Castle in the Sky
It was a bit odd, I'll give you that. Castles are not, by and large, known for their floating properties.
They floated individual blocks of stone down the Nile for the Pyramids, and they were very big stones it is true, but whole castles? Floating on air? That's probably a first.
Still, not one to be held back by outdated rules or attitudes I had agreed to give it a shot.
It had taken a while, we'd had to create whole new fields of engineering, but it was an open-ended contract. The customer had even lived long enough to see it completed. The results were quite impressive, even if I do say so myself.
At the moment it was parked in low earth orbit, however it was perfectly capable of "floating" at any height, or even landing if required. With it's carbon-fibre struts, nano-tube cables and diamond plates we'd dubbed it "Carbon Architecture", and it was a thing of beauty.
Intricate latices and sweeping lines hid the more brutal functional design of engines and armaments. It gleamed and glittered in the sunlight like a jewel. In fact it was such a pleasing design that you could get small versions of it to wear as jewelry in the space-hotel gift shop.
We were featuring in all the architecture and design journals. Truly, this was the pinnacle of my career.
Finally it was time for the grand unveiling. Somewhere on board, an engineer powered up the integrated neural computer network and triggered the as yet unseen lighting display.
At the reception party on the space hotel, the viewing platform was filled with gasps of delight. I allowed myself a small feeling of triumph. It looked exactly as the designs had intended and set the whole jewel off in multi-coloured perfection.
Naturally the multi-hued versions of the giftware products were being unpacked in the shop as we watched.
My phone buzzed, a call from my assistant architect.
"Um, we may have a problem."
No, no problems. Not now. "What is it?" I asked as calmly as I could. Clearly it was nothing obvious, and problems could always be fixed.
"Er... the castle... it ,ah, it wants to know if we'll be its friends?"