LJIdol S11 - Week 22 - Hiraeth
They say you can't go home again, but if I lived my life according to what "they" say then I wouldn't have constructed a floating island fortress in the first place, so I didn't give their opinions much consideration. Instead, I just threw together a small stealth submarine and went to go visit. It had to be stealth because various governments don't want anyone (mostly each other) visiting the site, and it had to be a submarine because various governments had fired an awful lot of missiles at my floating island fortress until it didn't float anymore. Really, an excessive number of missiles. Like, enough missiles that it started to feel kind of personal.
I switched on some exterior lights as I approached the coordinates and braced myself for feelings of...regret? Failure? I don't know, I figured it would be upsetting. But as the wreck came into view my first thought was "Wow, that coral really moves in fast, doesn't it?" Then I wondered if maybe this was an atypical amount of coral to have grown in such a short span of time, and tried to remember if mutant doom coral had been one of the projects I'd been working on before all of my meticulous laboratory precautions got hit by missiles.
Regardless, it was kind of pretty. And...I think it helped. All the coral and seaweed and molluscs all over everything made it harder to see the scorch marks or the jagged edges where metal had been torn apart. It made the all the violence seem like something that had happened much longer ago than it really had.
On the other hand, it also made the place even less recognizable. It might have been hard enough trying to identify which twisted bit of wreckage had been a doom cannon and which bit had been part of a hive filled with mind control bees even without all the seawater and the enterprising marine life, but with them it was proving impossible. Why, if I doubted my calculations, I could even have wondered if maybe I was in the wrong place, and this was the sunken remains of some other floating island fortress.
But no, there was my logo stenciled onto the chest of a headless sentry robot. There was a crab lurking in the largest of the holes in its armor, and I waved to it, like you'd wave to someone sitting on their porch as you walked down the street in front of their house. That's when it really hit me that this really wasn't my home anymore. It belonged to the crabs now.
That was a weird feeling. I'd fought off all kinds of soldiers and secret agents to try to keep control of my island, but I surrendered without a fight to this tiny crab. I guess I'd realized there wasn't anything here worth fighting for. It's not like I'd expected to be able to salvage much, but it was still a tough moment for me. I guess you really can't go home again.
Or maybe crabs are just really scary. Maybe I'll make the new sentry robots crab-shaped.
Anyway, I guess I'll have to start from scratch. This time I'm thinking maybe I'll go for a flying island fortress. That sounds pretty awesome. And maybe people will say that crab-shaped sentry robots look out of place on an airship, but I think we've already established how much I care what "they" say.
Robot crabs it is.
I switched on some exterior lights as I approached the coordinates and braced myself for feelings of...regret? Failure? I don't know, I figured it would be upsetting. But as the wreck came into view my first thought was "Wow, that coral really moves in fast, doesn't it?" Then I wondered if maybe this was an atypical amount of coral to have grown in such a short span of time, and tried to remember if mutant doom coral had been one of the projects I'd been working on before all of my meticulous laboratory precautions got hit by missiles.
Regardless, it was kind of pretty. And...I think it helped. All the coral and seaweed and molluscs all over everything made it harder to see the scorch marks or the jagged edges where metal had been torn apart. It made the all the violence seem like something that had happened much longer ago than it really had.
On the other hand, it also made the place even less recognizable. It might have been hard enough trying to identify which twisted bit of wreckage had been a doom cannon and which bit had been part of a hive filled with mind control bees even without all the seawater and the enterprising marine life, but with them it was proving impossible. Why, if I doubted my calculations, I could even have wondered if maybe I was in the wrong place, and this was the sunken remains of some other floating island fortress.
But no, there was my logo stenciled onto the chest of a headless sentry robot. There was a crab lurking in the largest of the holes in its armor, and I waved to it, like you'd wave to someone sitting on their porch as you walked down the street in front of their house. That's when it really hit me that this really wasn't my home anymore. It belonged to the crabs now.
That was a weird feeling. I'd fought off all kinds of soldiers and secret agents to try to keep control of my island, but I surrendered without a fight to this tiny crab. I guess I'd realized there wasn't anything here worth fighting for. It's not like I'd expected to be able to salvage much, but it was still a tough moment for me. I guess you really can't go home again.
Or maybe crabs are just really scary. Maybe I'll make the new sentry robots crab-shaped.
Anyway, I guess I'll have to start from scratch. This time I'm thinking maybe I'll go for a flying island fortress. That sounds pretty awesome. And maybe people will say that crab-shaped sentry robots look out of place on an airship, but I think we've already established how much I care what "they" say.
Robot crabs it is.