It was a quiet day. Nothing out of the ordinary, magnificient, or unusual happening in the town of New Fellow. It is the year 2044. New Fellow was built along the Central Coast Region of California around a decade ago. It is a small, beach town, built by hand. People come from all over to surf, dine, and plainly relax. As you walk down the street, sounds of laughing, wine glasses clinking, and up ahead you see the ocean waves. Dozens of children laughing, playing, and soaking in the water. Everyone is having a pleasant time. This is the average day in New Fellow. Much like the calm demeanor of San Diego or Phoenix.

There are many homes and cottages lining the inner neighborhood of the town, away from the shops and stores. Small houses, with large architectural advancements in place, line the streets. One man in particular, however, did not care for the peaceful life of the ocean.

Jack Ferdinand is a resident in New Fellow. He moved to this town only for his family, as they lived close by. He had few friends, and he lived alone. In his house were pictures on the walls of gatherings, and a shelf of personal achievements in sports. Jack’s pet dog, Baxter, lied on a pillow on the floor all day. A very lazy dog, he only got up to eat. Jack is an average man, around six feet tall, and worked in the ExxonMobil facility down the road. It is a place where petroleum and petrochemical is nationally traded. Jack worked here five days a week, and it was a steady job.

Income was not too high, or not too low. ExxonMobil is known to cumulate pollution, and is one of the largest fossil fuel producers in the world. As a result, Jack did not care for much of the environment around him. He couldn't care less about the ocean, as he hated the loud nature of the waves, and he couldn't care less about the beautiful sea life that thrive in the ocean. Not that he hated it publicly, he just never seemed to care. No mention, nothing. Jack had never swam in the ocean, and yet he had lived in his beach house for seven years. This day, however, was about to change that.

Winds started to blow, the clouds started to darken from up above. Jack was lying on his sofa, with a computer propelled up in front of him. He is watching ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’, a favorite of his. It is a Sunday afternoon, he is off work for the day. Jack reaches for his cup, which sat on a coffee table nearby. That is when he felt it. A shaking of some sort. Coming from the ground, he watched the coffee in his cup splash among the vibrations of the foundations of his floor. Jack got up off his sofa. He mumbled to himself, “Earthquake”.

Jack then hears the faint sounds of screaming. He twists his head to the closed window. Baxter, his dog, began to growl. Something was wrong. Slowly, he walks toward it. The shakings still going on. As he moved closer to the window, the screams became louder. He put his hand on the curtains, and moved them aside, leaving enough room for his eye to peer out into the open world. He saw people running and screaming. Panic was in the streets. People getting into their cars, people leaving their houses. As he thought, it was only an earthquake, but he was wrong.

Jack goes to the front of his house, and opens the door. His perfect view of the ocean was before his eyes, and there he saw it. The largest moving thing he had ever seen in his life. It was a tsunami. Crashes and loud noises followed, it was from the destruction of homes. There was barely any time to think. Hundreds of questions crossed his mind. How could a tsunami hit California? Jack slammed the door shut.

He rushed toward his basement door, which was set on the other side of his house. Jack twisted the knob on the door, and it swung open. He laid his own eyes on the dark, foreboding stairway that led to inconcievable darkness. Jack took one last look at his home, his living room, and his personal belongings. He knew that all was about to be lost in a flash. Jack went down into the basement, and closed the door behind him.

He had a rather large spatial area down there, and he proceeded to scurry down to the deepest point of the basement. Jack held onto a pillar that fed from the ground to above his head. He clenched it with all his might, and he closed his eyes. Then, he heard barking. Jack opened his eyes. He heard more barking. The sound of a dog. His dog, Baxter. He had forgotten him. Jack screamed “No!”. Then all of a sudden, he was taken off his feet by force.

A thunderous sounding crash like no other bled through the ears of Jack. He hit the floor, startled by the amount of pain that was in his heart, his muscles, and his body. Water started to come crashing into his basement room. Massive heaps of water from the tsunami went through all the cracks and crevices in his house, right down into the basement. Even if the basement was fortifiable and battle ready, this was a battle it could not win. The floor began to flood with the water of the ocean, as natural as it can be. Jack stood up from the floor, looking around the room.