It wasn’t long before they found the Master Up/Down Stepped Inclines. Despite Isaac’s nothing-short-of-criminal discrepancies and code cutting through high-toned bribery (e.g. ‘No one’ll ever see this shit down here…’) College knew they now had a chance at the top. Distant step-climbing sounds from far above gave him knowledge that others in the building, the few who were there, were also in the process of evacuation. That gave him courage.
After eighty-two flights had been conquered, the power blew and the storm lights went dead.
‘I have a torch!’ the be-prepared geologist announced.
Butterbugs wanted to mention the prop torches he’d used in the movies, mostly the Roman/Legendary pitch-burning kind, but wisely chose to remain silent and cooperative.
And it came to pass that the little LED got them successfully up to Jungle Level. Tears streaked down their faces when they saw the merciful signs of day streaming through the skylights of luck. And because of the motes of rising dust and debris, loosened by the shiftings far below, the light was cathedratic, or at least carried the secularity of the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof’s basilican moods.
Butterbugs’ emotional response had been so instantaneous, so instructional, and so powerful that a jog of sorts occurred. In the right direction. He said, in a stunned whisper:
‘What have I done?’
Then, in an outburst of chiaroscuric contrast:
‘We are saved!’
College looked over at him with a mixture of annoyance and contempt.
‘We aren’t out yet. How can you say that? My meter says we still have four hundred fifty feet up to go. Anything can happen. Never forget that. There’s several hectares of glass right above us!’
Just as he said this, an earthen grumble commenced, as a properly Richter-recognized tremor might give off. Certain objects, such as impounding screws and anchor bezels from the solarium grid, showered down in squally caprices. College pulled out two folding bounce-paper hardhats, which they donned with vigor.
They made their way across the vast expanse, and things settled down a bit. It was a glass floor, and they had a bird’s eye view of horrible things going on further below. Loosenings. Collapses. Failures. The building’s very superstructure was coming undone. Obviously, they could not pause for a second to assess or absorb. In such a light, their course of action was instinctive and engaged.
‘How could this have happened?!’ College ejaculated. ‘How could this place be so vulnerable!? In this day and age!’ The geologist was beside himself. Like Butterbugs, the stress of the occasion caused a measurable curve in his fluctuating frames of mind. Mutability was a constant threat now.
College was practically devastated by what he saw. Here was science unfolding all around him, but all he could think of was the human toll, in both criminal cover-ups and stark casualties – which would be certain. Dead bodies! They were here and there; those who had been struck down, or victims of toxic inhalation, when deadly concrete dust and asbestos mix brought would-be escapees low, within sight of the sky that promised so much hope.
It was an expansive scene of great threat and pathos, already mature in the devastation that had been wrought. A certain awful grandeur there was, but only in scale. Bondarchuk could have directed it! Delacroix could have painted it! Such were the epics of the urban contemporary scene to be acted out, so founded on lies.
At this instant, College regretted not taking the pathway toward the Wet Sciences, which would have led to his dream of Emergency Medicine, instead of toward rocks of death and destruction. Still, he could indeed behave like a physician in this crisis. That much was clear.
Butterbugs’ COO instinct, still somewhat in play, was to become defensive, even under these conditions. Quite clearly, there was still some major problem-solving to be done. Especially if this land was his.
What to do? Slough it off on someone else. As in:
‘I thought no self-respecting geologist would venture to the very depths.’
He gestured through the crystalline and rapidly clouding floor, then attempted urbanity.
‘Might I inquire… Do you… know of the certificate they display in the restaurant at the bottom, about no geologist having set foot down there? What made you?’
‘I know,’ replied College as they huff-puffed along. ‘I have heard of that very certificate. Seems like it has been disqualified this day. By me. You ask, what am I doing here? Why was I so stupid? Well, I’ll tell you. I am unemployed, sir. I am fully qualified to analyze seismic and thumper specifications down to one cubic millimeter-sized tracts. I have honors from MIT, CIT, Johns Hopkins, and the Vurr Institute. Nevertheless, I am for hire. I came. I am here. Now we are in jeopardy, and yes, I am here. Speaking for myself, I am also in a position to sue you for extreme distortion of your reasons for my services, for they have put me in harm’s way. I will also seek advocacy for all those others who have suffered this day. And if we make it out OK, I will pursue my suits with great gusto.’
‘As well you might,’ sighed Butterbugs. ‘I am a man of folly. I see that now.’
‘That is no compensation, sir. We are in dire peril, and you are to blame.’
‘I? How so? I?’
‘Don’t you understand? This building and all it stands for, or all it ‘stabs’ for (hah-hah!), has mocked the fault! The very bulk of Earth upon which it rests! Observe now how it wreaks its almost-holy revenge!’ Thus spake College Plerrie, PhD.
‘Oh, College…!’
‘And if you die, your death will not be in vain, for you will at least die along with the others you cared not one whit for!’
‘Jesus Christ!’ exclaimed Butterbugs, thunderstruck at College’s audacity.
‘He is not of whom I think, in your situation, sir.’
‘It was not my wish that this should have happened. These things were decided long ago…’
‘You crass, corporate, corrupt COO! You and your type! Always digging into things you know absolutely nothing, or less than nothing, about! And now what you’ve done stands to get us all killed in the stupidest way possible!’
‘It was not me, geologist! I didn’t start this stupid quake! How could I? It was not me, I tell you –’
‘You creeps and your psychotic lust for power at all cost! How can you say that, when you signed onto this hideous gumboil of a company! Surely you knew of the venality in play, of the slop and the sick twists, and the dirt under the corporate fingernails? You make me want to cough up blood!’
They began trying door after door, in search of the last route up and out.
‘I tell you, geologist, I signed on as a temporary measure. My head was turned by flattery! Flattery, I say! Flattery! And the promise of sky-blown fancy, through clouds of fluttering $100,000 bills!’
‘Then, you weren’t too bright, were you? Well, were you?’
As the popping increased, and the last of the power jolts faded and blinked out, taking most of the lighting systems with them, Butterbugs felt the true horror of participating in a lie. The awful penalty for tasting its forbidden fruit promised an oblivion of Gilgamesh proportions. Seventy stories of crustscraper made for an embedded entombment beyond the dreams of a Sargon or a Chephren or even a Yucca Mountain. Too deep for even a plaque, or a signpost to commemorate what lies below. One might as well install surrogate markers for all the graves in China!
Egads, ‘Daily Variety’ had gotten it right. Butterbugs had been duped, so the cartel could take advantage of his good name. Such were the wages of both Vanity and Isaac Davis-ism, when a monolith beckons and seduces and makes mockery of both good names and faults. Accustomed to good behavior, good intentions, good people, good sex, and goodness itself, Butterbugs had made a catastrophic choice in hopping onto the corporate funicular, purportedly bound for inevitable glory. And now, it could all come tumbling down on top of him. Or below him. Literally.
If only Yevtushenko could see him now! Regarding him, the poet might simply see a phantom… and not one
from Katyin Forest, either.
The birth of tragedy ends with the death of a dream.
62.
My Way
Could there really be a way out? Would there really be a dawn after? Was the grand scheme of Earth’s Laws still intact and able to function?
The tumult that came next, even for those who would escape the marauding mess from below via ready passage toward success, was nothing short of colossal. The thing was, if any had not progressed far enough up the architectonic landscape to come clear of the breaking earth movement, then their fortunes in sleeping that night in their own safe beds were severely compromised. Such was the case for Butterbugs and his companion, College Plerrie, PhD.
The acute pitch of the shaking had increased to a high-frequency jarring. It continued for so long that surely, Isaac Davis’ underground-empire-stratified building couldn’t last much longer. Alas, the entire superstructure of the crustscraper was surrounded by pure Angelino deposits of our own Cenozoic Era’s Quaternary alluvium, endowed hereabouts by the pathetic Los Angeles River, combined with hoary marine upthrusts. Altogether, an ugly aggregate too recent in geologic time to provide enough firmness under the stress.
It wasn’t until the two escapees had secured the final route up within the Vent Boiler Blow-Off Stack #34 that the pukka tectonic alteration of position came into being. As a natural phenomenon, no one could accurately predict its dimensions, despite all the expectant signs and sure-fire preliminaries.
That was it.
This, the final crack of the seismic rebellion was enough to occasion virtual implosion of the master framework of the building. Virtual implosion indeed resulted, and the massive collapse of the main mess proceeded down, down and down, over eight hundred feet down, until the gathering of all the rubble precluded any further collapse. The subsidence of the man-made material created a horrific bolt hole right into terra firma that was really quite piddling in comparison with the surrounding earth, banal in its obviousness, now exposed. And upon those ragged cliffs hung the solemn notice of Earth’s revenge, now made clear by her rejection of corporate audacity. Such was the natural resolution of an aberrant intrusion into an already over-injured planet’s subcutaneous sensitivities.
Stricken wordless, Butterbugs and Plerrie spied the ghastly vista from the louver-limited slats of a stairwell’s breather duct, freshly blown open to the light of desolate day.
Cinematically, there wasn’t much in the realms of high and new realism to be gleaned from the scene. Weirdly, it was all so fakey-looking, like a Toho disaster scene using miniatures, but without 64 frames per second running through the camera to ensure the proper gravitas. Perhaps because the reality herein was so appalling and so indisputable, any judgment of its realism as inferior would have to be an instinct of denial. As in ‘no animals were harmed in this production’. Therefore, because it couldn’t possibly be real, any affected audience members could rest easy. As in ‘it’s only a movie’. The fact that there were actual dead people down there – and not a few animals (one of Davis’ more psycho ideas was to have a hundred-member, two-by-two ‘Noah’s Ark’-style petting zoo way down on Minus-Floor 44) – might seem preposterous in light of such a ‘clean’ sinkhole.
Amazingly, the miracle was that this destruction scene was as clean as it was. Instead of sending a Tianjin Blowup-style firecloud into the sky, the perverse engineering in Isaac’s aberrant dream actually provided a public service of remarkable value. With the building’s implosion, the unholy Thrill Shaft, so moribund in its corner, was opened, accessed and drafted into a functionality that never could have been pre-conceived. Due to the air currents of disruption and the funky routing of ducts and mysteries on a titanic scale, the Shaft acted like a huge vacuum cleaner, sucking the vast majority of off-gassing, smoke, and rubbish dust from the collapse, and channeling it on down the Profundis Cistern, where Verne’s stygian coastline awaited its pollution, rather than our own sunny palisades and reaches.
Small beer to the escapers, though.
From the sturdy fastness that provided a widescreen peephole overlooking this newly-made abyss leading to hell, even the trained geologist had to admit that he’d underestimated the raw power enacted in the cataclysm. All his values required revaluation. In one dolorous stroke, all the past beloved seismic science studies he’d accrued had been superseded by this single event of manmade-provocation-cum-natural-response. Surely it was a precedent in the dynamic discipline he’d chosen, and surely he would gain the highest accolades from the on-the-spot field studies adding up in his head.
Then, another revelation was introduced to his mind. He should be thanking Butterbugs for the rest of his life, that he, College Plerrie, PhD, had been there, firsthand, as Witness and Student, in front of this, the first of probably many Earthly super-reactions to mankind’s trespasses. All because he had been sadly unemployed, and wearily took a phone call at the last minute instead of heading out the door for burgers, fries and shakes at Joe’s Eats with his neat wife Lelly and his fun kids 1) Trail 2) Earthie and 3) little Serrie, as planned. And all because some movie star, probably on drugs, had been wacky enough to give him a ring. Oh, glorious destiny! Out of tragedy and death for some comes preeminence and renown for the few!
No, now he could revise his mind, apologize to Butterbugs, and prepare a Paper to end all Papers. Next stop: Stockholm City Hall on Nobel Day…! His kid sis Mairla was even a hostess on Swanson Airlines, and could get tickets at half-price, probably via Reykjavik (where he’d like to do a little geological goofing around)!
By these thoughts he was scientifically refreshed, which provided considerable relief from the horror of the destruction and the unconscionable qualities of his escape companion, whom he’d come very close to calling ‘WRETCH!’
‘Butterbugs, I’d like, if I may…,’ he started to say, when the immediacy of the emergency returned in full force.
Both knew they’d better keep on keeping on, rather than tarry at a matinee with the kind of cheap special effects that would cause moviegoers to think of a pork-and-gravy dinner more than the cheesy thrills up on the screen in front of them.
However, once they emerged from the bunker-strong escape route, leading to the rooftop of the Venting Acreage, they were able to peer over the edge into the true abyss, and found it to be so dizzying that stomach wamblings began instantly. Butterbugs tried to vomit, but only a thin trickle of sour Orange-Like Bob emerged like a bloody dagger, only to slime off a wrecked I-beam into perdition below.
Elated by his new perspective on the scientific gifts before him, College’s assessments were singularly accurate and interdisciplinary.
‘Curious. There is remarkably little airborne smokings, blowoff-gas, and collision-dust from the wreckage. I would infer, surmising this structure’s occult systems, that it’s probably a result of the Prime Drain at the very bottom, creating a super-sucking wind tunnel, discharging its cargo who knows where, way away downstairs. Possibly routed, I’ll warrant, to the Salton Sea, or the Colorado outfall. Interesting! Also, the seismicity of this event seems more or less confined to this particular earth opening. Mainly structure failure, made vulnerable by substandard construction and location. I strenuously doubt there is much, if any at all, collateral damage in, and to, the urban fabric surrounding us. Probably a 4.6 tremor, I should think. I’ll have to ring Kobo over at USGS, at earliest…’
It was the Dry Sciences for him after all, and he loved to drily describe and speculate their realms.
But science was pushed aside for the moment. Consequently, the master view was alpine-clear. Now was the full panoply of truth revealed to them. They were frozen in the stalled state that astonishment mixes with horror.
‘Sweet baby Jesus and attendant manger creatures!’ hissed College.
‘I canna believe it…!’ Butterbugs whispered, fighting back more dry heaves.
Though what he saw rivaled any filmic stunner he’d ever seen, the actor thought more of Ken Russell than Mar
k Robson right now. The final shot in ‘The Devils’ (WB, 1971) seemed to fit the mood rather than the more literal panorama at the end of ‘Earthquake’ (Universal, 1974). And there were no more Sensurround effects now. Only an eerie silence, ready for Peter Maxwell Davies’ scoring to usher in the end credits.
Yet, there were sinister sounds that began to creep in. Seepings, leaks, metal falling, gussets teetering, and, from an exposed terrace some fifty feet away to the side below them, screaming started.
A woman lay on a flat panel of dislodged Armstrong ceiling. She freshly emerged from shock to notice that her left arm lay shattered under a corner of a ferroconcrete pier that had come undone from its base. Pinned as she was, she could do nothing but shriek her lungs out.
Those sounds slapped Butterbugs alongside his head.
‘We must get down there and help her!’
College looked at his companion, and, beholding his revealed humanitarian power, almost passed out.
‘But Butterbugs, the instability of the route! The chances of our doom! I cannot think that we should attempt it. And that arm will have to come off.’
Butterbugs’ clearing eyes blazed at College.
‘One who suffers calls for help. And help we shall give. Or I alone shall give it!’
‘Butterbugs! It is too risky! And I know about the likelihood of aftershocks.’
‘Then let me be killed!’ he announced, and made his difficult way down.
‘Wait, friend! I come!’ College called out.
The shattering vibrato coming from the woman rendered their passage all the more treacherous. Who knew what toppled barrage, what prone pillar, or what tipped plane of drywall might give way, propelling them into the pit of hazard that invited them to join its mysterious force, as if a new branch of Pandæmonium, the closest to the Earth’s surface yet, had just celebrated its Grand Opening.
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