Float

I wasn't sure it would float.

It wasn't physically impossible but it was highly improbable. I checked the calculations again, touched a few levers, and finally let her go. The first supporting pylons fell away, followed by larger ones until all that was left were hoses. Those fell away with a few more presses and she floated above me on her own power.

My island in the sky.

The product of thousands of hands and minds, hundreds of arms and legs, seas of sweat and boiling blood, and one dream. One dream, and it was mine. This new land floated on sunlight and wind, and it was the answer to the problem we'd created for ourselves when the caps melted. The land would float upon the sea when necessary, her vents sucking in water for desalination, and heave herself up again--the great solar engines humming the song of the hydrogen firebomb that kept us too warm in this age--and into the air, where we would go with the wind patterns mapped so long ago.

Other islands like this one would eventually rise from the bones of the mountains whose peaks still poked at the sea, but mine was the first. Most of the current population of this blighted mountain top would remove to the floating land above, and become nomad.


I still hadn't made up my mind.













For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, Barb Black gave me this prompt: I wasn't sure it would float..

I gave Grace O'Malley this prompt: Stop thinking, and end your problems.