Back when it was built, about 300 years ago, the Shimizu Green Float City was a marvel. Like a lily pad on the ocean, big enough to house and support ten thousand people. These days, the population has exploded, and the machinery is wearing down. We were abandoned by our parent nation and cut adrift when their economic troubles prompted the politicians to stop the trade ships. They could live without our dwindling fish production quite easily, but we had to adapt quickly to an autonomous life. That self-contained autonomy was an illusion, though. We could feed ourselves well enough, but we had nothing with which to repair our physical structures.
Well, today is the big day. We return home. We dismantled what we could of the central spire and built ourselves a vast engine underwater. With power from wind, the Sun, deep ocean water and a little fish oil, we have been powering the great propeller and aiming ourselves at the homeland. It was long, slow and ridiculous, but today the outer edge will make landfall around sunset and our hungriest, most viscious warriors will stream out and take the land for ourselves.
I wait in anticipation, hidden under seaweed scraps along with thousands of fellow soldiers, waiting for the grinding, crunching sounds of landfall. The stink is horrible, and I can't see anything, not even the other soldiers near me, but I can hear them breathing. They sound anxious and excited, like me. They can't wait to storm the beach. No doubt they will see us coming - a floating city is hard to miss - but they will assume we are weak, and that will be their downfall.
Maybe we'll put the politicians out to sea, along with the rich ones who lived at the top of the tower, and see how they fare without the poor and expendable workers to support them. Or maybe we'll just destroy this floating relic once and for all, and demand a place on dry land to settle. Deep underwater, the engine thrums with a subsonic heartbeat, inching us closer to the shore, and our destiny.
Mokalus of Borg
PS - Inspired by this floating city concept.
PPS - It's one of a few mega-projects on that page.
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