Since the dawn of time, philosophers had cautioned some hedonist dystopia, some sizable "apocalypse" (they'd always had a flair for the dramatic).

There were those Assyrians in early Mesopotamia who warned of cataclysmic corruption, that Norse tale of Ragnorök, or such an odyssey as that child Noah, carrying the last of humanity aboard a sculpted vessel.

They were all quite imaginative about their demise. Wishful thinking, perhaps?

Needless to say, history has never questioned that this world kept a timer. I think, really, it was just the matter of _who_ should end it, and whether those prepared few escaped _up_ or _down_.

So, when that world first began submerging in Blue, a Togolese billionaire called Joel Kassindja shared something extraordinary.

Joel's team in France had poured millions into an innovative technology called Bio-Life, a groundbreaking invention giving that human species the ability to live indefinitely underwater.

Still, while the politicians of Togo were hesitant, The President of Eritrea was not.

And so, Medri Bahri was slowly rebuilt beneath the ripple of the Indian Ocean.

Following suit, the French Prime Minister, who had been informed by Parliament of Bio-Life's success, relocated France a bit more south amidst the Atlantic, if only for aesthetics.

And how quickly the cynics of the Global Ocean Race realized that Bio-Life was the future. They chided that "Going Blue" was both progressive and economic and only mourned that they had not thought of it sooner.

It was clear that, while resources were scarce above ground, the oceans below presented an untapped faucet of renewable energy.

This, of course, led to that era known as _The Blue Age_.

And as countries battled to build dynasties beneath the seas, that old earth, monikered _the Green_, tipped into **The Second Disaster. **

It was that chimerical parable you learn as a child.

You see, during _The Blue Age_, more than 95% of the world was reconstructed beneath the oceans.

Astonishing, really.

Throughout that time, technological advancements in the Blue were constant and ingenious, if only for all the new space to industrialize.

_The Blue_, unlike _the Green_, did not have an owner and a price. There was constant food, encouraging a lovely Pescatarian diet, and the underwater cities were paraded to be even more impressive than the old ones had been.

For the Bio-Life resettlers, it was humanity's rebirth.

Sure, waking up to find a Lemon shark poking at the steel of your Subma-Residence wasn't ideal. But there were precautions for that now.

At least, that's what rumor suggested.

Because, you see, there were still _those who remained Above_.

There were a small few, a pitiful amount who, when the world first Sunk, gathered on the tallest mountains and prayed to the sun.

There were those witless nomads who migrated higher and higher, as that Blue swallowed its way through topography, as Green ground withered to less than 5%, that called the New World beneath the sea an abomination.

And as the Blue world progressed through endless innovation, that small Green community climbed earth and settled upon the likes of Everest and Matterhorn, Kilimanjaro and Olympus.

Then those nomads, and their children, and their children's children, and children's children, knew less and less of the world before, and only of those flooded mountaintops where they were raised, fondly calling each "The Island". And in their free time, they shoveled sand and soil together between palms, building up and up, for fear that the Blue may take them in a wave as they slept.

T_he Second Disaster _was an astounding crisis, with the 50-something percent of land since The Sinking spontaneously diminishing into less than 0.00000000001%.

And, even then, the land continued to shrink, as the once tallest Green mountains disappeared into a handful of lifted archipelagos, peeping from a prideful Blue.

For the ancestors of the mountain dwellers, the old world was nothing but a terrying fable, a reason not to step too close to the sea, or to swipe your toes through the Blue.

They feared of the unknowns existing beyond the water, if only for the fact they knew nothing of it, and not knowing, they'd heard, makes things dangerous. So, it's best to stay where it's Green.

This held especially true for an old dweller named Glu the Lonesome (who, at first, wasn't really lonesome, but waded through sand like someone who should be).

On the former mountaintop where he was raised, the "Isle Everest", Glu lived alone upon a manmade peak.

At least, now he lived alone.

It was unfortunate, but the last nine Everest dwellers, including his Rearer, had been swept away in the Blue's tide during a series of angry tempests.

Glu's own partners passed the solstice before with a nasty case of Listeria.

Bethune the Small had proposed they open their minds to the Blue, trying their hand at fresh beached sea bass, a fish that often washed on shore with two open eyes. Within a day of swallowing the bass, Bethune and another four dwellers turned the hue of the Green, and so Glu gave their bodies back to the land.

In the end, the only other dweller left, Emmett the Sane, seemed to inexplicably lose his mind.

On a tumultuous night, the wiseman threw himself into the Blue, claiming that he had learned to breathe beneath the waves. By the time he washed back ashore, skin more cerulean than human, Glu had already paid his respects. And just as it had given Emmett back to him, Glu returned that body to the sea.

Still, Glu's sudden solitude never justified that statute of Loneliness.

Really, Glu busied himself stacking rock after rock, leaves and dirt, day in and out, should the Blue suddenly rise and take him as it did his companions.

There were, of course, those stories he'd been told of that world that may or may not exist deep below. But he reminded himself that they were only story, and he would find out on the inevitable day that the Blue came to claim him as well.

Until then, he carried the responsibility of the Green, of Bethune and Emmett and all those who had resided on the Isle Everest since it had begun as that divine mountain-Island.

To Glu, it was as if the world begged him to Sink along with them. He was no longer Glu the Lonesome, but Glu the Last.

The _Third Disaster_ was, of course, entirely speculative.

To Glu the Last, at least, it was the day the Blue turned a sickly brown.

It seemed, even with the unlimited resources of the Blue, the endless space, and unparalleled innovation, the greed of society was not too different than it had been on the Green.

Perhaps the world beneath the Blue ended in nuclear aquatic war, with things turning so volatile the humans chose violence over survival. Perhaps they wasted away their environment, riddles with debris and pollutants, until nature revolted as the Green had all those years ago.

The how of it all is not too important.

All that matters is that on that particular today, when the Blue started to boil, so much so that curls of steam rose to meet Glu on the Isle Everest, the oceans turned Brown as far as you could see.

The spoiled fish, those open-eyed bass, floated to the surface in enormous brown masses.

Glu thought it looked as if the Blue had died, thoroughly purging its insides before weathering away (he'd grown used the routine).

But then the ocean began to drain, and its a wonder such a miraculaous sight was only witnessed by a single human.

As that Blue, or Brown, sunk lower and lower, revealing the artifacts of worlds that had disappeared, wars that had commenced, and castles beneath the sea.

And when that happened, Glu the Last was truly alone.

Because he came to realize that he lived on a mountain, and not an island.

And perhaps the tallest mountain.

And the most foreboding too.

But at least he had lived to see the world as he knew it.

Because he'd only ever really dreamed of Green.

And he'd lived to see the day that Green restored.