Knowing The Collapse

[Published here alone; written for a SPR/SUM Year 2 university module (assessed).]

TIMERS WEEKLY

CHANGE AND ITS SUBJECTS

A History column, started by Radley Greatauk.

(See ‘Our Writers’ for more information)

24.02.18

Knowing The Collapse
By R. Greatauk

          You can’t unite people to read about history unless it’s a kind of lost utopia you’re talking about.

I was born towards the end of the Cloudhome era, yet people continue to ask me what it was like back then. Truth is, its golden years are unknown to me. What I do know, though, is The Collapse. It’s difficult to add anything on top of what history books already teach school students, but I can tell of how it affected me. And, it did. But, not as much the day before it did. That was the day I was made ready.

~

My fingers were freezing, even through the gauntlets. Thankfully, my body had learned to recover quickly. Saying that, when you’re hanging from a faulty, moving, metal house leg, miles in the sky, you tend to panic a little. Though, the morning sun made sure I could see my hands enough to make no mistakes. My cutter-wrench was stuck inside the leg, and pulling too hard could’ve meant a slip. I’d prefer climbing twenty cold metres to get back up to our porch than a slip followed by the longest fall into and through the mist.

The wrench eventually came loose. I slipped it into my pocket and used the scaling grips to get back up. On the porch, a sharp cough forced its way out my throat, but I managed to flop onto and rest on the bench my Dad had fixed by the front door. Sunlight coated the wood and me.

The Sea, the original Sea, was, well… just a lot of mist. But, the civilisation of houses wading through it, each on four legs, was really something. And, with most travelling in different directions, it would look chaotic now, but collisions were rare.

Amongst that wade weren’t many like us. Four legs was standard, but us few had three. You could buy a new leg, or build one, which I had planned to do. That is until one of our three began to give way. Then, my duty became repairing it. It was an unspoken agreement between kids and their families in that situation—no matter how young, if you were capable and the job was required, you jumped to it. And, I jumped to it happily. Our house had provided us with all the conditions to live and play throughout the years. Offering it a hand was the least it deserved.

Gazing from the bench, there were plenty of four-legged houses to watch. The house that my eyes were fixed on, though, was a particular other three-leg. They were a recent neighbour, arriving with autumn. Somehow, they kept pace and direction with us until the end; whilst one of our legs had only just begun failing, all three of theirs were steaming and shaking for months. The whole thing never stopped swaying. This time, sitting there, I saw the mechanic they’d bought in to try installing a fourth leg. He or she had been staying with them for a week, but was running out of time. Not that many knew that then.

It was getting too cold. I headed inside.

All the floorboards creaked as I walked through the currently-inclined hallway, but I felt supported. In the kitchen, my Mum, like always, was sat at the control station.

“You can lock it now!” I yelled from the doorway.

With a key turn, the bones of the house groaned as it tilted to a mostly even level. “Seems you’ve done a good job, Rad!”

The bathroom door flew open. Out of it came a man wearing a suit and helmet paired with goggles: my Father.

“It’s all well and good performing temporary fixes on electrite converters at the upper hinges, but one day soon you’ll have to start climbing further down, son.” He eyed me, then Mum.

“Shush!” She referenced me with her eyes, then lowered her voice, “We don’t need a new leg. Look what the stress has done to you already!”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Father remarked, fastening his helmet by the buckle at his chin. “I’m off to put towards us getting a real solution.” He left through the back door. “Good day, you two.” A gust of cold wind replaced him.

The door soundlessly shut behind, before the engine of his E.A.A.P. (Electrite-Assisted Air Peddler) roared into life.

“Please don’t think anything of what he says, Rad.”

“Why would I?” I replied, feeling goosebumps.

She sighed, “Well- no, of course you wouldn’t. Come here.” We then spent some time discussing what had been done and what needed doing next.

          From the tap, I pulled two glasses of water for me and my Mum. The clearest water came from those house taps. Its quality wasn’t determined by big, industrial providers like here on the ground. Our house collected moisture from The Sea and treated it, moving it between different storages around the house, depending on the best preservation location.

          Holding my glass, I approached the warmly sunlit table, taking care not to trip over the reinforced bolts—they were on all front-facing sides of our furniture. Once seated, I looked into the water. “I saw the other house’s mechanic today.”

“Oh?”

“They’re making good progress. The first three layers are in, and they’ve got scaffolding in to suspend from and build downwards.”

“Is that right?”

Either the breeze left by Father was making its rounds again, or the thin crack in the window was letting in air. I stirred the water with my finger, “Dad’s saving for us, isn’t he?”

“Yes, Radley… but… a new leg is far too expensive.” She paused. The cold wind sharpened. Then she said under her breath, “Too late now, anyway.”

Air struck my cheek, the house moaned, and I flicked the water. “What do you mean?!”

“Nothing, Rad, you’re doing great work and have kept us going way longer than I thought you would! Even your Father is impressed despite his lack of showing.”

“No he’s not.”

“Yes he is, Rad.” The window flung open.

My goosebumps shook. I took a sip of water and returned it to the table. The glass wobbled in the gusts.  “Is the other house is going to walk ahead of us?”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re going to crash, aren’t we? Down, through the mist, and they’ll be walking faster than we ever have.” Mist had crawled up the legs of the house and was creeping over the window pane.

“Oh, Rad!” Another pause, “No!”

My eyes began to well up. A heavy gust entered, the glass tipped and spilled water onto the floor. I exited. One door to the left was my bedroom. I entered it, dove onto the bed (kept temperature-managed by the house), and buried my head into the pillow.

*         *         *

          It was the smell of stew that woke me—Mum’s cooking. Light had stopped coming through my bedroom window. As hastily as I’d left the kitchen earlier, I rushed in and made a scan. The window was shut.

“Dad’s not home?”

“No, not yet, Rad.”

“When will he be back?”

My Mother threw her hands in the air.

“Did he say he would be late?”

She responded negatively.

“Can you phone him?”

Another negative.

“Why isn’t he here?!”

“I don’t know! Alright, Radley?!”

An aching, metallic croak filled our ears, and the house tilted. I slipped back out the kitchen and fell down the hallway as the kitchen door slammed in front of me. My hand caught the living room doorframe. Then, Mum yanked open the kitchen door.

“RADLEY!”

We exchanged a stare.

“Radley…“

“I know.” I sighed with tremor.

With the hallway at a slope, I jumped onto it and slid to the front door.

          Even opening it just the width of my eye, the outside wind hugged every inch of my skin. I exited, sliding to the porch bannister. Peering from the edge revealed a red light flashing at the next hinge down from the one I’d fixed that morning. So, I stuck my leg over and headed down.

          The scaling grips were even colder through the gauntlets this time of night, and it got chillier with every declining metre. Five metres down from this morning’s hinge, I arrived at the hazard light. Opening the leg hatch, the bone inside was bent. At first, I tried using the wrench to open up the crease and realign it. It wouldn’t budge. Wind-drawn tears from my eyes began to freeze on my cheek. The bone needed to be cut. So, I flipped my cutter-wrench to the laser cutter end and began erasing the fold. A searing cry sounded as the metal melted away. More ice-tears were pulled from my eyes. Then, CLANG. Another groan sounded, and I used the now-loose piece of metal as glue, heated by the wrench, to weld the two parts of bone together. Closing the hatch, the red light stopped. I made my way back up the leg. The wind eased.

          Halfway to the top, I looked out behind me to the other three-leg. It stumbled and jolted, but remained moving. My hand clenched the grip. As I tightened my grip, the wind returned, chilling me through. I turned, and continued back up.

*         *         *

          “Look, we’re still going, Rad!” Mum said. She was holding a candle atop the dinner table, her back to the window.

“Ye- yeah, we are.” I sat with her.

A glass slid down the sloped countertop and smashed against a cupboard door, adding to the shattered glass of the window pane that had flown out during the breakage and hit the opposite wall. We both stared. A breeze entered through the hole in the wall. It travelled under the table and gripped my ankles.

“We should’ve got ready ages ago.” I lowered my head.

“No, Radley! This is the life we lead. There’s no point thinking on what could be.” The candle’s flame leaned towards me, its warmth brushed the end of my nose.

          All of a sudden, a roaring engine and propeller grew in volume until it was just outside. It ceased. The backdoor flew open, letting in a punch of a gust.

“Hello.” My Father said, before scanning the kitchen. “Did it happen again?”

I ran up to him and embraced him by the waist. A tear left my eye and stained his trouser leg.

My Mother either nodded or didn’t respond.

He began walking to the table, “Come on, son.”

          We all sat around.

“What’s got you like this?” Dad asked.

“We had another breakage.” Mum jumped in.

“Well, that explains the-“

“Not that.” I corrected.

Dad looked at Mum, “Then what?”

“The other house.” I answered.

“The other three-leg?” He investigated.

I nodded.

“What about it?”

“I don’t understand why we have to be broken.”

Mum intervened again, “Well, if we’re broken, imagine what it must be like for them.”

A drifting flame from the candle floated past my cheek. It fell to the table’s cold undercurrent. “But they’ve always been that way. We used to be able to run past the other houses, even do the leg pivot. We can’t do that anymore.”

Mum and Dad looked at each other. There was no sound for a while.

“Come on, let’s go into Mum and Dad’s room.” Dad said. We got up and followed him.

          Whilst sitting on their bed, the other house could be seen through the window.

“Do we almost have enough money, Dad?” I asked.

After a moment, he sighed. “No, I—”

Tears returned to my eyes, and I buried my head into Mum’s lap.

A groan echoed from the legs of the house. Silence rang for a while after.

“Are you on a bed?” Mum’s voice sounded.

“Huh? Yes.” I responded.

“Look around you, what’s in this room?”

I looked. “Candles, cushions, rugs, plants, paintings—”

“What’s out that window?”

I looked. “Houses, wind…”

I looked once more, this time at my Mum, trying to muster a word. “I…”

Then, Dad grabbed me from behind and yelled like a monster. “Come on, time to sleep.” He carried me towards the door.

His embrace tickled, but was warm above the wind currents travelling the floor. I laughed.

*         *         *

          Sun coated the clouds the next morning. On the leg, there were only a few adjustments to make to the top-most hinge. As I was coming back up to the porch, a breeze clasped the back of my legs. I turned. I looked. In the distance, multiple four-legs were smoking. They began falling through the mist. This was the beginning.

~

          In the nick of time, I was ready. Something in my Mother’s words, and lack of, held my mind where it needed to be. Still does. It was just like she’d done for so many years before. Not just her, but something in the house’s groans and silences. It kept normality. And, it prepared me for that morning—the morning of The Collapse.