The population of the mats hadn’t really dropped much, yet. Only a few floating cities had been constructed, and the Council didn’t feel the need to make them residential. Essential personnel and industry, only. Yet another reason why the public was getting tired of the Council. When we first decanted the colonists, there had been an expectation that living on the mats would be necessary for only a decade or so, maximum. And would be gradually phased out in favor of manufactured floating cities during that interval. Now, twenty years later, more than ninety percent of the human population of Poseidon still made their homes on the mats.