Down | Tyrus

I

The first step I climb up, I trip on, making a huge clanking sound on the metal.

"Slow down, Cyrus," Mrs. Hanton tells me as I regain my footing. 

"No time," I respond. "I'm already late."

She just shakes her head and continues on down the stairs to get to the bottom level of the city, while I carry on ascending the paths. All the others walking by me turn to look at the jetting boy zipping between them, but I keep going. 

At about one kilometre wide and eight levels high, each tall enough to hold a three story building, I have a long way to go to get to the top level of the city. Most of the buildings on the bottom floor don't even span the full height. Nobody down there has enough money to build anything higher than a bungalow anyway. It could've saved my leg muscles from the work if those stairwells linking that floor to the second had just been made a bit smaller. But at this point, I'm used to it anyway, so it's not so difficult anymore. 

When I reach the second floor, I see my friend, Jonah, climbing down by rope from above. He waves to me as he jumps down onto the copper railing that keeps me from falling down over the edge toward the first level again. I would never stand on that, but Jonah has no such fear. 

"You passing by the fountain at all?" Jonah asks me. 

"Most likely," I reply. 

"Well, don't go too close. The thing's spraying water like confetti everywhere."

"I'm already soaked anyway," I reason. 

Jonah looks down at the splashes on water on my trousers and good shirt. "Good point."

As he catches the rope again to continue downward to the bottom level, I carry on upward. I see the fountain on the third level, but I stay far enough away that I'm only misted by the spray. Besides, it's beginning to run out of water. 

At the forth floor, the buildings are starting to get taller, about two stories high, and one building stands out the most: the clocktower. It sits in the core of the city, with no ground beneath or above it so that all those from every level can gaze down or up to see the time, which is displayed on both the top and bottom of the structure. It spans across a gap in the metal ground, almost filling the whole in the centre of the city. It doesn't fill it entirely, though. One can still look down from the top level and see all the way to the clouds below. 

As I pass by, I check the time, feeling relieved when I see that I still have two minutes, but then I do a double take when I notice that the small hand is not moving after what I thought was a minute. An undeterminable amount of time later, Buffy steps out of the clocktower's entrance in a lacy blouse and ruby red skirt that hardly covers her knees. 

When she sees me, she explains, "It's broken. My mom is in the midst of fixing it."

As soon as she says that, the hand snaps back to its correct place, three minutes past the hour. 

"And she fixed it," Buffy says. 

Within one minute, I've become three minutes late, and I wave to Buffy as I zoom off toward the next set of stairs again. By the time I reach the top, I'm gasping for air, but I have to o so subtly, for this is the floor of the posh upper class. I have to act as though I belong here, even though it's obvious that I don't. I'm not wearing the same fancy waistcoats and hats of the other men or boys. Even the toddlers look better than me. And the buildings here have no height limit. They soar up as far as six stories. The one I'm rushing toward is at the head of the city, the three story structure that points in the direction that the city's moving, because it is where the whole city is steered from.