Twelve. is the number of alleyways that had to be closed with basically permanent cranes extending somehow silently into the fog above.  The fog was (and is) just as permanent.   The birds arrived shortly after the cranes, and they made homes in the cranes for some time to come.   There was nothing special about the birds, though I wish there was, maybe parrots might have been nice.  The birds weren’t very colorful.  They were, and are, probably sparrows, or something.

I spent the majority of the second week into the annual festival, which usually ended in some sort of political demonstration , sitting on the  floor, beside/underneath a window that would open out to one of these alleyways, with the birds.  It would open out if it had been a year and a half back, before I was worried about having to chase all those things out of here.  I tried leaving it open once or twice in the past year, but they really are dirty creatures. And I’d rather keep them out. And also, there are other problems.

A year and a half ago, there were vendors and produce in my alley.  Things were noticeably less damp and everything didn’t have to occur indoors.  Fortunately, the large buildings where the large construction equipment had been built are now vacant.  This gave local businesses giant dense indoor markets to sell everything that a local business might have a market for.   Damp conditions (birds…) and densely populated areas often result in disease.  We needed to find a way to vent all of the humidity, and they’re working on it.

These indoor markets are important to what I’m telling you because they’re basically community centers.   They keep the fruit from rotting in the street, and they’re where everyone goes to not rot-in-the-street.   There are people who fought this very specific and confining lifestyle, but they are gone, now.  There is no crime, because in order to live in this relatively harsh environment you need to do things exactly the way they are currently done.

The center of town has a leak.  Not in the giant dome we have constructed above, but below.  There is a leak in the ground.   It resonates, and results in an atmospheric variable pressure.  This pressure is a bit disorienting to the birds, which at times become more projectile-like.   This variable pressure is one of the other problems I was talking about.

There is a much lower pressure all around.  Above, below, and on each side of town.  We are basically in a giant terrarium.  It would sound pretty terrible if the town wasn’t quite so large, and the dome wasn’t of-the-radius-that-it-is.  There is a lot of explaining to do, so I’m going to include this memo that arrived scotch-taped to my door at around that year and a half ago when fruit was available on my street and there were noticeably fewer dead birds.

Dear Resident,

As you may be aware, due to environmental concerns beyond our control, the cranes which you all have lovingly and with great endurance constructed are being erected in the following alleyways:

Horner Sts between Fean and 3^rd

Olympic…

The town council assures you that all steps will be taken to provide as minimal disruption to daily life as is to be reasonably expected.  Concerns about street access can be brought up at Sunday brunch at the firehouse.  With your patient cooperation we can make the transition before the next solar wind event commences.

Sincerely,

Rev. Bruce A. Helbrook, P.E.

Town Manager

Lovingly.  Well, words can’t describe the mess that ensued.  There are a number of differing opinions on what could have been done, but this was the only one that Town Council honestly believed could be executed in time.  With the lower pressures, things were starting to dry out, so it was only a matter of time before more atmospheric issues would have cropped up.  Did I mention skydiving?  With the increased pressure parachutes were supposedly capable of functioning properly again at relatively high altitudes. This pleased all sorts of nut cases.  The fog is seriously so thick, you have to time your falls to not end up hitting anything.  One of these nut cases lives in my building.  He sometimes brings thick pureed fruit which we eat with chopsticks beside/underneath my window.  We don’t have to eat it with chopsticks, but we do.

On one of these such occasions (pineapple, if you’re wondering) the window glass shattered from one of those projectile birds.  My neighbor helped me clean up the glass, and the bird carcass, with the pulsing WOP WOP WOP coming in from the pressure outside.  We merely dropped the bird out into the street, the glass went into the trash, and it was at least three days before the window was repaired.  I suppose my neighbor could have jumped out the window, rather than take the stairs.  It really is a bizarre hobby.   In fact, we’ll call my neighbor “Luke,” as in Skywalker, because he is the type of nut case capable of jumping out into the foggy nothingness with little more than a stopwatch.  So many things to be hit with, on any given day, just minding your business, walking around, trying to get some fruit.

So, there is a pretty good reason why we don’t eat most birds.  Lots of them are really tiny, very fast, and really not much to eat once you get there.  I imagine that’s why traditionally people stick to the non-flying ones that hang out on the ground.  The evolutionarily lazy ones that we can overfeed and just stand by and wait.  Nevertheless, the increase in wild crane-based fowl has made bird bourne viruses more common, so we’re not eating much of anyone, lately.  It is more of a battle with the birds for the fruit, to be honest.  That’s why I would think that parrots would be a good fit for this town.  With gutters in streets looking like native American headdresses; you could almost imagine the garbled conversations sounding like muffled tape recorders coming from the scaffolding.  “PrettyBirdPretty BirdPretty. Grapes?”.  It’s truly a shame, but that is how luck works.

Like most, I am employed in one of the large state owned factory buildings without a proper name.   We’re currently working on an anti-algae coating for the inside of the terrarium.  It’s a top-down approach.  I like to think that we don’t have a proper name in order to keep anyone with environmental concerns from filing a suit.  Things definitely have changed. When you watch the weather report, they list humidity, atmospheric pressure ranges and don’t ever really go “to the map” anymore.   You rarely see those green blobs that used to look more like a toxic cloud than a raincloud (why not use white or grey?).  Eventually, as the humidity rose, the green just covered the entire map, as at the very same time, the job of weather person became more the role of showman, traveling to dangerous weather events, rather than standing in front of a relatively safe blue screen.  I don’t know if they would have had to employ another color system to show any truly noxious fumes originating from the Harry Street facility, but I like to think that it would be pink…since green was already taken.

Like I mentioned, in the fall is the festival.  They manage to fit it in before the weather changes.  Everyone voices their concerns in the most offensive sign laden way possible.  That is why I stay inside, though things rarely turn violent.  We’re waiting to see if certain basic town infrastructure and transportation issues are going to be addressed, since important streets are now permanently blocked.    Having been out in the morning, I returned to a container of cantaloupe left by that nut case Luke that had been left at my door, with a note that read “You weren’t home.  I’m keeping the toolbox until next week. Thanks.”  The toolbox is a low form steel box with a handle on top that, through a series of internal fans, helps to equalize room pressure.    I haven’t had it returned in months, so there’s no real loss that it will be at least another week, and I guess there’s always cantaloupe to ease the pressures of daily life.

I should mention that moldy cantaloupe skin was discovered to have penicillin growing on it in a high concentration in Illinois back in the nineteen-forties.  This affinity between substrate and active agent was the reason so much of this particular food began arriving in this humid town, and it became useful as a cure for a variety of infections.

So, what of the leak in the ground?  Was it to be fixed?  Well it was to be a source of basically a giant dehumidifier which would spew forth water to the area below the town, which was a network of caverns that opened up outside the dome, and hence, the less controlled environment.  People stopped trying to block the caverns completely when it became too dangerous, and they were never a problem until recently.

The town itself is relatively beautiful.  Beautiful in the way that anything with basically good bones to it can be.  It can decay away and look like it is covered in worry, but when the teeth come out, it’s smiling, and you see a naïve innocence that is definitely a child.  An old beautiful child that is trapped in an aging body with it’s somehow pristine smile being the only bone that is visible through the skin at the surface, hidden under patterns that were at some point also beautiful, but now minutely recognizable under a magenta smear of grime.  This is why we are saving it, as well as ourselves from all of these issues.  There is a certain pride in the inanimate that makes a group not only subsist, but forge ahead.  In this case, the pride is in a dirty seashell in the northern Atlantic region.

When the giant dehumidifier is awake, we will no doubt move onto other gigantic engineering feats that will further bolster the economy.  The WOP WOP WOP will be accompanied by a sleepy whirr.  I imagine switching to longer sleeves and maybe wearing a brightly colored tie.  Some fluorescent color that is also stain resistant.  I would appear on Olympic Street as a shaft of light had pierced through the heavy drapes above. With Excalibur dangling from my neck, half-blinded pedestrians would see the rest of life as if through a keyhole crack in the firmament, one that I carried, simply covering the buttons on my shirt.  It was a tiny bit of a plan.  Sort of a manifestation of something larger.  Something that should have been committed to paper and probably scotch taped to the door outside my house a year and a half ago.

 

“Wake up!”

There is no response, Luke repeats himself to his girlfriend whom we’ll call nut case Lucy, asleep in his armchair.

“Wake up! We’re already late for the demonstrations.”

Finally there is some sort of response.  It’s five in the morning and it makes perfect sense that Lucy be asleep, though not in an armchair.  Luke was referring to the second day of the festival.  Luke was also referring to the signs.  He wasn’t going there out of any specific political motivations, he was going there for the food.  The food was pierogies and they were definitely to be good, but the fact that this conversation was going on at 5AM was preposterous, and this type of common behavior occurs for events that are revered locally for little understood reasons.  The festival was, like most things, indoors.  People shuffled briskly along holding their heads down bearing politely the unpleasant outdoor environs.  Luke, en route, was wearing sunglasses, not because it was particularly bright out but because it was morning.  Lucy on the other hand was not wearing sunglasses because she was at Luke’s place, asleep in an armchair.  There was already a line, at 5:45AM for food.  People stood in clusters with paper cups filled with coffee talking about, in alphabetical order, the giant dehumidifier, their jobs, the new monorail that was being planned which stopped nowhere close to Olympic Street, the orange juice which tasted like loose change, and the pierogies which were good, something you already know.

Luke saw a fellow skydiver colleague of his, this one a female whom we will call Leia.  She was keeping her head down and bearing politely the unpleasant conversation that she had no idea how she had gotten herself involved with.  Leia called Luke over and as soon as the conversation continued, she excused herself, never to be seen again in this story.  While Luke was trapped in the conversation about the great engineering feat of the giant dehumidifier, Leia was headed home. to very shortly leave this giant-domed town.  She was doing this, not because of the boring conversation, or even the variable pressure, but because she was in love.  The person she so desperately needed to be with was not in the place she was headed to, however.  In fact she hadn’t spoken to this person in years.  She would never know that all of these things were entirely for the best and an improvement to her life.  It is just how luck works out sometimes.  She did not have the head to improve her life out of intention.  She was nowhere near organized enough for that.  She needed someone else to do that, and that Someone was a very meticulous mayor in a far off place that would never meet her, but rather create an environment in which she could truly thrive.  That, and she quit the ridiculous business of staring at a stopwatch while plummeting through the fog, like what most of us do with our lives in some sense.

The conversation that Luke found himself in did not end.  Ever.  It was still going on after the festival had ended.  After the foil tureens had been sealed up and chairs folded up and empty bottles boxed up, the conversation persisted.  Even after the people left, words continued to reverberate in the giant, generally unused factory building.  People from visiting cultures will someday visit the building to hear the monotone, politically motivated diatribe of the esoteric dehumidifier design that would ultimately save the town, bounce around in that hollow dusty seashell, as it waits for the erosion of the atlantic to turn it into grains of finely divided granite sand that will also reverberate in every infinitely tiny crevice with that boring and unending one-sided discussion.

Luke managed to sneak away to more food that was in an adjacent building, by 9AM.  By now the cool detachment of the morning air gave way to the intrusive packed-against-strangers-in-the-subway feel of the coming afternoon.  This feel was pervasive and all encompassing in a way that you could ignore, similar to how multiple turtles manage to congregate on a rock in summer, without a major disruption to their daily life, and since there were no long sleeves or brightly colored ties to inflame or to enlighten the populace, the second day of the festival went as planned.

By 9AM, Lucy was waking up.  She hadn’t realized that Luke had left, but she knew where he was at when he was nowhere to be found.  She saw that the toolbox/air pressure conditioner was near the door, so she plugged it in.  There was a comforting whirring that would continue in Luke’s place for the remainder of the day, though no one would be there, since Lucy had left the building to meet up with Luke, whom as she had suspected, was at the cantaloupe tables for brunch at the festival.  The cantaloupes had been brought in from the market by an older man that we will call Jacques.  Jacques has had a stand in the market for the past year and a half.  Before that he had nothing to do with fruit, or melons, or projectile-bird defensive manoeuvres.  He made furniture.   He made the chair that Lucy had fallen asleep in. He built the frame and hammered every tack in.   He wasn’t Lucy’s father, but he probably should have been, if the world had been one of those places where the perfect combination of people occurs in a manner different than is statistically probable. He hadn’t had any children to speak of, and the cantaloupes were a relatively new venture that would no doubt comfort the people he met daily, as how so much left on everyday things are tiny molecules of compassion that you can never see unless you were to go tremendously out of your way to somehow hunt down their quietly meticulous source pounding tacks into a chair in some room somewhere.

Lucy’s father was not bad, rather he was well above average as a father, if not entirely engaged in the behaviors of others.  He didn’t learn to listen until much later in life and was playing catch up.  They were very much on the same level and were, or had always been, closely in contact.  Lucy hadn’t always been desirous of a well-made chair to sleep in, but she was getting older and could appreciate comfort in situations that could be increasingly un-comfortable.  When Lucy caught up with Luke, the cantaloupe had been finished.  They left the festival to get what was probably a second brunch, with probably someone else’s cantaloupe in attendance.

When I awoke, which was a staggeringly late 11AM, I left the house immediately and began half-running down my bird-laden street to get to the factory where I work.  I had left an umbrella there.  It wasn’t because of the rain that I needed the umbrella, it was because of the inevitable sun.  I had planned to leave town for the day and needed to get there while the building cleaners were still there, as it was the weekend.   I was going outside of town, where, in contrast, there was a sun to speak of, as well as an area that was sparsely inhabited by sunglasses-wearing folk mostly selling gas on a relatively barren landscape, this was inbetween most things left un-domed.  I was driving myself to another smaller, but no less foggy terrarium which was considerably less populated and considerably less stifling.  A major difference between Terrarium 1 and Terrarium 2 was the presence of birds which are more agressively colored and no less aggressively protected by the state.