Week 8 - Tracey P - Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

This week, I pulled a Jules Verne and went to the distant future; the year is 7020. Mankind has moved off to far away planets, colonized other worlds, and left only a small group of people on Earth, those that wished to stay instead of venturing into the stars. My time machine landed me on the island of Oahu, in the Hawaiian Island chain, far off what used to be "California."
Surprisingly, the people here seem to have reverted to the more Pacific Islander lifestyle that existed before the US annexed and added the islands as a state.
I convinced the locals that I was friendly, and was just here to learn. They were distrustful of me, but were willing to share the history as they knew it. Apparently, climate change was a bigger issue than anyone could have anticipated. Governments attempted to take more and more drastic action but citizens continued to push-back until it was too late. Multiple companies poured their research dollars into space exploration instead of combating the looming crisis. Once the technology became viable, countries spent money on sending dozens of exploration vessels out. Like the doves from Noah's Ark, they returned with nothing, or were never heard from again, until a single transmission was received; success!
First, thousands of people, with the money and desire to leave, bought private spacecraft and escaped their dying home. Later, as the ability to traverse the stars became more affordable, more and more people set off into the vastness of space, hoping to find their place in the cosmos. Those that chose to stay were left to fend for themselves on a planet supposedly in its death-throes.
But there was still hope! With so many people leaving and so much industry shut down, the planet finally began to heal. These islanders chose a simpler life, free of most technology. I took a day to survey the island I had landed on, finding a vastly different coastline than I had remembered from my past. While Pearl Harbor itself remained about the same, the spur of land where Hickam AFB once stood had been reclaimed by the sea. Also now underwater was much of Waikiki, downtown Honolulu, and the entire airport grounds.

Map courtesy of NOAA

All of Kailua was underwater as well. Waipahu was turned into an island in the harbor, much like Ford Island. The north shore destinations of Haleiwa and Waialua were also swallowed into the Pacific.
I thanked my hosts and headed back to my time machine, ready to return to my own time. If this future is the one set to come true, I'm only glad that I will not live to see such interesting times. As I punch i the digits for the date after I departed (to avoid any overlapping paradoxes and such), and just after I began the jump sequence, I noticed something amiss. My display was acting up again, and something was wrong with the date and time stamps of my destination! I would NOT be returning to 2020! Where will this blasted machine take me to this time?!