A lady grabbed her purse. "It's too far." Her husband tugged at her arm.
"Come on. We have to go. It's getting late."
I looked at her feet, bound in leather and rubber like a Bai woman in China. She was a large woman. As if lifting a dead whale, she struggled to her feet, wobbled and grabbed her husband's arm. He tipped her forward and she listed down the sidewalk toward City Hall. Soot swirled in the street like black sea foam and passing trucks plowed through it like ore boats. I covered my mouth. "I have to get up."
"Where are you going?" A man on the bench next to me was staring at my feet. I hadn't noticed him until he spoke.
"Anywhere but here."
"Good luck." He folded his hands and closed his eyes.
The couple entered City Hall. The urban planning commission was meeting at one o'clock. Two guards at the entrance hoisted her up the steps and into the revolving door. Her husband followed. Out of the revolving door came another couple, much thinner and older.
The cloudless sky was raining ash this day. The winds were from the southeast, blowing the soot from the incinerators in the industrial zone onto the city. The skyscrapers looked like black mascara in rain. "I have to get up."
But I don't know where to go. It is an eight mile walk to the agricultural zones that border the industrial zones that border the residential zones that border the commercial zone in which I sit. How did I get here? Why was I here? Only one hundred and fifty years ago, a common man might consider crossing eight miles on an open plain to be a common and delightful task. Set your bearings, find a landmark, move at three miles an hour and you are there quickly; the shadows moving only a foot or two. But suppose this man encountered a sow grizzly while crossing a sandbar and was mauled. His world becomes a nightmare. He loses blood and is unable to walk. He lies on his back staring up at the sky. He is cold. He imagines a fire. The day advances. The shadows move out from beneath the shrubs and trees and up the valleys and creep up his legs and then cover him in darkness. That six miles might as well be the distance to a distant star. He looks up a the night sky and imagines himself standing on some random point of light - he thinks it's Polaris - but the points are swirling and hazy as his core temperature drops, his pupils dilate and fix. The distant point of light flickers and blinks. Then nothing.
Inside City Hall the couple listens to a panel of urban developers and planners describe an aerial image of the cityscape to several hundred concerned citizens. From seven miles above the earth, the landscape is segmented into well-defined, rectangular shapes set apart by green or blue barriers. The image is overlain by multicolored rectangles. Nine concentric rings emanate from the city center, which is a red dot. "It's beautiful," says the woman, fanning her face with her notebook. Sweat is soaking through her black dress, prickly with white dog hairs. The room smells of onions and cooking oil and stale cigarettes. Her husband takes an aspirin out of a bottle.
The sky is raining pollen on the agricultural zone this day. Women sweep it from steps; it pours out from grain trucks racing down the highway. The laborers come in from the field dusted in yellow, they eat yellow food off of yellow plates with yellow hands. The industrial farms and fields are painted in sepia tones. If you look to the horizon, the fields and farms blend in with the sepia-toned sky. There is no horizon, really. Everything has become pollen, just pollen - pollen that gulps down the swells of carbon dioxide by the gallons, swilling it, swelling like a beer drinker and floating away with millions of other yellow, bloated men. But the beer is made with engineered hops, spliced with the cold-resistant genes of musk ox, disease-resistant genes of sharks, drought-tolerant genes of the kangaroo rat, and collagen producing genes from chimpanzees. The distended men father children with giant thighs, multiple layers of teeth, bony plates of hair, and soft tails. They are addicted to pollen. They feel threatened by chimpanzees.
The couple looks at a six hundred and seventy two-page report that the planning commission distributed to all in attendance. It is entitled "City Planning and Vision Action Plan - Looking Backward to Look Forward - A New American City Again." Page fifty-one describes the urban canyon. "I didn't know we lived in a canyon," remarks the husband, rubbing his eyes. "Wow." Pollen clouds are drifting in from the west on winds drawn into the heat dome forming over the city center. "I need a glass of water."
His wife, feeling lightheaded after a large lunch of bio-engineered cottage fries and sausage with melted cheese food, nods. "But the water restrictions. We should have brought our own." The bun of hair on her head unravels.
A planner in a red suit coat with a salt-and-pepper goatee rises from his seat and points a stick at a graph describing security light density. "Our models show that roadway air dispersion will increase with future growth." He surveys the crowd, folds his arms, nods once, and sits back in his seat.
"I need air right now," says the wife. She purses her lips and whistles as she breathes. Her husband puts his hand on her shoulder. She throws back her head. "Can't a person get some air and water in here?"
The trucks race along the yellow roads toward the rendering plants in the industrial zone. Florescent orange grain spills onto concrete pads. Augurs drill into the mounds sending sparks of static electricity through the grain dust. Tonight, after dark, the factories will send orange, yeast-scented smoke out 1300-foot tall stacks. Downwind, over the residential zone, thunderstorms will form in the plume of smoke, throwing veins of orange lightning, like steel mills, like blast furnaces pouring out white-hot hail on remorseless villages below. The rain will coat the homes in a brown varnish. An allergy clinic will be struck by lightning and burn down.
The husband stares at the report. He is on page four hundred and sixty-six. He raises his eyebrows. "Hey, it says that light pollutants are absorbed by man-made chemicals in the earth's atmosphere." He looks over at his wife. "Did you hear that? It means we have mitigation."
She opens one eye. "Miti-what?"
"Mitigation." He drops his head and closes his eyes like a priest offering benediction. "It means we don't have to worry." The report slips out of his hand and flops to the floor. He reaches for another aspirin.
The meeting is going overtime and many of the citizens are dozing. The planning commission has much more to say, about pedestrianization, traffic calming, decay anticipation, crime design, hoardings, natural surveillance, water boards, homeless mobility, and toxic constraints. There is so much work to do. The husband stares at the flag behind the infrastructure planner, the wife is slumped in her metal chair, head tipped back, mouth agape. She is sliding off of her seat. A security guard jabs her arm with his nightstick. She begins to snore.
It is getting late. I look up at the skyscrapers, weeping in the twilight. This is the commercial zone. Here, tomorrow morning, trucks will race onto the curbs and spill out men in yellow rain coats and blue rubber gloves who heft frozen cardboard boxes onto dollies and carts and conveyor belts and move the boxes into stores. Later that morning, people march in and out of the stores, trading papers made from waste cellulose from the rendering plants stamped with portraits of fictional men and baseless promises for plastic bags filled with frozen compounds of magnesium carbonate, benzophenon3- Hydroxy naphthalene, potassium bromate, monosodium glutamate, and who knows - maybe polioplesiocarbohydrant-dimethybazelgrobbgadein, demoralized iron, glee shavings, and twice baked indifference. I don't know.
Now both the husband and wife are asleep. The commission continues to discuss graphs and charts and pages and models. The chairman is waving a stick at an easel. The sun set a long time ago. The rendering plants have been pouring out smoke for hours. Thunderstorms are raging. If the husband would just wake up and look, there, on the floor beneath his seat the handout lies, open to page five hundred and sixteen. On that page, in Section F-5, Light Pollution, paragraph 4 has a footnote. The footnote reads:
A 2009 study predicted that earth will no be longer visible from space. Researchers at the Marmarth Institute of Technology reported that increased man-made chemicals in the earth's atmosphere will render the earth invisible within thirty years. "All light incident upon the earth will be absorbed by this aerosolized toxic curtain suspended throughout the five layers of the atmosphere," stated lead researcher Hal Yunnan, astrophysicist with MIT. "No wavelengths of visible light will be reflected, we will appear black." Even ultraviolet and infrared radiation will be absorbed. "We will be difficult to detect," said Yunnan. "Data shows that persistent organic pollutants are producing an aerosol shroud throughout the various layers of the atmosphere that, when mixed, produce a light-absorbing compound so effective that not only will light not reach the earth's surface, it will not be reflected back into space...We will be invisible."
Too bad. Later tonight I will hear that the Allergy Clinic fire spread to City Hall, burning both to the ground. The planning commissioners manage to escape.
I feel seven hundred pounds fall over me. I feel weak. I cannot move. I can't breathe. I am unable to rise from the bench.
The man sitting next to me coughs. "Why go? This is the marketplace. This is where we all end up." He coughs again. "I can't see you."
I stare up at the night sky. I feel the darkness creep across my face. "I can't see anything either."
"Where are you going?" A man on the bench next to me was staring at my feet. I hadn't noticed him until he spoke.
"Anywhere but here."
"Good luck." He folded his hands and closed his eyes.
The couple entered City Hall. The urban planning commission was meeting at one o'clock. Two guards at the entrance hoisted her up the steps and into the revolving door. Her husband followed. Out of the revolving door came another couple, much thinner and older.
The cloudless sky was raining ash this day. The winds were from the southeast, blowing the soot from the incinerators in the industrial zone onto the city. The skyscrapers looked like black mascara in rain. "I have to get up."
But I don't know where to go. It is an eight mile walk to the agricultural zones that border the industrial zones that border the residential zones that border the commercial zone in which I sit. How did I get here? Why was I here? Only one hundred and fifty years ago, a common man might consider crossing eight miles on an open plain to be a common and delightful task. Set your bearings, find a landmark, move at three miles an hour and you are there quickly; the shadows moving only a foot or two. But suppose this man encountered a sow grizzly while crossing a sandbar and was mauled. His world becomes a nightmare. He loses blood and is unable to walk. He lies on his back staring up at the sky. He is cold. He imagines a fire. The day advances. The shadows move out from beneath the shrubs and trees and up the valleys and creep up his legs and then cover him in darkness. That six miles might as well be the distance to a distant star. He looks up a the night sky and imagines himself standing on some random point of light - he thinks it's Polaris - but the points are swirling and hazy as his core temperature drops, his pupils dilate and fix. The distant point of light flickers and blinks. Then nothing.
Inside City Hall the couple listens to a panel of urban developers and planners describe an aerial image of the cityscape to several hundred concerned citizens. From seven miles above the earth, the landscape is segmented into well-defined, rectangular shapes set apart by green or blue barriers. The image is overlain by multicolored rectangles. Nine concentric rings emanate from the city center, which is a red dot. "It's beautiful," says the woman, fanning her face with her notebook. Sweat is soaking through her black dress, prickly with white dog hairs. The room smells of onions and cooking oil and stale cigarettes. Her husband takes an aspirin out of a bottle.
The sky is raining pollen on the agricultural zone this day. Women sweep it from steps; it pours out from grain trucks racing down the highway. The laborers come in from the field dusted in yellow, they eat yellow food off of yellow plates with yellow hands. The industrial farms and fields are painted in sepia tones. If you look to the horizon, the fields and farms blend in with the sepia-toned sky. There is no horizon, really. Everything has become pollen, just pollen - pollen that gulps down the swells of carbon dioxide by the gallons, swilling it, swelling like a beer drinker and floating away with millions of other yellow, bloated men. But the beer is made with engineered hops, spliced with the cold-resistant genes of musk ox, disease-resistant genes of sharks, drought-tolerant genes of the kangaroo rat, and collagen producing genes from chimpanzees. The distended men father children with giant thighs, multiple layers of teeth, bony plates of hair, and soft tails. They are addicted to pollen. They feel threatened by chimpanzees.
The couple looks at a six hundred and seventy two-page report that the planning commission distributed to all in attendance. It is entitled "City Planning and Vision Action Plan - Looking Backward to Look Forward - A New American City Again." Page fifty-one describes the urban canyon. "I didn't know we lived in a canyon," remarks the husband, rubbing his eyes. "Wow." Pollen clouds are drifting in from the west on winds drawn into the heat dome forming over the city center. "I need a glass of water."
His wife, feeling lightheaded after a large lunch of bio-engineered cottage fries and sausage with melted cheese food, nods. "But the water restrictions. We should have brought our own." The bun of hair on her head unravels.
A planner in a red suit coat with a salt-and-pepper goatee rises from his seat and points a stick at a graph describing security light density. "Our models show that roadway air dispersion will increase with future growth." He surveys the crowd, folds his arms, nods once, and sits back in his seat.
"I need air right now," says the wife. She purses her lips and whistles as she breathes. Her husband puts his hand on her shoulder. She throws back her head. "Can't a person get some air and water in here?"
The trucks race along the yellow roads toward the rendering plants in the industrial zone. Florescent orange grain spills onto concrete pads. Augurs drill into the mounds sending sparks of static electricity through the grain dust. Tonight, after dark, the factories will send orange, yeast-scented smoke out 1300-foot tall stacks. Downwind, over the residential zone, thunderstorms will form in the plume of smoke, throwing veins of orange lightning, like steel mills, like blast furnaces pouring out white-hot hail on remorseless villages below. The rain will coat the homes in a brown varnish. An allergy clinic will be struck by lightning and burn down.
The husband stares at the report. He is on page four hundred and sixty-six. He raises his eyebrows. "Hey, it says that light pollutants are absorbed by man-made chemicals in the earth's atmosphere." He looks over at his wife. "Did you hear that? It means we have mitigation."
She opens one eye. "Miti-what?"
"Mitigation." He drops his head and closes his eyes like a priest offering benediction. "It means we don't have to worry." The report slips out of his hand and flops to the floor. He reaches for another aspirin.
The meeting is going overtime and many of the citizens are dozing. The planning commission has much more to say, about pedestrianization, traffic calming, decay anticipation, crime design, hoardings, natural surveillance, water boards, homeless mobility, and toxic constraints. There is so much work to do. The husband stares at the flag behind the infrastructure planner, the wife is slumped in her metal chair, head tipped back, mouth agape. She is sliding off of her seat. A security guard jabs her arm with his nightstick. She begins to snore.
It is getting late. I look up at the skyscrapers, weeping in the twilight. This is the commercial zone. Here, tomorrow morning, trucks will race onto the curbs and spill out men in yellow rain coats and blue rubber gloves who heft frozen cardboard boxes onto dollies and carts and conveyor belts and move the boxes into stores. Later that morning, people march in and out of the stores, trading papers made from waste cellulose from the rendering plants stamped with portraits of fictional men and baseless promises for plastic bags filled with frozen compounds of magnesium carbonate, benzophenon3- Hydroxy naphthalene, potassium bromate, monosodium glutamate, and who knows - maybe polioplesiocarbohydrant-dimethybazelgrobbgadein, demoralized iron, glee shavings, and twice baked indifference. I don't know.
Now both the husband and wife are asleep. The commission continues to discuss graphs and charts and pages and models. The chairman is waving a stick at an easel. The sun set a long time ago. The rendering plants have been pouring out smoke for hours. Thunderstorms are raging. If the husband would just wake up and look, there, on the floor beneath his seat the handout lies, open to page five hundred and sixteen. On that page, in Section F-5, Light Pollution, paragraph 4 has a footnote. The footnote reads:
A 2009 study predicted that earth will no be longer visible from space. Researchers at the Marmarth Institute of Technology reported that increased man-made chemicals in the earth's atmosphere will render the earth invisible within thirty years. "All light incident upon the earth will be absorbed by this aerosolized toxic curtain suspended throughout the five layers of the atmosphere," stated lead researcher Hal Yunnan, astrophysicist with MIT. "No wavelengths of visible light will be reflected, we will appear black." Even ultraviolet and infrared radiation will be absorbed. "We will be difficult to detect," said Yunnan. "Data shows that persistent organic pollutants are producing an aerosol shroud throughout the various layers of the atmosphere that, when mixed, produce a light-absorbing compound so effective that not only will light not reach the earth's surface, it will not be reflected back into space...We will be invisible."
Too bad. Later tonight I will hear that the Allergy Clinic fire spread to City Hall, burning both to the ground. The planning commissioners manage to escape.
I feel seven hundred pounds fall over me. I feel weak. I cannot move. I can't breathe. I am unable to rise from the bench.
The man sitting next to me coughs. "Why go? This is the marketplace. This is where we all end up." He coughs again. "I can't see you."
I stare up at the night sky. I feel the darkness creep across my face. "I can't see anything either."
1 comments:
Miti-What? Love these characters. Narration. The guy gets up from the bench next to you and you never knew he was there! I have COPD requiring O2 from simply reading this one. Chicago, Respiratory Therapy, Men and their wives; it all comes together! A Mess-terpiece!
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