The Building Sits Down
At 6:12 a.m., an eight-storey building bends its knees. Its residents need a home. It needs a seat. Original fiction: two decisions, three endings.
The Building Sits Down
You are the caretaker. The building is waiting.
Six twelve
At 6:12 a.m., your building bent its knees.
The mug stayed on the table. The tea climbed its side. Whitewash fell from the ceiling. Somewhere upstairs, something fell off a cupboard where its owners had meant to move it for twenty years.
“Don't panic,” said the building. “That was only a crouch.”
You are its caretaker. Keys to the cellar, roof and electrical cupboard hang around your neck. There is no key for the knees.
Two long folds opened in the courtyard asphalt. Concrete joints pushed through. The building straightened again, very slowly.
“Seventy years on my feet. Try eating just one lunch like that.”
All eight floors were awake. Mara on the eighth could not manage the stairs without help. Downstairs, a father held a child and a laptop; the child was dressed, the laptop wasn't. The rescue officer ordered everyone out, then looked for somewhere to attach his cables.
“We have braces,” he told you. “Hold it steady, get the residents out. After that we'll have to fill the joints with concrete. Steel won't hold this weight indefinitely.”
The building heard him.
“I'll let the people out. I'm not standing here for another seventy years.”
You can help the rescuers secure it, or stay on the stairs and talk while your neighbours leave.
Real estate
They install braces on both sides of the courtyard. As the final cable tightens, the floor levels beneath your shoes.
Mara comes out in her armchair. She insists that someone bring her lemon tree. In the evacuation bus, the chair blocks the aisle. The lemon tree gets a window seat.
By noon, everyone is out. Residents sit on the steps with bags, pet carriers and chargers without phones. The council offers one night in a sports hall. After that: “We'll work something out.”
A concrete mixer waits beyond the fence. Filling the joints will leave the building habitable, but it will never bend again. This isn't repairing its knees. It's abolishing them.
“Everyone can go home,” says the officer. “Tonight.”
You go to the electrical cupboard for the maintenance log.
“What a lovely expression,” says the building. “Going home. Where does home go?”
An old courtyard plan shows a little park. It is now forty parking spaces. The building asks for them to be cleared so it can lie on its side. But the mains are already damaged, and even empty, it won't fit between its neighbours. It will have to leave.
It can spend the night in the braces. By morning you must decide: fill the joints, or release the cables and give it back its empty rooms.
Nowhere to sit
You sit on the landing. It shakes beneath you like the hand of someone holding a heavy tray for too long.
“Where do you want to go?”
“First I wanted to sit in the park.”
“It's a car park.”
“I noticed. They put cars on my fingers.”
The rescuers lead your neighbours out. The building straightens each stair beneath their feet. Mara comes down in her armchair and tells the people carrying her to stop beside you.
“You should have said something.”
“I did. Every winter.”
“We thought it was subsidence.”
“An excellent description.”
The building knows an empty quarry outside town. An old haul road leads there. It has been looking at it from its roof for years. There it could sit without crushing a shop or somebody's bedroom.
“What about us?” you ask.
“I don't know. I've never done anything without you.”
It doesn't ask you to come. Empty rooms would be lighter. But its beams can keep the floors level, and the water tank will last until evening. If anyone stays, it will walk slowly. It cannot promise electricity, a way back or the usual view.
The bus is waiting outside. You can help empty the building, or invite your neighbours to travel with it. You won't decide for them.
Ending: warm rooms
You sign the authorisation.
As they pour the concrete, the building asks them to stop the jackhammer beside its right joint. It says it can hear it in its teeth. The worker switches it off. A minute later he switches it on again. His shift ends at five.
By evening, the floors have stopped shaking. They reconnect the heating and restart the lift. Mara returns to the eighth floor with her lemon tree. A yellow rectangle appears in her window. Then another window lights up, and another.
Everyone has somewhere to sleep. You check the list, flat by flat.
The building answers neither the thanks nor the complaints about cracks. The officer says perhaps it is simply tired. You don't argue. You would like that to be true.
Two days later, Mara brings you a pie. The lift runs without its old knocking. She mentions this with relief, then stops smiling.
You cut two slices.
Mara takes the knife, cuts a third and places its plate on the windowsill, right against the wall.
That night, you clear away the first two plates.
You leave the third.
Ending: vacant ground
You collect the keys, but Mara keeps hers.
“My flat. I'm entitled to the key.”
“Of course,” you say. “It just doesn't come with an address any more.”
By morning, the building is empty. The rescuers clear away their equipment. You check every room once more. A magnetic letter Q remains on a fourth-floor fridge. You put it in your pocket, step outside and tell the building it can go.
The first step takes eleven minutes. The last connected pipe pulls free with the sound of an enormous bottle being uncorked.
The building walks around the bus. On the road, it stops at a red light. The residents start laughing, angry and sleepless. The bus driver cries. He has a route to run, and an eight-storey building is blocking the junction.
A week later, the families are still arguing over rooms in temporary accommodation. You help label their boxes. Someone is already measuring the vacant ground for another car park.
On Sunday, you visit the quarry. The building sits on the rim, concrete legs hanging over the edge. Nobody is at its windows. It doesn't ask how you are. You are grateful for that.
You stick the Q to the metal electrical-cupboard door.
“Is that everything I forgot?”
“No,” you say. “It's everything I can give back.”
The building shifts. Beside its foot, a space opens for you to sit.
Ending: request stop
You visit every neighbour and explain everything, including the water until evening and the lack of promises. Some stay on the bus. You help carry their things across. Nobody owes a building proof of love at the expense of a home.
Mara goes back upstairs.
“Move the lemon tree, please. Will that be a south-facing window now?”
The building admits it doesn't know where south will be after it turns. For the first time that morning, an admission of ignorance is reassuring.
At the haul road, you have to take the drying racks off the balconies. At the bridge, the building stops: an outer support won't fit between the barriers. You and your neighbours argue over the route for half an hour, then go around by an old embankment. Nobody calls it an adventure.
By evening, it is sitting in the quarry. Pipes have burst on two floors. There is no power. Those who have changed their minds call friends for a lift. You make a list of who needs help. Tomorrow you must find water, a generator and someone willing to deliver bread here.
But the building has stopped shaking.
While you repair the bottom step, the neighbours bring Mara down in her armchair. Two folding stools lie across her lap.
She opens one for you. She puts the other in front of the concrete knee.
You are about to explain the problem of scale.
“I can see that,” says Mara. “I want it to know we brought our own.”