The shoreline is progressively colonised with private high-rise constructions in units, pairs and compounds. Permeable only to their dwellers, these growths collaterally prevent all crossovers to and from the sea: while they are equipped with security and surveillance apparatuses to regulate access to their own premises, their chain-like alignment constitutes an impermeable physical barrier that surrounds what comes to be known as the inner-city. Visible only through certain corridors and gaps in the siege, the shoreline grows distant from the inner-city dwellers. Even the smell of the sea hardly crosses the siege, blown back to the horizon by a series of giant deodorising mist fans. The sea and coast eventually become an abstract landform, a postcard, sometimes a photograph, but mostly a bedtime story, a nostalgic memory or a threatening myth. Having lost all sensation of it, by 2061 the inner-city dwellers forcibly relinquish all possibility of agency or claim over the sea.