The river used to belong to the town. Now it belongs to the cloud.
A colossal black data center towers over a small town, and a transparent straw the width of a highway jams into the river beside it, visibly draining it. The houses below are the size of lint. Someone signed off on this, someone zoned it, and someone’s vacation photos are now cooled by what used to be a fishing spot. The town gets a tax abatement and a lower water table. The data center gets to keep your cloud storage from overheating. The straw is the honest part. Most companies that drain a town’s resources at least have the decency to use a pipe you can’t see through.