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=== MIAMI, THE SUNKEN CITY === How does a city of seven million people disappear? Well, they say that the lost city of Miami was the lowest-lying place in Florida – only six feet above sea level, on average. But almost nobody left alive remembers the days when Miami was above sea level at all. At first, they tried to save it. Miami was the third-richest city in the world, after all – a hub of international finance and business, an irreplaceable cultural landmark. Conservative investors and residents pulled out, but the diehards? Foundations were strengthened, seawalls constructed, and for a time there was hope— Until Hurricane Myleen made landfall on September 19th, 2076 with a top wind speed of 220 miles per hour, a 100-mile diameter of hurricane force winds, and thirty feet of storm surge. And Miami drowned. Never in the history of the US had a city flooded so comprehensively and catastrophically. The seawalls shattered beneath seventy-foot killer waves. The freshwater aquifers were poisoned by massive infusions of saltwater, and the porous limestone beneath the city cracked in a hundred places. The retreat of the floodwaters was gradual… and only partial. The collapse of the limestone layer left huge sinkholes behind. Whole districts were gone, and much of the infrastructure utterly unsalvageable, turned into a brackish swamp. Arguments over how to proceed were furious and lengthy, but in the end the judgment was inevitable: The federal government would not pay to rebuild Miami, only to compensate its millions of displaced people. Population, business, and money departed in great waves, the vast majority of Miami resettling in what would become Tamlando. But deals were quietly being struck behind the scenes, sunken land sold for a song. In 2080, the pharmaceuticals billionaire Alejandro Galliardo announced what would be become known as the Biscayne Plan: an ambitious proposal to raise and rebuild the heart of the city. Pumps, seawalls, artificial foundations, reinforced aquifers… The cost and scale of the Biscayne Plan was unimaginable, but by 2090, downtown Miami had been lifted from the swamp, raised well above sea level into the most environmentally-sound, sustainable, and striking planned community in the South. Of particular note, what had once been Key Biscayne was now an island retreat covered by an unbreakable dome of transparent polymer – a miniature climate-controlled city owned entirely by the Galliardo family. And as further waves of regrowth were constructed, the people began to return. By 2150, two million people lived in the outskirts of Miami once more. Their lives tend to be furious, fast-paced, and cutthroat, driven by competition for the luxurious First Wave habitations (controlled by a tight application process). Cutting-edge innovation in medicine and science is also a hallmark of the businesses in Miami, drawn by Galliardo’s support. Perhaps it is also unsurprising that Miami has become the very first port of call for the designer drug market, extraordinary new concoctions circulating outward from its underground every few years. For example, it’s known to be the origin of “Tiovivo”, a vastly expensive party drug that provides a combination of cocaine’s euphoria and methamphetamine’s pure energy – at the potential cost of lifelong brain damage from even mild overdose. But that’s just life in Florida, isn’t it? If you want the highs, you have to accept the lows. ==== Notable Landmarks ==== * Key Biscayne. The Galliardos have ruled from their island fortress for over fifty years, with Alejandro’s granddaughter Miranda Galliardo the current head of the family. It’s rumored over fifty thousand people live in Key Biscayne’s beautiful domed enclave, but the unfathomable wealth of the Galliardos can buy quite a lot of silence. It’s a commonly accepted truism that the Key serves as the home port for a smuggling empire that would put most other cartels to shame, and yet no one has ever come close to making anything stick. So the Key rises just off-shore, dominating the horizon of Miami’s downtown – a beacon of luxury, mystery, and jealousy in most minds. * The Neverglades – Though successive waves of the Biscayne Project have expanded Miami’s habitable lands, the outskirts of the city have still become one gigantic swamp. They’ve merged with the remnants of the Everglades, mostly destroyed in Myleen, and the heartier species that survived its destruction… not just the ubiquitous alligators, but weirder inhabitants like the invasive Burmese pythons. Add to that the sinkholes abruptly plunging to profound depths and sudden ruins peeking up out of the swamps here and there, and this surreal, dangerous landscape was named ‘the Neverglades’ by some clever joker. The moniker’s stuck. ==== Notable Organizations ==== * El Cucuys. Of course there is a large criminal organization present in Miami, and they do dark work indeed. El Cucuys (named after a mythical shapeshifting bogeyman figure) primarily see to the thriving underground markets of the city, controlling its massive drug outputs in particular. Their reputation for making people disappear is unparalleled, and only a fool or a madman intentionally gets in their way. Many believe they work directly for the Galliardo family, but of course no one would say it aloud – even if they could prove it. * Galliardo Rehabilitative Medicine Foundation. Half a place, half an organization – a four-square city block of hospitals, research laboratories, and similar facilities, all allied under the family funds to push the borders of medical science as it’s commonly understood. Some of its success stories include: ** Milagro Biotechnics, whose specialized work in rehabilitating people who suffer from extreme cases of brain damage has been hailed as bleeding-edge; ** Connectivity Incorporated, designers of one-of-a-kind cybernetic solutions for cases of dismemberment and amputation, who live up to their slogan of “Better Than Natural”; ** Protean Industries, a multi-technical firm specializing in “makeovers” – a combination of surgery, cybernetics, and applied gene-editing techniques to help people become their ‘best selves’.
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