The Sinking
Karly Foland
That stone is sinking and so is that one, and those over there, and the ones on top of those, of course. Our Building's anthem dedicates three verses to extolling the stones’ rough beauty, comparing them to fields of golden wheat before the harvest (here we must defer to the Lyricists’ expertise as no generation has ventured beyond the Building's walled gardens since the Architects placed the capstone and wiped their brows, content with a job well done), but mentions nothing of their fragility.
The quoins and lintels alike shed sand like an itchy snake when the pudgy hands of even the smallest children grip the corners around which they fling themselves during rousing games of tag. Once compacted under pressure and cemented together to form our glorious Building, each grain now flees lest the earth below entomb it. The first breathless discovery of a Resident's gritty fingertips led to the forbiddance of touching exterior stones with unclean hands (the law decreed all hands of all Residents at all times unclean) to maintain the sanctity of the Architects' work. Thus the cleaning of the stones ceased, and the sullying of the color began, and now our harvest has gone to rot.
The Neighbors beyond the garden walls call down from their balconies and ask where we are going, as their 30th floor occupants now peer into the unfamiliar salons of our 40th floor. None know the heights the Building first reached, but it must be lower because the Neighbors say so, and many windows are now under ground, and the Architects would never have included windows that must remain closed lest soil and worms spill in. Some Residents don't believe in the Sinking and, when confronted with the Neighbors and the windows, they slander the Outsiders (they don't call them Neighbors) and retort how lovely that the Architects provided a view into the marvels of the underground, and how dare we question their foresight.
The Sinkists wring their hands but remain perched inside their splintering cages as none can fathom the thought of leaving the greatest Building ever erected. Fracture lines crisscross ceilings and separate Sinkists from anti-Sinkists, with in-Betweeners still deciding while their teacups slide bit by bit off their tables since one side is sinking faster than the other, giving the Building a slight lean like it's too nonchalant or tired to stand up straight. The anti-Sinkists wave this away, listing many great Buildings in the history of the world that have leaned, insisting our great Architects made the artistic decision to emulate these and we are fortunate to be in such esteemed company, thus the lean is intentional and safe and not at all the result of any Sinking despite the occasional shift back to evenness once the other side has caught up.
The Sinkists and anti-Sinkists agree only on the benevolence of our Architects, who bequeathed generations they would never see a home worthy of songs and monuments. The songs we sing every morning, but the monuments slipped off the corniced roof during the first lean because we weren't expecting it and when we remind the anti-Sinkists of this, they scoff and say we are misremembering. When we point to the smashed marble jutting out of the lilac bushes, they claim vandals chucked those slabs over our garden walls and were never ours even though any eye can reconstruct the scattered, broken pieces into replicas of our great Building. Both sides forbid children from playing on the ruins, Sinkists because it'd be sacrilege, anti-Sinkists because they consider them contaminated by Outsiders.
The Sinkists suggest several reasonable proposals for identifying the cause of the Sinking, but never have enough votes to implement them because the anti-Sinkists refuse to acknowledge the Sinking and the in-Betweeners fear that the question itself besmirches the legacy of the Architects, so they hang their heads and abstain. So the Sinkists conduct secret surveys at night, hushed by the sounds of the stones' brittle cracking, and realize with muffled sobs that our Architects should never have built such a massive structure on such water-logged ground with such soft, porous materials for the stone is disintegrating rendering the Sinking inevitable, and the Residents must act now or the ground will swallow the Building whole.
Echoes of the thumping fists and churlish insults of great debates bounce off the pillars lining our cavernous halls for many months, shouts of blasphemy and ignorance and treason and blindness until a vote settles the matter once and for all. Quivering in-Betweeners self-sequester in apartments with walls cracked like lightning tracing a storm cloud while their newest Neighbors across the way shake their heads and draw their curtains, and enough Sinkists find themselves defenestrated atop the broken monuments that their surviving fellows vote for personal safety over communal sustainability.
The Architects left no mathematical textbooks, but the remaining Sinkists' rudimentary calculations predict the monument-less rooftop will reach ground level within a year unless a catastrophic and complete sinking happens first during the next major rainfall. They assess the absence of their bodies and things will buy the Building another few months, thus for the first time in the history of the Building, Residents fling open the garden's rusty gate and step onto new ground in search of solidity and solidarity, wondering if those left behind will use the extra time to climb out of the muck or if the muck will press and press upon the facade until it collapses in on them.
The quoins and lintels alike shed sand like an itchy snake when the pudgy hands of even the smallest children grip the corners around which they fling themselves during rousing games of tag. Once compacted under pressure and cemented together to form our glorious Building, each grain now flees lest the earth below entomb it. The first breathless discovery of a Resident's gritty fingertips led to the forbiddance of touching exterior stones with unclean hands (the law decreed all hands of all Residents at all times unclean) to maintain the sanctity of the Architects' work. Thus the cleaning of the stones ceased, and the sullying of the color began, and now our harvest has gone to rot.
The Neighbors beyond the garden walls call down from their balconies and ask where we are going, as their 30th floor occupants now peer into the unfamiliar salons of our 40th floor. None know the heights the Building first reached, but it must be lower because the Neighbors say so, and many windows are now under ground, and the Architects would never have included windows that must remain closed lest soil and worms spill in. Some Residents don't believe in the Sinking and, when confronted with the Neighbors and the windows, they slander the Outsiders (they don't call them Neighbors) and retort how lovely that the Architects provided a view into the marvels of the underground, and how dare we question their foresight.
The Sinkists wring their hands but remain perched inside their splintering cages as none can fathom the thought of leaving the greatest Building ever erected. Fracture lines crisscross ceilings and separate Sinkists from anti-Sinkists, with in-Betweeners still deciding while their teacups slide bit by bit off their tables since one side is sinking faster than the other, giving the Building a slight lean like it's too nonchalant or tired to stand up straight. The anti-Sinkists wave this away, listing many great Buildings in the history of the world that have leaned, insisting our great Architects made the artistic decision to emulate these and we are fortunate to be in such esteemed company, thus the lean is intentional and safe and not at all the result of any Sinking despite the occasional shift back to evenness once the other side has caught up.
The Sinkists and anti-Sinkists agree only on the benevolence of our Architects, who bequeathed generations they would never see a home worthy of songs and monuments. The songs we sing every morning, but the monuments slipped off the corniced roof during the first lean because we weren't expecting it and when we remind the anti-Sinkists of this, they scoff and say we are misremembering. When we point to the smashed marble jutting out of the lilac bushes, they claim vandals chucked those slabs over our garden walls and were never ours even though any eye can reconstruct the scattered, broken pieces into replicas of our great Building. Both sides forbid children from playing on the ruins, Sinkists because it'd be sacrilege, anti-Sinkists because they consider them contaminated by Outsiders.
The Sinkists suggest several reasonable proposals for identifying the cause of the Sinking, but never have enough votes to implement them because the anti-Sinkists refuse to acknowledge the Sinking and the in-Betweeners fear that the question itself besmirches the legacy of the Architects, so they hang their heads and abstain. So the Sinkists conduct secret surveys at night, hushed by the sounds of the stones' brittle cracking, and realize with muffled sobs that our Architects should never have built such a massive structure on such water-logged ground with such soft, porous materials for the stone is disintegrating rendering the Sinking inevitable, and the Residents must act now or the ground will swallow the Building whole.
Echoes of the thumping fists and churlish insults of great debates bounce off the pillars lining our cavernous halls for many months, shouts of blasphemy and ignorance and treason and blindness until a vote settles the matter once and for all. Quivering in-Betweeners self-sequester in apartments with walls cracked like lightning tracing a storm cloud while their newest Neighbors across the way shake their heads and draw their curtains, and enough Sinkists find themselves defenestrated atop the broken monuments that their surviving fellows vote for personal safety over communal sustainability.
The Architects left no mathematical textbooks, but the remaining Sinkists' rudimentary calculations predict the monument-less rooftop will reach ground level within a year unless a catastrophic and complete sinking happens first during the next major rainfall. They assess the absence of their bodies and things will buy the Building another few months, thus for the first time in the history of the Building, Residents fling open the garden's rusty gate and step onto new ground in search of solidity and solidarity, wondering if those left behind will use the extra time to climb out of the muck or if the muck will press and press upon the facade until it collapses in on them.
* * *
The last Sinkist pauses at the jagged ruins and yanks out a small chunk resembling the Buildings's entrance. Purple petals fall away revealing dried blood smeared along the archway. This relic will sit under glass in a great hall, where a thick forest meets a golden field of grains and grasses as a memorial to a half-believed myth, whose origins the Sinkists' grandchildren's grandchildren yearn to explore, but cannot, as they have forgotten the way back.
Karly Foland is a writer of speculative short fiction from Omaha, Nebraska, who has spent over a decade living in Africa, Asia, and Europe and lives with her husband, daughter, and the two cats they rescued from the streets of Rabat. Her writing and photography have appeared in print and online and can be found on karlyfoland.com.