The Fall of Man

Part II chapter 11

Chapter 11

“A city will arise as superior in its beauty and magnificence to our first crude attempt as the finished canvas of a great artist to the rough and untaught attempts of a schoolboy.” Ebenezer Howard

Noah steps through the sliding glass doors of the hospital lobby and onto the sun-drenched street. The air outside is still, sticky and sweet. The pavement before him is alive with bodies moving purposefully in all directions, and he is buffeted around like a leaf in a raging rapid. He doesn’t recognise this world; the people are not the same creatures he lived among forty years ago. One face blends quickly into the next. They might as well be a pack of some other species; all alike in their fundamental difference from him. The mob swarms around him en masse and unblinking. A few feet beyond the throng, a wall of cyclists, scooters and buggies flash past in a constantly changing stream of colour. The flickering light and frenetic movement are overwhelming. His vision blurs in and out of focus and hot blood rushes to his pounding temples. With tottering steps, Noah falls back against the cool plate glass of the hospital like a cornered animal, and closes his eyes against the outside world.

At first, the noise is as cacophonic as the visual assault, and just as alien. Slowly, however, his brain begins to decipher the clamour, which settles into an orchestra of distinct sounds; footfalls on the hard paving, the chatter of raised voices, whirring gears and spokes, and the intermittent swoosh of the door opening and shutting to his left - triggered no doubt by his trembling presence. Behind all this commotion is a constant buzz, a toneless drone on the verge of being imperceptible. In place of the twentieth century sounds of engines chugging and horns honking, the air swirls and howls in great eddies to the hum of an electric city.

Noah opens his eyes. It is midday and the sun is high in the sky. He takes one step out from under the shade of the entrance canopy and into the fray. The heat is oppressive in spite of the persistent wind. Forcing his way through the melee of hot bodies, he pushes his way across the busy pavement into a calm oasis of green that cleaves the street in two. Along its opposite side, the buildings stand in great piles. They jostle shoulder to shoulder like tidal waves about to break. At their feet, a plethora of buggies, pods and carts weave amongst another stream of fast-moving people. A chain of tram-like carriages glides gracefully and silently over the crowds, strung from an elevated single rail on the furthest edge of the busy windowed canyon.

Noah’s eyes follow the towering edifices upwards and he squints disbelieving into the brash yellow haze. The strip of sky that is visible overhead is littered with airships of every size and shape. Some glide just above the building tops; others are all but lost in the low-lying haze. The plump vessels hang pregnant in the heavy air. They glide in silhouette against the sun, passing overhead like the dark underbellies of strange whales as they drift from one side of the street to the other.

Back at ground level, the broad avenue heads due north. A swathe of trees has been planted along its centre, each one identical to the last. Noah moves into their shadows to avoid the worst of the sun, which burns fiercely on the back of his neck. The pristine canopies overhead soften the harsh sunlight into patches of cooler shade, and underfoot the grass feels lush - soft and verdant. With great relief, he pauses momentarily to slip off the clammy hospital clogs and walk barefoot, dodging with care the spiky sprinkler heads that jut out from between the blades of green like tiny serrated daisies. The grass is perfectly short and wet, with the spring of a luxurious carpet, and miraculously free of blemishes. Rover’s ball turns soundlessly on the slick surface, and leaves a thin trail of droplets in its wake.

The central reservation takes Noah from block to block, occasionally bisected by a footpath or the paired steel tracks of a tram line. Every city block he passes is different, but there appears to be nothing unique about any of them. Each one is composed of a jumbled pile of units stacked vertically on top of one another, and fabricated in a medley of brightly coloured panels, transparent panes, corrugated sheets and a myriad other unidentifiable materials. The units are grouped clumsily about the centre of each stack in towers ranging from thirty to perhaps fifty stories high, like building blocks piled on top of one another by an enormous, uncoordinated child. Most of the towers have a crane or cranes at their centre and are stacked relatively tall on their southerly side, tapering down to the north - presumably to avoid blotting out the sun for the neighbours. However, overlooking and overshadowing are clearly not primary concerns in the assembly of these giant Jenga kebabs.