Floaters [FICTOID]

In the aftermath of climate change and global warming, several small island nations facing the threat of extinction submerged beneath rising sea levels opted to install large buoyancy devices around themselves, cut loose from the sea mounts supporting them, and become free-floating.

This produced many benefits…and many problems.

The benefits included basic survival plus then ability to migrate out of the way of storms of ever increasing severity and into milder, more temperate waters.

The problems included a dramatic loss of revenue.  Islands were valuable as fixed points on trade routes; if they moved, who wanted to chase them down?

Islands also once held strategic value in geopolitics; without their former fixed position they no longer served the needs of global superpowers, hence those powers’ monetary and material support vanished.

This left millions of islanders alive but impoverished, oceanic nomads with no resources to help themselves.

The rest of humanity -- at least the vast majority who weren’t among the uber-wealthy planning to flee to Mars -- felt empathy for the islanders.  “There but for the grace of God / Allah / Yahweh / Vishnu / The Flying Spaghetti Monster go I.”

Because of that, nurse Aghavni Nerguizian was able to open up her island clinic.

Located in the now temperate continent of Antarctica, Nerguizian’s clinic offered all varieties of medical / psychological / spiritual aid and comfort to the islanders.

As island would be overcome with plagues, pandemics, panic attacks, and plain old ennui, the would make their way south to Aghavni Nerguizian’s clinic.

There, thanks to generous donations by the sane 98% of humanity, the islanders could receive treatment for all their ills.  Their bodies would be mended, their psyches eased, their souls salved, even the buoyancy devices supporting them would be checked out and refurbished.

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,” Nerguizian would say, quoting one of the better books, “and I will give you rest.”

Meanwhile, on Mars, the uber-billionaire colony failed.  They called Earth for emergency help but having impoverished the planet before they left, felt horrified to learn no resources remained to rescue them.

The Mars colony proved to be the single most expensive self-guilloting exercise in history,

© Buzz Dixon