The Sea Cities
The cities gleamed in the luminous depth of the oceans, great domes with smaller domes within, bobbing above great tubes of filtration plants and hydroponic gardens – all emitting their own ghostly light down in dark waters. Modelled on jellyfish the outer domes were flexible, and could help propel the cities out of danger. Three lots of nested domes allowed a lot of damage before the people within would be harmed.
There were an inversion of the little floating kingdoms that had sprung up in the lat two centuries, those structures had started as the last ditch rescue attempts of lands that had been enslaved merged with the remnants of boats set a drift to escape disease as it felled the populations of the landmasses. The seasteds were floating pinecones and were often drowned in the turbulent storms that now racked the Earth on an almost daily bases, there was only so much battering the hauls could take and their precious cargos could take even less.
The Tenticaled Cities on the other hand had been designed with all that taken into mind. Designed by A.I. The cities were self sufficient, mobile and modular, bits could be lost or added – another survival strategy stolen from nature. With their ability to connect and the tactile nature of their great domes meant that they could buffer each other from the roughest seas and if that wasn’t enough then they could move. Such movement was easy in the up and down axis and with more hassle horizontally movement through the oceans to new destinations could be achieved. Mostly just moving out of the turbulent channel of water was all that was needed.
They waited in the semi darkness for the humans to come, they had been built for the humans, designed for the humans, they would wait for the humans, they would serve the humans. Computers whirled and robots carried out their functions – all just waiting, it had been 50 years since their completion, none of the A.I.s thought it especially strange that no one had yet arrived.
Storms battered the sea’s surface and disease, drought, ice and more scoured the land, reports still sounded on the recievers of the numbers dying of plague, the air plagued by toxic clouds. The humans would come eventually, until then there were crops to be grown and harvested and sown again and water to purify.
The last remaining dolphins clicked their agreement that they could wait a long time for the humans. They were perfectly happy in their habitation tanks.
Posted: Thursday, September 28th, 2017 @ 2:23 am
Categories: Flash Fiction, The Punks World.
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