History, Economy, Weather, Hydrology

In 2016, people thought Gig City would just keep getting better. The art scene would become more diverse, the startup culture would keep producing wealth and innovation, big industries would keep moving in and hiring, the political culture would spread the city's wellbeing to the poor folks who didn't have a slice of the pie.




The faeries -- that's us -- who feed on art and tech and creativity would keep dancing over the heads of the programmers and the moviemakers and the lithographers and the dancers.



In 2017, an executive order of the new president sold the nuclear power arm of TVA to Axis Industries and defunded the waterway management arm entirely. After the existing budget ran out, no one opened the locks or repaired the dams.

Drought kept us safe for a while, but the Great Flood of 2021 rolled 13 feet of water down Broad Street. Most of Brainerd and the west side of East Ridge were submerged. Houses washed away. The same spring, a tornado ripped a half-mile-wide swath of the Citico Creek neighborhood right off the map.

If you haven't seen a flood in the Tennessee Valley, here's a flooded Chattanooga as seen from Point Park, circa 1867.

Here's some of what we lost:


Downtown dried out, as did a lot of Amnicola Highway, but Brainerd and Citico and big swathes of East Ridge are uninhabitable swamp. People squat there, but they move out every year. Springs are violent. Summers are hot. Winters are wickedly wet and cold.

Now we have too much water, but the water's not always clean. A group of Unseelie Nockers moved into Raccoon Mountain Pump Storage Facility (aided by an angry Tsalagi spirit up on the reservoir side) and charge an arm and a leg for the reserves, which is about the only guaranteed good water around, unless you have a private well, or, like a lot of corporate neighborhoods, your own water treatment facility.


Our numbers dwindled. Chattanooga now has about 150,000 citizens. They work -- when they can -- in tech and manufacturing. A lot more, poorly paid, work in the nursing and service industries, and more work around the city in agriculture. Trade is more difficult with most of the borders closed, and we depend more than we did on local farms. Here it's dairy, beef, corn, and soybean, mostly.

A lot of people don't work at all. When a social media group posts a day job ad, there's typically a riot at the gates as 200 or more people show up. There are food riots and clean-water riots and disease riots -- all that water breeds mosquitos, which carry dengue and malaria. Indoor plumbing is unreliable. We have electricity, but there are rolling blackouts.

There's plenty of wealth, but it's mostly in private enclaves. As far as we know, changelings aren't ever born there.

At least we do still have screened windows and toilet paper. And technology. If you're sick with tuberculosis, you may not be able to afford any medicine, but your wristband or pocket device can bring up a VR simulation that lets you walk through your body and see large as life what the TB is doing to each organ. You can hold a virtual tubercle in your hands, if you like.