From the inside of a long since abandoned pipe, a small flame leapt from the tip of a lighter. Colin lit the cigarette he held between his lips as the sun set in the building bespeckled horizon, watching the surface of the lake ripple as a fish surfaced, silver scales breaching the water for only the briefest of moments.
Lake Maoge glistened in the dying sunlight on the outskirts of Coil City. The lake had once been a fundamental aspect of the sewage system, but because of the overpopulation of the City, it had turned into a veritable tar pit. This had inspired the reconstruction of the sewers, and after it had lost its usefulness, the lake was all but forgotten. However, a decade after the lake had been pronounced "dead", it became a site for experimentation.
A leading scientist by the name of Edwick Swieth had introduced a new species of fish to the ecosystem, a fish that had been genetically engineered to feed on sludge. The hope was that the fish would decontaminate the lake. And it had worked better than expected. Within a few years, Maoge Lake was entirely toxin free, thanks to Swieth's fish, and the city voted to populate its waters once again.
This, however, turned out fatal to the savior fish. The fish, at first, had had no natural preditors, nor any other species to coexist with, and was therefore unable to adequately adapt to the invasion of its territory. This, coupled with its food source being almost completely depleted (as no new sewage was being dumped into the lake) killed off the fish that Swieth had worked so hard to create.
Luckily for Swieth, he was not alive to see his masterpieces destroyed, he had died of lung cancer only a year after introducing the fish into Lake Maoge.
Kekroka · Tue May 01, 2007 @ 05:14am · 0 Comments |