Escape From Miami
and The Battle For Biscayne Bay
March 21st. The Year 02050.
From atop his downtown high-rise perch, Boss Ross’s ugly scaled and scarred face stared across the serene blue waters of the Eastern Atlantic ocean, as the sun slowly rose into a burst of fiery purple brilliance. The full moon synthetic cacao orgy was wrapping up and he gathered some fresh air while he surveyed his fiefdom looking eastern into the sunrise over Biscayne Bay and farther to the sunken skyline of Miami Beach.
The dilapidated high-rise condos of Miami Beach still left standing are now the headquarters for a pirate band of organic cacao runners. Miami Beach is the most northwestern outpost of a bioregional Caribbean island nation called “MAR”. The group of islands are each independent and have agreed to a confederation of communities united through the common cacao currency to establish a decentralized autonomous bioregional governance free from imperial tyranny.
The mangroves swayed in the early dawn breeze, stubbornly clinging to the bare shore while a flock of white ibises foraged the sandbank for breakfast. Beyond the bay lay the remnants of Miami Beach. The blasted-out bridges had long since eroded, and the high-rise hotels were now completely covered in vines. The only thing the vines didn’t climb was the solar and sail arrays that hung extended between the tops of the towers in a spider web formation. When it rained the web would capture the water and divert it into a network of underground cisterns that sustained the local inhabitants called Voleres.
Non-binary, and non-confrontational, Voleres are known for their superior skill at cultivating the cacao and taking advantage of solar and sail power to not only propel them along the seas as they island-hop around the world, but to also power their decentralized organic growers' network called “The Collective”, which emerged in service to cultivating Gaia Consciousness, or the earthly manifestation of the spiritual singularity.
Biscayne Bay is at the forefront of the fight for the future of Earth. The collapse of Miami Beach happened abruptly during a confluence of catastrophes on October 13th, 2023. After forming in the Atlantic and blowing past Havana with 300 mph winds, the first-ever recorded Category 5+XL hurricane named Omega rammed right into the southern tip of Florida. The ensuing 5-day downpour inundated Lake Okeechobee to a point that the levees broke and the swamp that had been drained a century before and turned into a sprawling exopolis was now under a rushing current of 5 meters of swampy water. The worst was yet to come. The nuclear power station at Turkey Creek south of the city had an ensuing meltdown and the core reactor exploded with such force that a hole was punctured through the hurricane cloud, and visible from space. The adjacent bitcoin mining factory that took up 10 football fields died with it. That’s when a new Miami was reborn.
Taking a long deep inhale of the vape pen through his throat, Boss Ross exhaled a cloud of smoke from the balcony of his 91st-floor penthouse, the tallest building in the flooded Brickell Basin, only accessible by armed airboat.
All bridges to Miami Beach island had been destroyed. A 5-kilometer long motion sensing security network releases a drone swarm armed with tranquilizing darts that can sting someone from 100 meters away. The only way on or off the island is by doing a “fly-by” on a high-speed foils called “velas”.
As the smoke cleared Boss Ross noticed a fast-moving object gliding over the water. At first, it looked like a pod of dolphins jumping in and out of the ocean with white foam blasts every few seconds, but he knew it to be a smuggling vela. As Boss Ross squinted even farther with his augmented vision he could see the silhouette of three individuals between foam sprays. As he zoomed in on the captain’s face, a sharp blast of refracted light burned through his retina. He screamed out in pain, slamming his fist on the cold metal of the balcony. The pain immediately transformed into a bright flash that illuminated his mind’s eye that resembled a spiraling and unfolding flower. Regaining his senses, he could see the last remnants of the vela flying by.
With the collapse of the dollar in 2024, American democracy was indefinitely suspended in 2028 with a buyout by Amazon. Land east of the Mississippi was sold to a subsidiary called the East Amazon Company. The EAC is part of a global cartel of e-commerce giants that manipulate the degenerative supply chain running a centralized digital currency at the expense of people and the planet.
Boss Ross, the regional warlord of the Miami mainland appointed by EAC high command. Since the incident of 2023 when state-backed law and order ceased to exist, only the most ruthless strongmen survived. They survived through manipulation of the state-trading-dollar called STDs by violently maintaining a monopoly on hydro mining. This was accomplished with a large portion of the unknowing northern climate refugees who were captured at the Florida Georgia state line and then sold like cattle between warlords. The unfortunate souls first had their neural links scrambled so they forgot who they were, or where they came from. They were then forced to the liquidity mines in the contaminated wells. There they maintained the aging proof of work infrastructure with radioactive hydropower. The life span of these workers was less than 6 months.
A trio of Volerxs, Myco, Pyca, and Ryco are returning home on their vela, a solar-powered foil catamaran that can achieve speeds of up to 100 knots in ideal weather conditions. In the dawn haze, the Voleros were returning from a night raid on the mainland foraging for salvageable electronics.
During the raid, Pyca had picked up a curious metallic seashell with a unique inscription on a tiny glass mirror on the inside. The string of characters only contained ones and zeros. She put the seashell back in her pocket and focused her augmented glasses to zoom in a mile away.
From the bow of the vela she could see the reflection of Boss Ross standing at his balcony with his shiny scaly bald head. She yelled back to Myco to turn the tiller to tack so she could get a straight angle on the pinhead in the distance.
As the sun peaked over the horizon Pyca decided to play a little trick. She flashed the shell from her pocket and aimed the mirror with hawk-like precision, zapping Boss Ross right in his alligator eyes.
Boss Ross reeled back from the balcony confused by the vision. The East Atlantic Company requires daily code downloads to the cortex of all operatives, the vision had unscrambled his memory. Flashes of his repressed trauma came up. The screams of his transformation 20 years ago as he signed up for a company experiment that turned him into a grotesque reptile human as scientists were hastily looking for a vaccine for the Aroma Virus. He had to capture the voleres and get to the truth.
“Turn off the music!” he shouted to his second in command, DJ Lieutenant Lucy. “We are going hunting.”
…
Just as Pyca put the seashell back in her pocket, she could hear Ryco yelling “Drones port stern!!!”
All three voleres hit the deck as the drone as the swarm flew overhead. As the drones attempted a bankroll for another pass, a strong gust of wind overpowered the rotors, sinking them into the water just as the vela was lifted up on the foil and out of their firing range.
Docking back in South Beach to unload their haul, Pyca grabs the crew and explains the seashell incident. Moreover, she thinks that the inscription on the seashell is valuable to the collective and that they should consult the oracle. Ryco thinks it’s crazy because the cruise ship is not a secure location and there are known mainland double agents aboard the ship.
With the collapse of the cruise industry from covid, many ships were anchored offshore. One of them, the MSC Meravilgia, a 315 meter long 10 storey tall ship that was run ashore during hurricane Omega. It was subsequently abandoned, and eventually became a meeting point for collective smugglers. The Oracle resided in the captain's bridge surveying the loot from around the world confirming the legitimacy of the artifact, or declaring it utter garbage. Surely she would know the key to the seashell Pyca thought to herself.
Does The Oracle hold a backdoor key to infiltrating the East Amazon Company’s database and with it the demise of the cruelest currency regime in the history of the planet? Will Boss Ross discover his origins? And when will the next cacao orgy take place?
To Be Continued….
