by Davi Cao
“That was a frustrating place. Lots of potential and little realization. What you liked about it was just a tiny bit of what people were capable of doing if things were organized in another way.”
“Well, I can’t speak of what didn’t exist, and neither can you.”
“Yes, I can, I have seen other worlds, I have made other worlds. And I’m going to make you see it too. I accept your challenge.”
“Challenge? I thought you hated competition.”
“I do. But how can you grow without frustration, right?” She looked at him through half-closed eyes, a malicious grin taking over her face.
Laura inhabited the skyscraper that ruled downtown’s skyline. An architecture made of glass, a tall cylinder with a spiky crown, a spire taller than any other construction in the area. Deep in the night, when the city was lit by lampposts alone and a few passing cars, one window showed life inside of an office, high up, near the top. Laura worked, putting down some lines for a speech she thought about while sleeping.
“This is really her house, then,” Dalana said, looking up at the building, walking with Colin on the avenue leading to it. “Does she do everything in there?”
“Yes, this is her house. She’s got her own living quarters in one floor. For us in old Terra, work was our second home, the place where we spent most of our time.” Colin nodded at her question.
“I remember that, although I never considered the situation in these terms. Do you wish for her employees to have their workplace as a second home?”
“Well, it’s nice to have that. They can feel more comfortable and make a better job. It’s good to make them feel like they are important too.”
“Oh, I couldn’t agree more.” Dalana swayed her spine to left and right. “I know you’re not fond of my ideas and all that, but could I maybe materialize your wish?”
“What wish? Making their workplace more comfortable?”
“Yes, turning it into their second house?”
Colin laughed, reconciled with Dalana. “Alright, that could be interesting. I guess I would like to work in a place like this, where workmates become a family for real.”
“Good,” she said, closing her eyes with a blissful smile. “It’s done. When people come, they’ll find beds, kitchens, bathrooms, living rooms and leisure areas throughout the building. And I updated their duty files, giving them more homely activities to do. Is that ok? Am I destroying your world like this, huh?”
“I doubt so, but we have to wait and see. It looks interesting to me, very Terra-style. It could be nice to make them work more, now that they don’t have to commute. You can do things too, see? I don’t want to be your enemy, I just want to have a way of reaching my goal.”
“You’re right, there’s no reason for being enemies.” Dalana entered Laura’s building to check her adaptations.
Workers that day had a breakfast with Laura. She toured the floors grabbing bits of bread and eggs, greeting people like dear neighbors. They had fridges filled with food, replenished after a contract with one of Laura’s own companies. Managers took care of cooking, their new check-lists updated with new functions.
“These pancakes are wonderful, boss! Never knew you could cook so well,” one happy employee said.
“Certain things only need an opportunity to appear, ain’t that right?” another one added.
“They sure do,” the manager said, taking more pancakes to the table. “Alice, grab these, and there’s more coming.”
“Good morning, my dear ones.” Laura arrived at the scene with a baby blue blouse, short pants, and slippers. “Let me have a bite of this one too. Sorry, Alice, I just want to have a taste. Oh, hmm... it’s good, it’s nice. Our managers make good cooks, don’t they? Do you mind if I sit with you guys? Tell me, John, how’s your wife Anna? I only see her at night, but I heard she coughed a lot tonight.”
“Nothing to worry about, Miss Laura, she’ll see the doctor after lunch, and I’m sure it’s no big deal. We’ve good news to share with you, though, something we want to tell together,” John said, pouring hot water in his cup to make some coffee.
“She’s pregnant. I got it, right?” Maurice, the cooking manager, said.
“Oh, ah-aha, no, guys, wait, let’s wait until she’s around too, I don’t want to spoil the surprise.” John shook his head with fingers spread wide.
“Whatever it is, I’ll be glad to hear it,” Laura said, passing a slice of buttered bread.
Colin and Dalana toured the building behind Laura, finding the place transformed into a big, multistory house. Children ran across the halls, they played in the elevators, they cried for food and visited neighbors. Workers had brought them from home, willing to create a community out of their workmates' own children.
“Were you a good daughter?” Colin said to Dalana, sitting on the couch of a living space.
“We didn’t have parents like you did in your world. But I had a good group, yes. I was born aged fifty-four years old, so my husband took care of me and taught me how to speak and move in just one life-cut,” she said, joining his side on the couch.
“Your world was so different... No wonder why you don’t want the same as I do.”
“We’re more alike than you think.”
“I had a family, a good one, and I want to have them back. You don’t, and that makes us different. Father was a serious guy, a bit like me, but better looking and funny. He made jokes without realizing it, apologizing every time someone laughed at his material. And he was hilarious. Mother was silly, so she made him feel awkward all the time, milking his accidental jokes until she was the only one left laughing. Very protective, though, very jealous of us, and nobody could dare mocking any of the family.”
“They seemed like good people.”
“They were, yes, very good folks.” Colin heard the joyous chattering echoing through the hallways.
He tightened his eyes, realizing how odd to hear nothing besides the buzz of family life. It was past 10am and workers and managers still talked about day-to-day stuff. Nobody worked.
∙ 11 ∙ Smashed dreams
Laura locked the doors to her office and stared at the glass panes with a view to the city. High up on the skyscraper, mountains stood on the distant horizon, and to the left, the sea formed a straight line dividing heaven and earth. The view reminded her of old Terra, although the elongated sun removed all her fantasies. The landscape felt amiss, and yet herself, her own behavior toward the people, disturbed her more than anything.
The computer on her table turned on by itself, not starting the operational system, but an image of a shadowed man. She looked at him and waited for the sign.
“Dalana tricked us. Work is not a place for family. Work is work, don’t you agree?” Colin said through the speakers.
“That’s the issue, I see. It affected me too, to see beds and kitchens and sofas and children everywhere. You can’t think of salvation this way, there’s no space for the future. The Devil is charming indeed.” Laura closed hands under her chin, looking at the city beyond her office.
“We have to be more careful. I’ll try to convince Dalana of our point of view, I’ll try to show her what we can do as a species, I’ll work harder on this. Before that, we must heal this place, this new oasis. Take them out of the oasis again, Laura. I know you can do it.”
“It’s harder now. They’re already at work, and family is also sacred.”
“If it keeps them from producing for their own living, things need to adapt. Without work, they can’t keep the family well. Work comes first.”
“Alright, I’ll see what I can do.”
She meditated in silence, after Colin’s departure from her computer. In her mind, she prayed for the one true God, the one above the Creators, asking for guidance, for any word superior to that offered by Colin himself. Work comes first, yes, and yet the family was the pinnacle of society.
Maurice, one of her managers, knocked on Laura’s door to call her for the afterno
on snack. Without an answer, he opened the door and peered into the room. She waited for him with closed eyes, thinking of how to convert him.
“Miss Laura, we’re waiting for—”
“Come here. Let me touch you,” Laura said, interrupting him.
Down on her chair, she heard his coming steps and waited to feel his presence by her side. She opened her eyes and raised her arm to reach his forehead. He allowed her touch with the trust of a family limb, not an underling. After one day of community, he saw their bond grow to brotherhood.
“Money needs work. We can’t feed others with paper,” she said.
“We have enough, our companies provide for us—” the man said under her grip.
“Again, we can’t feed others with paper. We have to set the example.”
“Our example is holy, we are the perfect work family.”
“Yes, a family that doesn't go through harshness, that doesn't resist temptation. It's wrong, it's unhealthy.”
“It's the dream, our mission in this world, we've made it. We should enjoy it.”
“Nobody is producing, no wealth is coming our way. You can't live like this forever, because one day food will end. And Heaven is eternity, nothing less.”
Maurice blinked three times in a row, taking a deep breath. “All... hm... You are right, Miss Laura. How can we turn things back?”
“Come with me.”
Storming through the hallways, Laura yelled at the managers, finding them in different rooms. One by one, she placed a hand on their foreheads and spoke the words of truth, survival always in peril by magical temptation. The world thrived on hard labor, not on joyful sloth, and it clicked inside their minds, it made sense, and it was a pity that it had to be thus.
“John, come here, help me getting this bed out, we’ve got to remove everything.”
“Ulysses, the fridge, now, get this out of my room.”
“Get your child out of here, Alice, this is not daycare!”
But the people resisted. They turned the office into their home, and the managers tried to evict them from their haven of peace. They outnumbered the managers, they had their families with them, together they could take the whole building to protect it from those few ones who didn’t want to share their spaces. And they stayed immune to Laura’s conversion.
“We work enough! We’re alive, aren’t we? See, we work enough, we’re saved,” a young man said, taking Laura’s hand off his forehead.
Dalana ran from the first floor to find Colin, who watched Laura’s moves with excitement. She cheered with the employees’ resistance, with their fiery looks and unity.
“If she puts them in peril, I won’t let it go without consequences,” Dalana said, poking Colin with her elbow.
“She won’t hurt anybody. She cares for people.” He followed the action unfold in front of his eyes, the prophet of Terra waking up those enamored with Utopia.
“Burn this building!” Laura interrupted their chatter. “Take them out of here, and burn everything. I’ll be the first to set fire to my quarters. Burn it and get out. Out, now, now!”
Dalana stared at Colin in disbelief, so did he, surprised with the sudden escalation of their dispute. People screamed before trying to catch Laura, the managers pushing them back to let their boss enter the elevator and head for her room.
From then on, fire broke out, inevitable, so the workers took to the stairs and the free elevators to flee from the building. Dalana and Colin went with them, keeping a watch on their desperation, new ideas hovering in their minds just waiting for materialization.
The alarm went on, the fire burned above. Once on the street, they ran away from the torches coming up from many floors at once, the heat increasing the more time it spent consuming the furniture and the plastics.
Laura left the lobby with a small army of managers, walking slowly toward the families who trembled by the power of her apparition. Two men bowed by her feet, asking for forgiveness. She put hands on their heads.
“We can’t feed others with paper,” she said, and they nodded.
Not all families fell for Laura’s power, seeing in the flaming skyscraper a sign of terror and not of salvation. Dalana wished for the fountain’s music, she made it play again in the minds of all those in need. It struck Colin in the head and made him turn around.
Behind him, a mass of people took over the avenue and followed toward the park, led by Dalana, who went ahead invisible to all mortal eyes. To heal resentment and frustration, they still had the easy way out.
They formed a crowd of refugees, fleeing from shattered dreams and frustrated possibilities. They passed on a crossing, interrupting traffic in both ways, and as they did so, the music seduced more.
“Are you going to the fountain? It’s a sin...”
“The real sin is isolation,” they said.
“Work is isolation,” others added in agreement.
And the crowd grew larger. It all happened too fast, it made matters too difficult to decide even for Colin, who wanted an intact Terra and yet got carried away by those lives independent of his will. Those people were grand, they were sacred, they deserved their own free will, despite... despite that he created them only to fulfill his goal.
Dalana looked for him, glancing at the people behind her, and found his lost gaze amid walking bodies. She stopped, waiting for his approach, and grabbed his hand. The low cast eyes in his face spoke everything.
“Worlds are complex things. We get nothing out of full control.” She patted the top of his palm.
He nodded and followed the procession, watching the city tear itself apart. A part of the crowd went with the flow, falling once again for the fountain’s lure. Another part took the opposite way, fighting against the current to reach Laura, who came the same way without hurry, behind those who looked for magical abundance. She greeted each newcomer with a gentle smile and a sign for the managers to guide the new ones into her group.
A concrete block housed the fountain, a square house without windows nor doors. Thick walls, barbed wire covering its surface, good art in its deranged fashion: close, but out of reach. It exerted a fascination among those first in line, the ones who heard the song and saw no way of entering bliss, locked at the gates of Heaven. The forbidden fountain, trapped in a concrete cage. Rumor spread like wildfire, the whole crowd picturing the shape of frustration in their minds.
Men cried first, doomed to a life of unrelenting toil, children cried second, scared at the spectacle of sadness around them, and women consoled both, used as they were to endless work since birth.
Dalana tightened her grip on Colin’s wall, she looked for any sign in his eyes that allowed her action. She could break the wall, she could make the whole park a fountain of Paradise. He gave no answer, though, conforming himself with watching his creation grow bigger than him and suffer and look for their independence. Thus, she waited with him and let frustration run the world.
“A feeling grows inside your hearts, my dear ones,” Laura said, splitting the crowd with her approach, entering the park between people, her managers asking for space, pushing others back. “It is a feeling cultivated by beautiful ideas, by thoughts of love and salvation. Feel not guilty about it, for what you want is right and is bound to come one day. You want Heaven, the way I want it. But this thing you’re looking for is just a fountain. A trap made of innocent shapes, designed to take advantage of your weakness and destroy our world.”
A camera crew followed behind her, a microphone extended toward her mouth to record her every word. They filmed her walking, reaching the concrete block, and turning around to face the crowd. She raised her arms to the sky, relaxed her face in an angelical gaze that offered salvation in the place of fire, making amends for their grueling day.
“Resign from your false hopes and come with me. I can lead the way to the true Heaven, the one that will come after we die a good life. Cry, my dear ones, cry as much as you need. Give me your tears, let me dry them. You don’t h
ave to suffer life alone. You need a job, I can get you one. No magic can save us from Hell. Only our good deeds can fight evil. Work, my children, work, for it brings us food to eat, water to drink, houses to dwell in, people to heal us, to teach us, to entertain us. Work feeds us.”
One crying man raced toward Laura, breaking through the line of managers, and hugged her tightly. She returned his embrace, blessing him with generous offers, “Use your suffering to make good to others,” she said, soothing him. The crowd swallowed her, enveloping her in a collective embrace that included even the managers.
“Can I... Hm... Can I invite you for a walk with me?” Colin said, staring down, and adjusting his shoulders to the weight of his shyness.
“Sure. We’d better leave these people alone for a while, right? I see what you mean, and I agree. Where do you want to go?” Dalana said, turning her face away from Laura’s collective embrace.
“Nowhere. Let’s just walk, is that ok? I’m not feeling well in here.”
Dusk came, spreading its dark mantle on Terra’s col.loc in its peaceful takeover of the day. The city readied itself for sleep, people laying their heads on pillows to think about their tomorrow, about their jobs. They thought about Heaven and wished for it, but it would take a lifetime of good deeds to have it for real. They slept in the hope of healing broken dreams.
A faint point of light shone in the countryside’s darkness. Colin spotted it and pointed there, engaging Dalana in his observation. They had left the busy streets hours ago, they had chosen the most obscure path toward the fields where rural life reigned supreme.
Wheat and corn covered unending hills, scarred by precarious roads and lonely houses. Elongated stars shone up in the sky, forming a traced arch from one horizon to the other. The col.loc right above was crescent, it illuminated the land with clarity enough to allow for the human eye to see everything, ten times stronger than Terra’s old moon.
The col.locs in the infinity of space, one by the side of the other, colored the sky with abundant worlds. They spun amid a perfect vacuum, no gases to form nebula, no freedom to form black holes.
