I am dedicating each section as I put it up to various fans for their help, love, and support over the last few months which for me have been to difficult and painful to talk about... this one is to Lisa for just being an ear and keeping me going and don't worry Lady Dawn you are not forgotten...Wattpad doesn't allow me to put up more then one at a time.          

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     Undertow: The Bottom Sider Revolution or Neptune's Revenge.

                                                By A.I.I.H. Reiss

                       A Steampunk meets modern Sci-Fi (or the Modern world) Novelette

Sept. 15th 2016

     I have never been sure how to write this or even how to tell the story of my return to dry land and eventually home. I thought I would never enjoy seeing the open sky or watching children cry or play... or the smell of fresh rain on a muggy September morning, the grass smelled sweeter then I remembered, as I was released from prison these were my thoughts. The case against me had been more to prove to those in the world my innocence against the P.R. Campaign started by the bottom-siders sympathizers (I called them the “Undertow” at my trial.) Now those same sympathizers are either wondering why they were ever loyal to the bottom-siders in the first place since the majority were to drown with the rest of those on the topside...on the good green earth damaged ravaged though she might be our mother still lives, thanks to those bottom side who wanted no part of the bottom-sider revolution. These people where now gaining ground, as it were…more of the bottom side saw the danger those in charge had put them all in, the world as a whole. But I get ahead I should start this by saying I was typical of a topsider when I lived topside. I was dying in small pieces, I had a tumor that made it impossible to eat nearly anything without being sick...I had been looking at my life as if it was over and in a way it was because at forty seven I was so broken, I was so of body and spirit, like a beached whale I waited for death. I was trying to enjoy my last days by pretending nothing was wrong...an ostrich with the head in the sand as my mom called it. I didn't care all I cared about was that my children would have nothing but good memories of me once I was gone. I was taking my kids to fish at the beach...near the end of the pier.

I had gotten them going and was going to get some munchies (we were out of drink too) and told them I would be rolling back with the goodies...

Whatever happened next is unknown they say some damage occurred when the mess occurred and I saved someone who was a bottom-sider without knowing it (or else he was a Undertow as mentioned above) apparently I looked like a painting of the lost heir... Jules Verne called, Nemo a mere Captain and also a Prince, which was true, but his name was not Nemo (Jules like any good writer who knows that too close to the truth can get you into trouble one way or the other) It was his “daughter” the young girl who was his son's (his only child for he had not been blessed with the spare that all royals and nobles know to have nor had his father) only child his bride having fled with her children... I looked so like her and they said I was a genetically her great, great, grandchild. I remember thinking when they tried to convince me of this that I understood why she had escaped just as her mother had when she had been caught in their nets, as it were. Now I was free they couldn't and wouldn't bother me and I looked forward to a reunion with my family. I wondered how they would react when they saw me, I was know longer the broken woman they had known in fact I looked about like a teen or maybe early twenties...I had a whole new life ahead of me, and all it had taken was just one dumb move to get some munchies.

I will have to tell them the truth, that I have only the bits and pieces of the happenings of that day, and that my first real memory was later when I awoke.

Will they believe me? I am writing this because it may be the only way that I can tell my story, speaking as it is done in court, leaves out too many details, that might make one understand why I wanted to stop what the crazies (from down below the waves) were doing, without hurting those who I knew would have no life topside, but all they had were memories, and the love of those they knew where gone but whose graves still lay topside (so they believed) and the love of those lives and the life they had, had were their reason, or they were  just good people who deserved the simplicity of the world they had. A world of steam and electricity and super powered engines made of a power source greater then several suns.

Maybe I just like to hedge my bets. Maybe with global warming, it is as some believe, just a matter of time, well in that case let us use the time to learn, and grow up, then maybe will be worthy of their world, and ours (though we share it) and maybe then by choice will join their world below the waves of the sea, when that day of the ultimate great flood comes.