The Builders' Day

Last Episode

As time went on, the valley became a bustling metropolis. The Builders' command center was a glass dome enclosing an atrium that filtered UV rays. As a sort of messenger, a token mediator, I now worked with them, on their salary. For doing simple things, I was generously compensated.

The first of our nine sacred stones was translated in the command center of the Builders. It must have been very important to the builders to remember what was written on the first sacred stone, the one that told the story of our beginnings. The story of my people was now carved in a massive metal plate, written in the Builders' language. It read,

Do you see what has happened to us now? In fact, when you first found us, we were swarthy and inelegantly entire, with a hundred and one different splinters tucked away from sight, our hooves not yet scored and bled by a hundred distinct splinters, and our calm multifarious blackness still bristling in place. Until a mile-wide iron-laden rock wrecked the area of the tropical forest where we used to live.

The blast tore down the trees, turning them into supplicants who brooded as they circled the crash site's perimeter, now a faceless crater lake surrounded by algae-infested water. As if they were worshipping whatever it was that had killed the majority of them, what were once trees turned into stunted wooden figures leaning toward the crater. Even in the absence of wind, you might note how the not-quite-trees twitch, flinch, and rattle their phantom branches with phantom leaves — all these delicate motions taking place even when there is no wind.

Everyone in the group was killed at one point or another. Those who were able to resurrect what had died were the ones who were able to do so. Summer's rough beasts — the restless and languorous, the reckless and selfish, those with tough hides that allowed for high pain thresholds — flourished, as did those with tough hides that allowed for high pain thresholds. They mingled with the two-legged ones in the cities, the ones who had long ago learned to quit walking on all fours, to l**t after what others have, and to always take more than they required.

Of course, the remaining elders were made to feel at ease. While razing the valley and mercilessly carving the first layer of an open-pit mine at the edge of what was once the forest sheltering the wild creatures of summer, the Builders made sure of that. The elderly were each provided with well-furnished, temperature-controlled chambers in the residential skyrise, with butlers, chefs, and health-care specialists at their disposal. Because I knew it would satisfy my people, I advised that they occupy the ones on the west side, which had the widest balconies and walls filled with a dizzying climbing array of hydroponics-grown veggies.

Under the sun, the balcony rails were golden and gleamed sharply. I made a mental point to have those replaced with wrought iron railing as soon as feasible to have replaced with wrought iron railing.

In the history books, I read yesterday how the Builders wrote about us. The books were elaborately illustrated and had internal plates that were identified in a systematic manner. Grid 1 was assigned to the first area of the valley, Grid 2 was assigned to the second area, and so on. My people's mystical charms were even given new names. Archeocyathids, trypanites, edrioasteroids, and petroxestes were only a few of the names given to them by the builders in the Fossils chapter.