2 September 2024, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2483: neglected suburb - The Down-Below

This post was inspired by today's 5-minute writing prompt in the Freewriters Community - NEGLECTED SUBURB

Enjoy !

Image created by AI in NightCafe Studio

The space station of Harmony-32 had been the first one built around the massive gas giant known as Ogre. It was assembled long before the flying cities and single-family habitations that floated in the upper cloud layers of that terrifying world.

Over a few hundred years it grew to be the massive place it is today. Two hundred levels, spinning ring stacked upon spinning ring, each generating it's own gravity for the many inhabitants.

But the bottom thirty levels were different. They were known simply as "The Down-Below". Neglected, almost derelict and virtually uninhabited. Once they had been housing for fifteen thousand citizens.

That was before the meteor strike. It wasn't a very big meteor, maybe ten feet in diameter. But the station's defences had shot at it, trying to break it into dust or blast it into a different trajectory.

They failed. They turned the meteor into a cloud of gravel that punctured the lower levels hundreds of times. Many people died, the rest evacuated in a hurry.

It took years to clear the bodies and restore pressure. By that time, there were rumours The Down-Below was haunted. So those rings were never spun up again, and now it's a neglected, empty ghost town, the abandoned suburb at the bottom of a somewhat tired old space station. Emergency lighting only, no gravity, few inhabitants, and few willing to go down there. I guess that makes it safe, in a way.