The Building

It was time to rebuild the city and everyone joined in enthusiastically, men, women, and children. Larger pieces of rubble were loaded into trucks and driven to the quarry. Smaller pieces of rubble were swept from the avenues into the alleyways and down into the gutters. The Mayor assigned everyone a task. The larger men were assigned heavy lifting, the skilled men and women rewired the electricity, the children were given brooms. Those with the training operated the heavy machinery, repaired the broken pipes, chopped up the fallen trees, rebuilt the crumbling buildings, resurfaced the cracked roads, cannibalized one automobile to rebuild another, relayed the tracks, cleared out the irrigation system, planted saplings, made playgrounds safe again. By the time Johann returned to the city, it was once again fully functional and there was nothing for him to do.

Rebuilding the city had brought the community together in a unique way. Everyone trusted their neighbor with the same amount of confidence they put in their own brother or sister. The citizens of the city felt no fear at walking around outside at night or leaving their children unattended in the park for they had all bonded together to repair a broken city, each of them had invested time and effort into making the city a paradise and therefor no one would commit a crime against another since they didn't want all their hard work to go to waste. The citizens knew and loved each other to such an extent, they didn't bother to repair the locks on their doors for they weren't required. The differing strata of society even tolerated each other's differences. The law book was no longer enforced because the people didn't need laws. A person would only be punished if he hurt someone else, but this didn't happen. The police stopped harassing people they didn't like and started helping people with their yard work when there weren't any emergencies. The only person anyone was suspicious of was Johann since he didn't help rebuild the city with everyone else.

To solve the problem of Johann, the Mayor decided to give him a part of the city to rebuild and thus he would become a trusted member of society. There was only one building still in need of repair, an old seven story building which the inhabitants were planning on demolishing since it was no longer structurally sound. The Mayor assigned Johann the job of cleaning up this building before it was to be demolished. Seeing the utopia his home town had become and wishing very much to be a part of it, Johann instantly agreed to the Mayor's proposal and began work on the doomed building immediately.

On the first day, Johann replaced the shattered light bulbs and rewired the building so that it had electricity once again. He went floor by floor replacing fuses and splicing wires together. He wasn't originally skilled as an electrician, so he asked one of his friends who was an electrician to help him. His friend had already done his part to rebuild the city and now wished to enjoy the fruits of his labor. Besides, he knew his skill would be wasted on this building since it was scheduled to be demolished once Johann was finished. Thus, Johann's friend refused to help him, so he did the best he could to bring light back to the building on his own. He received a few shocks, but the damage wasn't that extensive and he eventually managed to restore light to the building.

Johann then set about replacing the ceiling tiles which had fallen to the floor. Many of the tiles were cracked and split down the center and thus could not be glued back into the ceiling. Johann went to a supply warehouse and asked for replacement tiles to be fitted into the ceiling. The manager at the warehouse knew that the building was scheduled to be demolished, and thus did want to give Johann any tiles as they would be wasted. Johann returned to the building and did the best he could to fix the ceiling with the old broken tiles, nevertheless there remained many holes in the ceiling. Since the electricity now worked, Johann was able to work throughout the night, and by the end of the second day, Johann had repaired the ceiling as much as was possible.

On the third day, Johann focused on the plumbing. Before the water had been turned off to this building, many burst pipes had leaked, soaking the carpet outside the bathrooms and around the drinking fountains. The basement of the building had been flooded waist high. Johann knew nothing of plumbing, and knew no plumbers would help him, so he just emptied the basement of water with a small bucket. He tossed the excess water out the windows onto the yellowing lawn which surrounded the building. The grass had been without water for a long time, but it was eager to live and gladly accepted the flood of water from Johann's bucket.

When Johann left the building that night, he realized that when he replaced the light bulbs inside the building, he had neglected the street lamps outside in the parking lot. So on the forth day, he retrieved a ladder from the janitor's closet and examined each of the light fixtures in the parking lot. The glass had not been shattered, so Johann concluded that the problem had to be somewhere within the metal poles or underground and he wouldn't be able to repair the damage himself, so he gave up on the street lamps. However, he noticed that while he was outside, people started watching him. Instead of fixing up the interior of the building, he decided instead to work outside, to show everybody that he was friendly.

He got a hand broom from inside and started to sweep the parking lot clear of dust. As he walked up and down the parking lot in the blistering heat of day, he noticed more people out of the corner of his eye stop and watch him. At one point, a small child became interested in him and began to approach. However, the child's mother soon became aware of the situation and intercepted the child, lifting it up in her arms and carrying it a safe distance away from Johann. Johann felt like the worst sort of scum after seeing this, but he reminded himself that once he had finished cleaning the building, he would be as trusted as anyone else, so, picking up his spirits, he continued his task and finished sweeping the parking lot by the end of the day.

The next day, he began removing the rubble from the first floor. He carried each smashed table, chunk of wall, malfunctioning piece of office equipment, and all other debris from the first floor and stacked it in a pile in the parking lot. This activity took him the entire day. Some pieces of debris were so heavy he could only nudge them forward after a running start. He thought to ask other citizens to help him with the particularly heavy bits of rubble, but any time he went outside and tried to make eye contact with someone walking past down the sidewalk, they would utterly ignore him. He saw the citizens in the supermarket across the street routinely help each other with carrying groceries unasked, so he realized they weren't helping him because he wasn't yet a citizen and that once this building had been cleaned up, he would be a part of this grand cooperative, so he once again grew exceedingly happy and continued his task.

Before the fifth day came to a close, Johann noticed cockroaches and vermin scurrying out from underneath the rubble whenever he lifted something up to move it. Johann didn't mind the small animals, but he knew that when the people came to inspect Johann's work, they wouldn't think highly of him if bugs and rats still ran around the building. Therefor, Johann sprayed the entire building with insecticide and set out mouse traps before he left that night.

The next day was the day set for inspection. Johann didn't have any time to make the building presentable before people came streaming in to examine his work. Electrical wires were piled up in the corners, holes in the wall hadn't yet been plastered over, the glue didn't hold the ceiling tiles firmly to the ceiling, the carpet was still wet in places, wind blew dirt back into the parking lot Johann had so meticulously swept, rubble still covered most of the floor, and dead insects and rats were seen in nearly every room. Johann was ashamed at how slovenly the building still appeared after all his hard work, and looking into the faces of the men and women who toured the building, he knew they would never accept him.

After the tour, the citizens of the city met outside and the Mayor elevated himself by standing on a desk Johann had dragged out of the building. Surprisingly, the Mayor praised Johann for all his hard work and officially welcomed him as an official citizen with the full rights and benefits enjoyed by everyone else. The Mayor was eager to have the town whole again and finally solve the problem of Johann. Hearing the Mayor's proclamation, Johann was filled with joy and reintroduced himself to the people of the city. However, declaring Johann a citizen didn't make him one in the eyes of the people. Despite his best efforts to win their affection, they continued to keep their distance from him. Everywhere he went, he was given the same guarded reception. The people were now fine with Johann living in their city, but none of them wanted to be his friend.

Thus, at the end of the day, Johann went back to the building, even though his work there was completed. He climbed to the seventh floor of the building and sequestered himself in a small office. The next day, he remained quiet as the demolition crew set up the dynamite. He waited in the room for the explosion. He didn't look out the window for fear of being spotted. He instead focused his attention on the carpet. He picked out crumbs of plaster and dirt and the bodies of insects. He became so focused in his task, he didn't hear the countdown and didn't feel the rumble of the building.

After the building was demolished, some of the people noticed that Johann was missing, but none of them worried about it. They didn't care if he chose to move to a different town or to become a hermit. He never fully belonged among them anyway. He wasn't a real citizen.

6 August 2001