When the rains came people celebrated. Rain, which had not visited for decades, brought with it a kind of dizzying joy. The inhabitants of the upside-down skyscrapers, even the most reclusive introverts who’d never set foot outside, came out to witness it. More than a hundred people rushed about shouting and laughing. They came together in HMD Square, grabbing each other’s hands, clasping arms and attempting to dance in bumbling clusters.
It was a strange and disorienting few hours, and some of them staggered and even fell to the ground like drunks. It was so strange and novel not to be in the Cloudscape, not to be lost in thought, not to be shut in a closet room, not to be drugged or dreaming, not to lie comatose, nor be held spellbound by some virtual event or contest or hypnotizing dream. The vast majority, being too young, had never experienced the phenomena of rain. It proved to be wildly exhilarating and eerily beautiful. It looked like pelting silver, cooled their skin and made them laugh uproariously.
As the untidy crowd stomped its feet, the urchins and scavengers who lived in the decrepit neighborhoods nearby were also shouting and singing. Under other circumstances, these voices would have felt threatening to the Numbered people in HMD Square, but on this day the crowd felt by degrees more and more accepting. Barriers fell with the raindrops, the usual suspicions were banished and strangers greeted strangers with broad smiles. They pointed at each other’s sopping garments and laughed. They shouted nonsense to the sky. A woman affectionately clasped a neighbor’s face. She’d only just that moment recognized him with his hair plastered to his cheeks. As the rain poured down on them, oddly warm and not even quite clean—you could see the yellow lines it left on their skin—a few even flung away their clothing. Modesty, too, was tossed aside. The oldest, the handful of elders, were the only ones who remembered how to sing. Several of them attempted this to the amusement of the others. Some became frightened then—by the novelty of everything and of the singing—but soon, even the most damaged souls, people who’d never laughed or had any intercourse with another person or touched the tiniest smidgen of dirt, began to play in the streets. Even the most inward among them reveled in the rediscovery of their lost animal nature.
By midday though, the situation had changed. The downpour had increased and begun to batter them. It was painful how it pummeled their heads and hammered their necks and bowed their shoulders. It was no longer endurable and they were driven back inside. They sloshed through ankle deep puddles to return to their buildings and, by the time they reached the lobbies, the floors were roiling with water. They packed into the elevators, their bodies squeaking against the walls. Soaked through, they shivered as water slid down their legs and onto the slippery floors. The elevators dutifully lowered them to the depths, surrounded with emotages showing lustrous droplets that sparkled on stems and cobwebs. The residents’ faces took on the appearance of wet porcelain, all anxious and muted by the steaming condensation.
High in the sky, the rain spilled through widening cracks of a long-shut celestial dam. The volume increased until it became something more than a rainstorm. Huge amorphous globs of liquid fell along with common raindrops, as if the water of a long forgotten river was returning through an enormous spigot in the sky. Or, the contents of a lake, by some miracle held aloft until that moment, fell down as a single object. The sound was deafening. It was a bombardment, a deluge that smashed down on an earth that could not possibly absorb it. All across the city, windows imploded, roofs collapsed. Every sort of loose attachment, every sign and fixture, was dashed against the ground by cascading water. Glass was pulverized in the flurry. Vehicles were compressed and shattered. The statue of Carmen Mann was knocked to the pavement, her thallium pyramid crumpled. Long strands of steel were ripped from every structure and flung down on people who hadn’t retreated quickly enough, the ones left thrashing through chest-high waves. They’d come around a corner only to be killed by flying debris. An angry swirling sea, churning with rubble, engulfed the city.
The rooms of the Cumulus filled rapidly. People who rushed the little-used stairwells were bashed by stinging waterfalls. They fought against raging spillways as well as one another. They flailed, furious with adrenaline, terrified until all terror had been suffocated. The building filled up and their bodies were left tumbling like chaff in a hundred murky cauldrons.
Finally, having occupied every void and able to calm itself, the water regained a little of its transparency, and was left to pulse with the rhythm of a panting beast.
The residents of the Cumulus rose inside their liquid chambers and many, who’d lived together for so long but had only that morning become acquainted, were clustered in the stairwells. When we illuminate these dark underwater scenes with a powerful spotlight, we see how gently these corpses mingle. A boy in a frilly dress appears to dance with a mustachioed man. The fish faced woman slowly gathers a toothless elder in a headlock. Mr Poopiepants, in his playsuit, burrows his face between the breasts of an pudgy blue-skinned lady. All these cadavers seem caught in the midst of a slow weightless dance.
Dr. Bunny Escobar, Psychotherapist & Life Coach, MA, BSC, hovers in her subaquatic room as her muumuu that features little bunnies wearing top hats and waistcoats, twists around her. The upside-down taxidermied body of Hortense floats just a few feet in front of her. Each seems to stare intently at the other as if commingled in a single thought. Amid the scattered beakers and bottles that hover around them, an illustrated book of tropical plants passes by, splayed open to a painting of a pygmy palm. A murky cloud of cockspur flour obscures the disarrangment in the kitchen. Hortense’s artwork has pulled away from the walls and begun to disintegrate, though the topmost parts remain snagged by the hangers. A few swaying stems can be seen pushing through the door of the nursery. It’s as if they’re trying to escape.
In Swan’s bedroom, the beautiful house has levitated. Detached from its base, it sails to the center of the room. Its furnishings, Ottala’s bed and chairs, her toilet and table, spill out and drift among the many objects that dot this watery abode. We notice the purple box, the Genitron, a flowtube that bumps along the ceiling. Sen, in her pretty sarong, floats sideways near the middle of this aquarium, while bits of plyboard, shoes, tiny bras and swords and pistols, the little glass dome, and a hundred other items from Swan’s collection, gently churn around her.
A mile away (seen from the point of view of a hovering drone) the Nature Preserve has been ravaged. The carpets of polyvinyl grass lie in tatters, ripped to bits and tossed around like dishrags. Stringy bits of polyester flora are tangled in the artificial trees. The animatrons are dismembered. Vinyl leaves and polyurethane petals are scattered over everything. Topiary and other fantastical props lie crushed, slathered with mud. The glowing paths are extinguished, their outlines barely visible. The edges of the crater at the center of the park have prevented the water from draining, resulting in a wide round lake. Amid the floating wreckage we see the leaves and branches of the last living oak, now in the last throes of extinction. Other debris drift ambivalently: little articles of clothing, carvings of tiny animals, miniature tools, plates and bowls, musical instruments, acorns with painted faces. The central trunk of the great gnarled oak has held firm it seems, and some of it protrudes above the water. Most of the bodies of its residents are still inside. Those who managed to escape have risen, Kulp among them, still in his fine burlap suit; a green tie encircles his neck like a cravat. We see him as he floats chest up with an impassive face, his hands spread wide as if making an appeal to the clouds. There are no fish to nibble at his entrails here, no flies to land on his face. None of the bodies will ever be found. There is no one left to find them.
Stunning! — probably the best adjective that I can muster for this chapter. Swan? I'm hoping his spirit animal has interceded, and as in the tale of Ugly Duckling, guided him to shelter if there still is such a thing.