The Fourth Flood

“How, exactly, does time work in Norco” isn’t the mystery I expected my brain to latch onto while playing Geography of Robot’s 2022 masterclass point-and-click adventure game.

And yet, a week on, I’m still thinking of the fourth flood.

I haven’t finished Norco, though I think I’m getting close. I really like Norco. I knew I would like Norco. That’s what scares me about it. Just like Kentucky Route Zero or Citizen Sleeper or Disco Elysium. These games are tapestries, rich, multi-faceted texts that demand analysis. They require introspection and dissection. They are my favorite genre of games, the ones that remind me of that elated moment in sophomore English where I discovered something. Those moments when you latch onto something and can’t let go for all your life.

I’m still thinking of the fourth flood.

You (Your character? Your perspective? Who is “you” in Norco is hard to determine at times) stand before a house. The main character, Kay, remembering the three times previously this house in southern Louisiana flooded.

You recall three floods, flashbulb memories of tearing out drywall, of weeks in hotels or time with friends in New Orleans. Sweat and mildew and destruction.

And then “you” are gone and “You” see the future. The Fourth Flood.

“The fourth flood will follow a slow hurricane and it will be a calamity. It will leave the entire region submerged as critical levees breach.

How do we know this, though? How do get this information? Who knows this and, of course, the nagging question of all questions: what does it mean that we know this beyond a doubt. The fourth flood will follow a slow hurricane and it will be a calamity.

There will be a massive blackout that lasts weeks. Much of the sewerage infrastructure will be damaged beyond repair.

The authority of this voice is resounding. It is a bygone fact that the Fourth Flood will come, that, no matter the outcome of this story, the region will be lost. It is written as if it had already happened, as immutable as the passage of time. No help is coming, but the Fourth Flood is.

The embattled federal government will do nothing to assist. It will bankrupt the region.

Kay weaves their way through this small-town story of capitalism and decay, but, in the grand scale, it means nothing. Nations and corporations move and manipulate the grand balance in Norco, but that is table-setting. That’s background noise. You are told in the opening half hour of Norco that this place is not the story. You will not destroy the Mako reactors and bring peace and happiness to this world. The Fourth Flood will come.

Small militant enclaves will form along the high ground of the Mississippi River. They will take to piracy and hijack commercial shipping vessels. Private mercenary forces will retaliate in kind.

You (again, which you?) see this violence already. Lucky holds a gun. Lucky uses that gun. Private guards, faces covered with tessellated cyber-rhombuses use their guns. This is the reality of Norco, an area under constant threat of violence. Eminent domain is the corporate piracy, hijacking the homes of residents to expand their next franchise location. And yet, it doesn’t matter.

Slowly, industry will flee this hotzone. The Old River Control Structure will collapse from neglect and sabotage. The Mississippi River will again change its course.”

It takes years for a river to change its course. Decades, even. How does time work in Norco? Who tells us about the Fourth Flood? And what does it tell us?

Neglect and sabotage. After all of it, the floods and the fights and the failure of infrastructure, the river remains. Different, but indifferent to the passage of humans. The floods come like the tides, a rhythmic cleansing and time of transition. Sheet rock removed, new paint put in place. Waterlogged carpet and warped photographs. In Norco, none of it matters. The Fourth Flood will come.

I haven’t finished Norco yet. I’m still not entirely sure what Norco is about, let alone what it’s doing with the Fourth Flood and it’s other gestures to the future and the passage of time. But it’s intriguing that a game that so meticulously phrases its sentences to be uncanny and arresting would spend so much time talking about the future. A future so far—or near—that is repetitive.

After three floods, the levee still breaks. Time repeats. Homes flood. But this time, there is no rescue. Norco is failing, a town persisting in the shadow of extractive governments and industry, tossing de-regulated pollutants into the air to maximize profits and hasten the climate apocalypse. Nothing is done. The Fourth Flood will come. It is inevitable. It is a bygone conclusion that nothing will be done for the people of Norco. Little has been done for them in the previous three floods.

Perhaps what intrigues me most about the fourth flood is that we only assume it’s water. Which part of what follows is the fourth flood, do you think? Is it the cataclysmic rise of water? Or, is the fourth flood the whole shebang: the water, the violence, the neglect and the sabotage? Is the flood simply the Mississippi changing its course toppling the stacks of the Shield refinery and burying the interstate and wetland-destroying bridges beneath silt and storm water?

Just like the repetition of the floods, the Mississippi will change its course again. The cycles repeat. All the cycles repeat: the exploitation, the violence, the neglect, the sabotage, and, yes, the natural. There may never be a fifth flood, but the fourth is guaranteed.