The Breath of Concrete

(Val): "I'm late, I'm late!" she said, "I'm in the ultimate tardiness, I've got to run run run run run hard run hard" as she reached out to grab with his fingertips a slice of bread she had left on the kitchen table the night before and crashing into the door to push it open and then slam it behind her against the hinges as if the future of humanity depended on it. She descends the stairs, sliding on the concrete steps and clinging at the last moment on the rusty iron handrail while grinding the slice of bread with his teeth and checking that she has a sharp piece of iron in his purse to defend herself against them, as it was early morning and...you never know. Reaching the ground floor, she runs to the front door and begins the ritual. Opening building doors is impossible unless you have a key; concrete is home, and any of them would be willing to do anything to call a wet hole "MY home." In the semi-darkness of the hallway on the ground floor, a cold and inhospitable windowless room, Val inserts the key inside the lock placed at the side of the door, and before her eyes the bolts creak, the deadbolts go up, the blocks pop, the girders snap back into their cracks in the wall, the hinges squeak, and from the crack in the door that is opening a small glimmer of light enters. That small vertical line of blinding is bright enough to make all the darkness enveloping the ground floor disappear. The boundary demarcating the house from the street is marked by black water and garbage, which cannot penetrate the thick doors made of iron, concrete and polymer. For val it is an obscenity to have to step on the outside, she gets gag reflexes just at the thought of HER shoes so carefully cleaned the night before touching that filth. Still, the lure of the city is always strong and irresistible, and Val's devotion to it is monolithic. "It certainly won't be a little water that scares me," she tells herself as she takes the exit. Val lies to herself almost continuously, but she is so good, or so stupid, that she ends up believing her own lies. As she walks toward the subway she passes piles of them, piled on the sidewalks by the special garbage collectors who keep the big street clean of bodies. Many penniless, who are those who do NOT own, die during the long night for a wide variety of reasons, some from starvation, some from cold, some from overdose, and some are killed. It makes no difference to the specnets, who simply pick up those things and throw them into the truck bed. Often they have to remove the bodies from the clutches of family members or the claws of children born deformed from garbage and drugs. "If you really loved them, you should have given them your things, don't pretend to cry NOW," they shout to the desperate crying people, with their hieratic looks, half-closed mouths, quivering lips and faces covered with black water and only two rivulets cleaned from the tears under their eyes revealing the true color of their skin. Val no longer pays attention to these things, it is common knowledge that this is the fate of those who possess nothing, "cruel but fair" she repeats to herself "the rules of the city are simple, you are what you have, and if you don't have you are not." The hurry seems to have left her once she returns to her place, walking through the streets in the presence of the tall buildings, the tops of which are invisible because of the clouds of gas. The cars in the roadway pile on top of each other, almost crushing each other at the traffic lights and intersections, to go just a little bit further, just a few more inches. They all have to do what they have to do, go to work, enter the concrete buildings to perform their very important functions, because they know that the city without their efforts would become chaos, and the city being big, their efforts will have to be big. Entering the Plasticorps skyscraper, Val quickly runs her shoes and hands through one of the sanitizers placed in a row like little white soldiers and then heads for the large elevators packed with people he has never seen in his life. "it's strange," she thinks to herself as the elevator goes up, "every morning I take this elevator, and every morning I see new faces." The crackling of cables in the elevator shaft distracts her as she imagines the square counterweight plunging at great speed into the void from the tops of the building, knowing in her heart that she can only imagine what is happening and that she will never see what it sees. A soft *Ding* announces the opening of the doors to the 41st floor, and of the few people still left in the elevator she is the only one to exit. Walking on the greenish synthetic carpet, through the maze of warm greige office cubes, a soft muffled thud from the dirty fluff accompanies her every step to her little box. She sits in her black chair in front of her wood-colored desk (though it is actually made of plastic) entering his computer password and checking that his phone line is working. It is very important to check the functionality of each work item, both because they are hers and because phone calls may be coming in as early as the first few hours. The phones are connected to each other inside the building, and calls come only from her fellow workers in the edifice. Val does not know whether anyone can be called from the outside, she has never tried, and to do so would only be a waste of time. All her workdays follow the same course. Her very important job is to call the other floors on the phone and fill the computer with the information they exchange. Information about packaging, plastics, protection, and packaging. Production is very important and the quality of the product must always be very high, the best plastic in the city, in fact in the whole world because "with such a tall building and with so many workers, we should be selling plastic in every corner of the planet.". 

When the phone rings, she answers it and listens to what is being said, stores it in the computer, and to her great boast also in her head, and then calls another number and repeats the information dictated to her. She remembers everything about the job, but really everything, names and numbers, dates and deadlines, schedules, types of plastics, brand names, and even sixteen-digit serial numbers. She could not be happier or more proud of herself. She is doing her part and doing it very well, too.

She works until someone on the phone tells her that it is time to quit, and she, being the good worker that she is, repeats the closing message over the phone to another worker. During the elevator ride down, not the company jingle is played but a recorded message repeating instructions, which Val hears but does not listen to since her head is already full of information, and she certainly does not want to accumulate any more. Stepping out of the building's hallway doors, she looks around, admiring the concrete that lives and thrives around, above and below her. It almost seems to her that nothing has changed since she entered, that the cars are still the same ones waiting to advance in the same lanes. "Coming back always has a melancholy feel to it," she says as she takes the path home, "I like to work and call my colleagues." By now it was almost time to hear the desperate cries of the mothers coming through the windows of the buildings, and Val expected to be able to hear the names of the children, but she felt as if an element was missing in the air, as if the energy released by the amused cries of the little ones had dissipated into the smog. And indeed that evening she heard no mothers screaming nor saw children running toward the gates of their homes, but one thing that intrigued her was noticing a certain level of frenzy in the nobodies, as if they had no intention of conserving for themselves what little energy they had left in their limbs and muscles, but wanted to disperse it in the rottenness around them; they were dragging, chasing and catching each other, choking and mutilating each other's faces by every means at their disposal, biting and chewing each other, tearing and covering each other's pieces as if they were rotten ornaments and primitive effigies, entrance tickets to the world of dances forgotten by moral men. She kept walking, dipping her shoes into the thick oil-like liquid that was no longer black in color but purple, which seemed to flow and gush more intensely than usual. But it was certainly not her problem, figuring out the course of the black fluid was not her concern and she had no desire to do someone else's job without receiving anything in return, and then again she was not going to be there forever, it would have been smarter to spend her time looking for something else. And while she was absorbed in these thoughts all around her those things stood over piles of torn flesh and limbs, as they used portions torn from their bodies to strike with great eagerness and effort at the pile, as if they wanted to crush and destroy every animal cell in that conglomerate. The cries of terror of mangled and slaughtered women and children should not be heard if those women and children are THEM. Val thought of this as she watched the great iron gate open with great snaps, and that same din suddenly attracted the attention of some dark figures, hidden beyond the beams of light, grinning and panting. They seemed to be able to think like higher animals, it seemed as if their neurons were exchanging electrical signals in a morbid and convulsive manner, moving their heads in jerks and flexing every muscle from their backs to their fingers in an unnatural and malignant arc that caused them to crush the putrid air out of their lungs, producing a fat and rotting grunt. Val was looking at the lobby of the apartment building, so dark and cold, she would have been glad not to be alone at that moment, perhaps talking on the phone as she had been doing at work, and so she did not notice that those unnatural and dying beings had hurled themselves at her in a big way, running and showing themselves for the disgusting monsters they are whenever they were hit by the light of the street lamps. Running in the most disparate manners, they looked like caricatures of human beings, some with their arms outstretched toward her, their heads back and their mouths wide open as if they were screaming at the top of their lungs but without producing any sound, others with their elbows nailed down and their torsos swaying, colliding and getting up again, tripping over camping tents and other beings in the sidewalk. Val lured by this sudden feeling of murderous fury makes the mistake of turning around, almost bored, and her gaze meets the face of one of those beings, Val's face fills with pure terror, her eyes widen and her mouth opens slightly as she sees those abominable figures approaching as never before in her life as she raises her hands from her hips in a futile attempt to defend herself. She stares him in the face as he crashes at full speed through the small gap in the doorway and becomes trapped in it only to be crushed by the powerful motors that spin the hinges. His expression remains astonished, motionless, for a time between a handful of seconds and several hours. Going up the stairs seemed to become impossible for her, each step had become very high, and she had to constantly hold on to the handrail with both hands in order to continue without keeling over with each step. She would have liked to sit in a corner and wait for someone to pick her up, but that would never happen, and she knew it. No one would give her anything without receiving something in return, and she certainly would not give up anything to anyone. Once inside her apartment she took off her shoes and washed them automatically, it was the response that her body carried out every time she came home, like an automaton, but as she removed the residue of bodies, blood and city bitumen she collapsed in tears, slumping to the floor and losing consciousness.