# City in the Sky

July Flash Challenge Post 2

They sure don't make 'em like they used to.

Why, in my day, you wouldn't ever see a car on the side of the road unless it ran out of gas! You didn't plug your car in like a toaster and wait 'til the little plunger popped up before driving into town. No, our engines contained destruction, held in a thousand explosions a minute. We sacrificed all that chaos to move ourselves around.

What do kids these days sacrifice for their toaster cars? Nothing! And that kind of convenience demands a sacrifice.

They've been playing fast and loose with the rules. Technology made it easier to flout the old compacts. Sure, it's cheap, and it's easy, and it's even got more reliable. But what that does is it makes the price higher when you have to pay the butcher.

That toll has got to be paid, and as they say, you're only as good as your worst day.

So the town council of New Icarus was late on their power bill - so what?

You made the choice to cut them off. You sent that beautiful city full of young families crashing to the ground. You are responsible for all that death, all those lives paid to the old gods.

Do you imagine the history books tut-tutting at the New Icarus residents, saying they should have paid their bill? You are the monster that history will vilify. The New Icarus folks did pay. They paid with their lives, for all of us, per the compacts.

I beg you, please don't send another city up. You are never the ones to pay for your hubris.

-- From a letter to the editor after the fall of New Icarus, September 29, 2187