Aussie Rules
A gray and angry labyrinth of waves, rising to enormous, unimaginable heights. Smashing with an unearthly vengeance against the thirty meter steel and concrete bulwark that seems to appear out of nowhere, the water just seems to come to an halt. A greenish looking sun pushes the odd ray through the grey clouds, not contributing much to the gloomy afternoon. This was not the summer Bente remembered from her childhood. Glorious, unfathomable blue skies, dominated by a glistening sun that seemed to be present all year, baking the red sands of Alice Springs were the most dominant of her memories of the early twentyfirst century. But here, standing on the thirty meter high engineering miracle that was the 'Gamma Dam', she longed for those vitamin D filled moments.
The Gamma Dam was one of the European megastructures that went up all over the continent in the last forty years. Build to protect the Scheldt delta and the rest of the Netherlands, this was the logical continuation of the Delta Project, the first large structure the Dutch built to stop the flooding of their lands. But with the increasing frequency of freak floods, the sea level 4 meters higher than fifty years ago and most of Bangladesh gone, the Gamma project was the only way to keep sixty million people from moving eastwards and lose some of the most agriculturally important area of Europe. Four hundred kilometers long and in some areas up to 300 meters deep, this amazing complex of towering walls, locks and canals did not only produce electricity with its built-in network of eighty wave power stations, but also was host to eighty thousand happy (and rich) owners of some of the most extravagant apartments in the world, sporting million dollar views of the raging sea..
If Australia would only still be habitable, she thought.
Qaqortoq:Prologue II | Aussie rules | Qaqortoq: Chapter I