All of a sudden I noticed my mask was beeping.  The throbbing in my head seemed to beat in rhythm with it.  I’d never heard the highest warning level of my breathing equipment before but, according to the manual, I should be unconscious or even dead by now.  Maybe that’s what I wanted under the circumstances, to be dead.  The scene was so horrific yet hypnotic. 

   I had nearly begun counting the number of species on the beach when the excitement at seeing my first Beaked Whales among them overcame me, or maybe my brain was desperately working to counteract the shear horror of the fact that they were dead.  The motion of the surf even made some creatures appear still alive as they moved with the surging waves, mouths opening and closing, fins flapping, and some of the human bodies even seemed to be waving or jogging in the water as they were pushed up and down the shore, all dead. The milky gray water was not opaque like paint so the miles of dead animals, fish, birds, plants, and humans were all distinct in every detail.

   Ships and boats were floating adrift.  A few at the base of the cliff down from where I stood had run aground.  My mind was adrift as well and I could not breathe.  My vision dimmed.

   My only chance was to get back to the safety of my mobile lab.  It was an armored security Hydrogen hybrid with Oxygen enriched triple filtration systems for both the passengers and the engines. It had not been built in anticipation of anything remotely like this, but rather for my specialty, which was chemical, and biological warfare assessment.  I could identify any agents or chemicals used and determine the best defense against them, theoretically anyway.  I felt helpless and very stupid just now as I turned slow motion on legs that felt as though they weighed a ton each.  Looking toward the parking lot, someone was stealing my van!   

   Without hesitation, my legs seemed to take off on their own.   As I approached getting closer to the van, there was a man and a woman seeming to be getting out, not in.  Their skin was red and their eyes almost closed as they gasped for air and my emotions shifted from anger to rescue mode.  I motioned for them to get back in and quickly secured the door and started to purge the bad air.   I pulled off my mask sucking in deep breathes of the Oxygenated air, and the couple seemed to be getting their normal color back.

    We were all alone there in the parking lot except for a collection of abandoned cars.   There was no sound except for the rush of the ventilation system and three people huffing and puffing exchanging glances with mouths moving unable to speak.  I handed them both bottles of water and we sat there just breathing and calming down.

    The man wore a faded black and blue Hawaiian shirt, and he had wild Einstein-like gray hair.  She had short white hair and her eyes were two distinctly different colors, one hazel/brown and one bluish green, and she had a space between her two front teeth.  As nightmarish as this all had been, they were holding hands.

   The man spoke first and I was in instant awe staring right at the person Id been fruitlessly searching for all that morning.  His name was Matt Horn and he was with his partner Stella.  Over the next half hour they talked and I listened.  They answered every question before I could ask it.

   Matt was an artist/writer who’d put together a manuscript consisting of over thirty years of journal entries and essays mostly relating to problems in human behavior related to notions that humans are divine extraterrestrials and that the Earth is disposable.  The work he’d sent to publishers was entitled “Sacred Secrets and Forbidden Thinking” and the title of one of the short chapters was “The Gray Seas Prophecies”.  He collected lots of nice polite rejection letters.  Most of his art had never shown anywhere either.

   When oceans actually began to turn gray, one of the publishers called into CNN live on the air about the manuscript giving details including Matt’s name and where he lived. A massive manhunt began for the person who knew this horror was coming.  If he knew it was coming, many thought he should know what to do now. 

   They lived fairly close to the ocean, and roving gas clouds were causing illness and death, not to mention stalling cars and trucks, and the roads were an obstacle course of vehicles and bodies.  Matt explained how they’d driven here in a 92 Dodge Colt with a scuba tank hooked to the air intake, which gave out about a mile away.  They walked the rest of the way.

   Stella told me about how she and Matt had met at the beach and how they moved to Bonny Doon together.  They had stored all his paintings and original manuscript art in a secure storage facility under her name and found a place to hide out.  They had survived longer than most by using scuba gear, medical Oxygen concentrators from a Senior Home, and they had army surplus gas suits.

   My boss had contacted them and arranged for them to stow away in my van.  They had gotten my satellite location and the door combination but the signal faded before they learned how to work the air system.  They barely survived the walk only to practically suffocate inside the van with the air off.  I was fifty yards away without my cell phone the whole time practically suffocating myself.   When I finally picked up my messages, my orders were simply to protect them at all costs.

   I looked at the two of them staring at me, as though I knew what to do, and I felt just as helpless as I had on the cliff looking down at all that death.  Where was there a safe place to go in the world with all the oceans disinfected of all life?  It had happened so fast that there were still ads on TV and the radio hawking popular products that cleaned and killed germs and gave you the brightest whites and freshest toilets before people realized that it was all the chlorine, ammonia and other chemicals that were responsible for the global catalytic conversion of the living oceans into stinking chemical soup.  We had done it.

   After talking it over, we headed up to the top of the Santa Cruz Mountains looting a convenience store on the way.  The gas clouds were heavier than air, and once we were near the top there was some breathable atmosphere.  We set up camp at an abandoned house and Matt and I made up places to sleep near the van setting up gas detectors on four sides to give us warning time if the air went bad.  Stella stayed on the onboard computer the whole time working with panicked people all around the world.  As grim as things seemed, she appeared to be somehow hopeful.

    I’d read a printout of Matt’s manuscript before I fell asleep, each page feeling as though I had written it myself.  It was mind boggling how many things were so obvious and common sense observations.  Why didn’t people see this coming?  Every time we used soap or cleaned clothes we were condemning the Earth to death.

   In the morning, Stella was still busy typing like mad working on-line, and Matt drawing something in a notebook.  The name of their site was “Gaia’s Will”.  I asked if that was like God’s will and she explained that it was more like a last will and testament from Mother Earth. 

  “What did she leave us?” I asked. 

  “Nothing”, she said, “except perhaps to die with grace and dignity. It’s too late for much more now”.

…….

  I choked and gagged as I woke up on the beach with a dog licking my face.  All of the words of Matt’s manuscript were still in my head, and I could still see the illustrations and art, and Stella’s eyes too, but the whole experience disappeared as dreams do.  

   It all came rushing back to me.  I was working to save a pod of beached Pilot Whales when some fumes caused me to pass out cold.   All of the whales were already dead I think. 

   “What color is the water?” I asked as someone helped me up.

   “The usual green” they answered adding “but the water in the whales was milky gray.  Weird, huh?”

    In the ambulance, I decided that I would write the entire book in my dream, and I’d start painting again too.  The oceans were still green, so there was still time, right?  Someone next to me whispered that things were going to be ok.  The EMT had short blonde hair and strange mismatched eyes.

   And, her name was Stella.