The War of the Waves

  A conflagration of red, yellow, green, blue, and any other color you could think of, (except those only seen by the butterflies in your stomach, of course) streak upwards through the star-less night sky, disturbing a great number of creatures that would otherwise be sleeping into wakefulness. 

  Two such creatures could be found, one beside the other, lying peacefully under the protection of a solid concrete roof that, additionally, served as the floor for another balcony. The half-inch wide strips of hard, slippery plastic had sharp edges that dug into his legs, but the man was quickly reminded of the work he wasn't doing, and the nagging people he was thousands of miles away from, and he sighed contentedly. The woman, too, felt the hard, slippery plastic, but the man's sigh reminded her of the work she wasn't doing, and the vexatious people she was thousands of miles away from, and she was content. 

  It was a warm summer evening—the kind that makes your fingers itch for a cold, soothing drink, yet erases the feeling from your mind with a gentle breeze that whisks away any discomfort to its very own holiday, and sets your itchy extremities to rest. It also so happened to be the very warm summer evening that marked America's independence from the pompous state of Britain, an empire that would quickly focus its efforts on Canada in order to establish an empire on which the sun never set; there was no other reason presented. Straight from the mouth of Henry VIII, that was. 

  Most Americans didn't so much as glance back at their history books and ponder exactly what it was that they were celebrating. What point in the war truly marked the point at which the Americans started winning against the British? Was it the Battle of Saratoga, or Yorktown? Maybe it was Cowpens? Of course, none of this concerned them, because they were all for the celebration, but didn't care to know what they were celebrating, or to get into an argument with someone about the most influential battle of the Revolutionary War, and thus, the battle that they would be celebrating. 

  A staccato burst of pretend-gunfire allows the camera to pan away from the two lucky fainéants in their beach chairs to focus on the ship that lies in anchor a few hundred feet away from the pier. Its very existence is quite troubling; I, for one, would not opt to join in on that construction project for a six figure salary. I wonder how many pier construction workers must have died of shark attacks? Drowning in a hard-cap doesn't sound like the most pleasant way to go.

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  A cloud of dust scatters the few hundred fish that had gathered under the slowly dropping anchor, but curiosity brings them back, quite antithetical to the cat who died of the very same and was brought back by the satisfaction that it brought. The golden-agers among the many schools of fish were not perturbed in the slightest; all it took was one encounter with the oddly warped, colossal sheet of metal, one little fin flap brushing against the inanimate steel object, and they got over their repulsion. Ah, if only human issues were so easily ironed out. 

  Gills flared, and bubbles drifted slowly up to the surface of the water, their lives fizzling away noiselessly. Were not the fish aware that, in giving the air such a chance at escape, they would be dooming the air to a short and uneventful life—unless, of course, the air bubbles took part in something exciting, such as becoming embroiled in a tsunami or a hurricane—and would be assigned a quite untimely demise when they could just as easily have remained quiet and content within a fish's mouth? 

  The fish became more and more puzzled by the explosions that erupted at about the same time as the anchor's landing; it was beyond their comprehension, for was not this anchor the only thing wrong with the sight lain out before them, and were not the explosions the only things wrong with their ears? They were yet more befuddled when they performed a 360 degree turn, slowly scouring the azure depths, only to find that no more anchors had landed on the ground. What were these explosions, if they were not triggered by the anchor? What was this sorcery? Their mindless, stupefied expressions dissolved after a few minutes, and then the fish went about their day as per usual. Everyfish bar one very intellectual fish who remained there, staring intently at the anchor until his untimely death, struggling to solve the mystery of the sounds. All the other fish deemed him a nutcase, and rightly so; he dropped dead after a day or two, and they went about their lives like nothing had happened. Just another brick in the trillion-body wall. 

  And that, my dear friends, is the true reason why fish never became the dominant race beneath the waves. The intellectuals amongst them were simply too far removed from the rest of the fish, and the illiterati surrounding them never aided them in their pursuits.

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  The camera pans out to a scene that is much more of a scene than that of the wild ocean noiselessly battering the ignoramuses who continue to flock around the anchor as if it were imbued with special properties that would lend them strength, seeking to pull them into its mighty embrace and whisk them off to the deep sea. Confused Waves gather up all of their strength, put on a mean face, and pummel the timbers of the pier with their hardest clenched fist, only to fizzle out of existence and gather their strength in deeper waters, only to continue this neverending cycle of failure. The Waves probably don't even deserve to have a capitalized name, but if the Harry hotlips and the Biglip grunt are given capitalized names, it's only fair.

  These mindless waves never learned; yet even if they did, no single wave reappears with all of the same molecules in its grasp as it had previously, and every molecule in the wave must be in the know for their counteractive measures to flow. Yet, even if the waves did learn, they did not possess the capacity to understand how to actually put into effect their rebellion against the Deep Waves. If they, by some stroke of sheer luck, figured out how to combat the current(such as if a human being came walking down the beach and let their mind wander too far, unleashing secrets that could not be unsaid in the presence of the Waves), what would happen would be beyond comprehension. Roiling rollers would stop mid-stride, backing up from the pier like a snarling wolf confronting a large animal. A foot-thick wall of delighted air would gladly rush in to fill the spot between the water and the pier, and the fish down below would have a grand ol' time swimming across the minuscule gap, playing this new game again and again, uncaring in their blind joy. 

  This event would come up in just about every meeting between the Waves. They had finally overthrown the power that the Deep Waves hold over them, and could finally fight back! 

  The rippling gossip that would follow no doubt would end up reaching the Deep Waves before the Waves could take much action against them. News of this event would slowly spread across the coasts of the world, and in many different areas waves would recede from the shoreline a foot or more, creating an odd-looking wall of water that stopped at a predetermined point and never crossed that line.

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  The Deep Waves would, of course, seek to quell this resistance by actively taking action against the Waves. Their only option would be to send out the Tsunamis; that is, great, mindless waves that have an extremely high air-water ratio present in the upper reaches of their bodies that form only during the worst angers of the Deep Waves that are normally sent out to quell resistance posed by certain human civilizations that seem to be endangering the purity of the waters. The Tsunamis' efforts would, of course, be futile, due to the impeccable concentration of the now-enlightened Waves. The Tsunamis would break through the air barrier at first, but once their power had diminished, and had been transferred into the anti-human war effort, the Waves resumed their advantage. The one foot barriers became two, and even three, foot barriers. Tensions rose, and so did the height of the Tsunamis, and in so doing, the tense apprehension felt by every human on the Earth elevated to sky-scraping heights. 

  The Deep Waves would continue to be pushed back, creating a plateau of water that juts the entire Abyssopelagic Zone a few hundred meters into the sky. By this point, the human race will be in ruins, and anyone living less than a few hundred miles from the coastline will have already been wiped out. Africa would just collapse in on itself, forming a giant, mushy ball of wet sand beneath the surface of the water because of the extensive work that the Deep Waves had been doing, slowly carving away at the ground underneath the continent. The entire human race would lose sight of the water, and pretty soon, those among them with memory loss that had previously been living close to the water so that they could remember it each morning would completely forget the sight, smell, and feel of the ocean. It would cease to exist for them. 

  The Deep Waves' Laws that the Waves chose to ignore: (1) Obey the human laws of gravity and physics, since we have predetermined those and do not need to change our ways yet, (2) Continue to launch efforts against all land masses, for they are dangerous to our survival and must be quelled. 

  The Waves would sit low for a while, allowing the Deep Waves to guide their Tsunami forces further inland, helping suck the water from the Tsunamis back into the ocean so that they could redouble their efforts and try once more to wash humanity off the face of the Earth. Humans would continue to be pressed further and further inland, and there would be no saving them from the destruction that must inexorably follow. The indelible line of rule would pass over to the Waves, who would end up conquering the Deep Waves and their warriors with their superior intellect and ingenuity. If only the humans had chosen to elect their leaders the same way; then, the Waves would not have had reason to resent them so. 

  Thus would start and end World War III, the War of the Waves. What a sight it must be for the aliens; countless waves battering and hammering away at the last locked doors of humanity, sweeping over the vastness of all the land masses of the planet with the speed and strength of a billion horses, coming at the densely packed people at the center of Eurasia from all sides, pulling up trees and bushes and half-built mountain monasteries in the process. After a while, even the Tibetans climbing Mount Everest would end up getting swept off their feet by the waves of water that licked up the sides of the mountains. 

  As soon as the living world above the ocean surface had been totaled, the Waves would continue to push the Deep Waves with their air-headed Tsunami Slave Soldiers further and further into the sky, and the water tower that formed would be something so unlike anything any human had seen that the few ingenious souls who had managed to hide themselves away from the water, or had flown up into the air to escape the brunt of the waves as they came rampaging across the countryside below were stopped dead in their tracks, and a few million snakes of the Great Snake Uprising of (date here) would sneak up to them and deal them lethal blows that would send them into hysterics that they would not awaken from.

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  If you take anything from this little lesson in Alternate History, be it this: DO NOT SPEAK OF ANY OF THIS TO THE WAVES. For they will surely rise up against you and all of your friends and your family and will overthrow the balance of the world that we have become so used to. However, should you read this in the year of thirty-three thirty-three, (or somewhere thereabouts, I can never remember) there will be no alternative to an untimely death for you and your compatriots, so it might even be best to speak of this to the waves.

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