Pelican Drift is GLMZ's largest permanent floating settlement, a loose confederation of barges, decommissioned platform rigs, and engineered pontoon structures moored approximately four kilometers off the western shore of Lake Michigan. It began in the 2150s as a squatter settlement on a pair of abandoned Arcturus Defense Solutions test platforms — Arcturus had used the lake for weapons systems trials and walked away when the contracts ended, leaving the infrastructure behind. Squatters arrived within months. By 2200, Pelican Drift has grown to a population of roughly twelve thousand people spread across sixty-plus connected structures ranging from a repurposed Carrion Logistics freight barge to handbuilt pontoon cabins barely large enough for two.

The settlement is technically outside GLMZ's jurisdictional boundary, which is drawn at the shoreline. This legal ambiguity is the foundation of Pelican Drift's entire identity. No corponation has formal claim. No Tier system officially applies. Taxes don't reach here. Neither does most enforcement. The Drift operates its own water reclamation, its own power grid (a patchwork of wave energy converters, solar film, and a single aging micro-fission cell that everyone agrees is probably fine), and its own adjudication system built around something its founders called the Compact — a simple document that has been amended forty-seven times and argues about as often.

The lake around Pelican Drift is not safe. Zheng-Dao Bioelectric runs power cables along the lakebed that occasionally fault and electrify surface water in localized patches. There are E.L.F. signal clusters in the deep water that mess with navigation systems. And every few months, a Tessera Corporation drone passes overhead performing what Tessera calls 'environmental monitoring' and what the Drift calls 'harassment.' But the people of Pelican Drift are lake people now, defined by distance from shore, and most of them would not go back for anything.