This story was written for the Sci-Fi Smackdown 6.0 Round 3.
The theme was Classic/Trashic/First Contact.
I chose the classic, The Little Mermaid and the trashic, Hunger Games.
The setting is the Tower World, which I explore heavily in my Tales of the Tower World collection. Visit the external link to check out other stories based in this world.
This story covers the Tower that was erected in the Seattle in Washington state.
Odine of the Water
Ondine was a water nymph in German mythology. So of course, I named my little mermaid, Odine, a form of the name. She is not actually a water nymph or mermaid. She is simply a member of a tribe that lives along the waterways of Washington state in the far future.
Odine's people are a mix of Native Americans, techies and other rebels who escape to the depths Olympic Forest and into tribal lands to avoid being recruited to work on the tower, be forced into hibernation or worse, eliminated.
Hundreds of years have passed since the Tower was sealed, and the world has cleansed itself. Odine's people have survived, lived and prospered. The temperate rain forest with its ever changing weather has cleansed the air and water. Her people have clung to some technology, and are not completely ignorant about the world that once was.
They speak a hybrid mix of English, Chinese, French and a small amount of Quinault. Some bands lean towards one language or the other, trying to preserve each language. Yet, as time passes, they all mix and blend. Only those with intact vids and recordings are able to listen to and learn the original languages as they were once spoken.
The Seattle Tower
As with all the towers in the tower world, the Sisters are a left in the care of the Tower and it's sleeping inhabitants. When the world has healed, they awaken the sleepers and mankind will return to the earth and repopulate the land.
At that point, the Sisters only duty is to preserve the history kept in the servers of the Tower.
As with many of my tower stories, not all goes as planned. The sisters do not release the people in their care. They have grown to consider themselves as gods, and struggle to keep their people in submission. They do so by using their own version of the Hunger Games. :)
THE MASHUP
Peter, (I just couldn't use the name Peeta, had to deviate a bit.) took on the role of the prince who the little mermaid watches and rescues.
The element of first contact is that Odine, a member of the survivors of an Apocalypse is the first to meet the people of the Tower, who are awoken from centuries long hibernation.
Katrina (Katniss) comes in as the princess who ends up stealing the prince from the little mermaid.
And so, as the story develops, Odine, the little mermaid, dies to ensure Peter's (the prince's) happiness with Katniss (the princess) rather than die and live without him.
She turns into the rain, just as the little mermaid turns to seafoam in the classic story.
And so I mashed together the two and called it good. :)
________________________________________________
Tales from the Tower World is available now on Amazon through Kindle Unlimited. A link to the book on Amazon is available under "External Link"
Available exclusively here on Wattpad is The Children of the Tower. It is something of a fan fiction mashup, and so I chose to leave it here.
I hope you enjoy!
YOU ARE READING
Tales from the Tower World
Science FictionThe Towers were constructed to preserve both our species and our history. The earth has been exploited, mined, ravaged and polluted to the point that survival of the human race is threatened. The governments of the world collect, sort and their peop...
