A time capsule is what they had called it. These words raced through Dr. Francesca Lucci’s mind as a rather loud speaker announced their arrival to the ancient city of Los Angeles.

The early 21st century had always been her favorite era of history to study and explore. She found it so interesting, how a world so riddled with turmoil and despair could not only persevere, but thrive. Now, as she peered out the window of the Continental Bullet, she felt her stomach rolling over and over on itself. She could see the old skyline, once magnificent skyscrapers now rendered irrelevant and desolate when compared to the monstrous structures that inhabited her home town of New York City.

This was Los Angeles, the long forgotten city of dreams, now being lifted once again from the ocean to be picked over by archeologists like herself. Francesca had studied the climate crisis that eventually invited the Pacific Ocean to feast on North America’s western coast. It broke her heart even more so now that she was able to relish in all of… well, it.

She made her way to the back of the bullet train — a once retired 20th century invention that was now the only way to travel across America’s original coast — and stepped out onto the platform. The first thing to hit Francesca was, of course, the smell of salt. Then, she noticed the stark contrast between where she stood next to the train and where the platform turned into a flight of rust-stained stairs, the white on dark orange making her feel a tinge of pity for the white skirt she currently wore.

“Dr. Lucci!” a male voice called from somewhere on the platform. Francesca looked through the relatively thin crowd of experts like herself — they were here to study the freshly surfaced metropolis — and spotted a man wearing an outrageous looking sun hat approaching her with enthusiasm. “I’m Dr. Vincent Reyes, the gentleman who invited you here,” he introduced himself with a smile.

“Oh, yes, of course!” Francesca exclaimed, dropping her satchel to the ground and shaking his hand. “Please, call me Francesca. My title seems a bit too formal given the amount of time we’ve spent in communication.”

“Then, you can call me Vinnie,” he responded, picking up Francesca’s newly discarded bag and throwing it over his shoulder. “I’ll show you where you’ll be staying,” Vinnie began speaking as the pair walked the length of the platform, their hair being tousled as the Continental Bullet made its swift escape for its next stop in the recently landlocked state of Nevada.

“It’s a curious thing, isn’t it?” Francesca said aloud as they approached the stairs that led down into the city. She could see the Hollywood sign sitting idly across the valley, looking much different than she had seen in pictures. “I never thought I’d ever get to step foot in Los Angeles and yet here we are. It’s almost unreal,” she paused for a beat, seemingly contemplating something. “How is it that this city isn’t still buried beneath the Pacific?”

It had only just occurred to Francesca that she had no idea what exactly had possessed their modern-day Atlantis to come crawling back to the surface. In all of her studies, she had learned one fact that, up until the last decade or so, was never expected to change. You see, the western coast of old North America was gone, never to be seen again. So why now, 5 centuries later, did the ocean decide to spit it back out like a toddler spits out something they aren’t supposed to eat?

“That’s an interesting question,” Vinnie told her, his eyebrow cocked up in thought. “I haven’t been briefed on its entirety yet but the explanations I’ve been given suggest a shift in tectonic plates. An underwater earthquake of sorts.”

Francesca laughed to herself. An earthquake, of course. How simple of an explanation that was.

The pair made their way down the staircase that had been erected 3 years prior when scientists decided it was safe to walk across the former state of California. Though the empty land was not yet open to the general public, there were already clear paths through the young trees below, Francesca noted. It was strange, in her opinion, that the soil was even able to support plant-life yet. Surely all those centuries beneath salt water had to have done some damage.

Maybe Los Angeles wasn’t as desolate as she thought.