William picked up the telephone on the third ring.
“Hello?”
“Why, hello there!” the voice chuckled warmly. “Is that William?”
“Uh, yes, speaking—who is this?”
“I’m Nimrod, your floor manager,” the voice continued in a strange sing-song cadence. “Think of me as your cheery one-stop shop for everything! Anything you could possibly want, just hop on the phone to me and I’ll get it sorted for you in a jiffy.”
“Ah, well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Nimrod; I’ll be in touch if I need anything.”
William motioned to replace the telephone speaker to its wall-mounted hook.
“How are you settling in?” Nimrod asked.
“Fine,” William sighed, bringing the facsimile antique speaker back to his ear. “Not really had much time to unpack, actually; you called as the drones brought the last box in.”
“Ah, how exciting! You’ve still got so much ahead of you!”
“Mm, yes, I suppose I do.”
William paused, waiting for some kind of response, but there was only silence—not even the sound of breathing.
“Well, thank you for calling,” William started to hang up again.
“Oh, William?” Nimrod called.
“Yes?”
“I just wanted to say welcome, on behalf of Babel Apartments Incorporated, to your new life in the Tower.”
William paused again, unsure how to respond.
“Thanks.”
He hung up. The dead silence from the speaker remained in the air.
“It’s only a machine,” a woman’s voice muttered. William turned and saw her, leaning against the door frame of his apartment. He casually straightened his polo shirt, brushing away its subtle creases.
“A machine?”
“Nimrod,” she sighed. Her eyes remained on his brand-new carpet. “He’s not real. You can hang up on him mid-sentence, he doesn’t care. I do it all the time.”
“Oh, right, good to know. Thanks.”
William paused.
“I’m William, by the way,” he continued, broadening his smile. “Just moved in.”
“Yeah,” the woman replied, shifting her eyes to the boxes piled up around him. “I can see that.”
“Uh, have you been living here long?”
She shrugged. “Two weeks. But they only finished building this floor three weeks ago. So I’m not really sure if that’s a long time, or if it’s no time at all.”
The woman continued to peruse the boxes from the door, as though she were conducting a visual inventory: counting them, perhaps. Her arms remained crossed.
“Well, I was, uh, thinking,” William continued, “once I’m unpacked, you could come over for a drink, maybe?”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “I’d like that.”
“Great! I’ll, uh, let you know—which apartment are you?”
“278-B.”
“Right, and do you mind me asking your name?”
“Esmerelda.”
“Well, it’s been a pleasure meeting you, Esmerelda.”
“Likewise.”
William swirled the port in his glass and leaned back into his exquisite cream sofa. The light of the distant sunset refracted through the deep purple liquid. He took a sip.
“So, what brought you to the Tower?” he asked.
Esmerelda shrugged, staring into the sunset. “My parents were in the water industry. Life was good, for a while. Then people got envious of us, of our success. Started blaming us for all sorts of things, none of which were our fault. They were killed by eco-terrorists, in the end. I cashed out before those thugs could come after me. That’s why I came here. I can’t live on the surface.”
“The surface?”
She gestured out the window with a contemptuous nod. “The outside. Among the rabble. Whatever you want to call it. No, I had to find somewhere more… respectable. Somewhere I wouldn’t have to leave.”
“You haven’t left?” William asked, leaning closer to Esmerelda. Her eyes remained fixed on the sunset.
She shrugged again. “Why would I? If I need food, I call Nimrod and the drones bring it to me. If I need exercise, I go to the fitness suite. If I need fresh air, I use a canister. And if I need company, well, the residents here are more cordial than most. It helps that we all speak the same language.”
“What, English?”
“No. Money.”
“Very funny,” William nodded with a subtle laugh. Esmerelda remained straight-faced, the port in her glass still frozen, pristine, untouched. He paused, taking another sip from his glass, waiting for her to ask him something in return.
“Your view…” she eventually started.
William frowned, turning his attention to the landscape beyond his floor-to-ceiling windows. His eyes strained against the sunlight, obscured as it was by layers of smog and pollution. “What about it?”
Esmerelda sighed, evidently deep in thought. “It’s nicer than mine.”
It took a few moments for William, lying prone in his four-poster bed, to realise that he wasn’t imagining it: he was, in fact, falling. The unexpected inertia, initially dismissed as residue from his half-asleep brain, made itself suddenly real as it slammed his body into his delicate handmade mattress. He jumped awake to the sound of glass breaking.
Stumbling through to the main room in the dark, he saw that his beautiful windows had been shattered, though not broken entirely. The subtle moonlight illuminated the newly formed cracks against the dark vista. He crawled his way to the telephone.
“Nimrod?” he called desperately.
“Why, hello there William! How can I help you?”
“What the hell was that? Was it an earthquake? Do we need to evacuate?”
“Please remain calm, William. Your safety in the Tower is our number one priority. The entire building is fitted out with cutting-edge safety features that are designed to protect our residents above all else. Please rest assured, the safest place for you to be is inside your home.
“OK, OK,” William gasped with relief.
“I’m looking at the building’s sensors now; give me a moment.”
The line went dead, then returned seconds later.
“Ah, I see. No need to fear, William, the danger has passed.”
“Why? What happened?”
“The safety features that we built into the structure of the building triggered at the ground floor, most likely because of a delivery of new building materials to floor 308.”
“What?”
“Well, in layman’s terms, the weight of the building got too much for the underlying structure to sustain, so the safety feature was deployed—successfully, I might add—at the bottom of the structure.”
“What safety feature?” William shouted. “Why did it feel like everything dropped?”
“That’s probably because everything did drop, my good fellow,” Nimrod answered with a synthetic chuckle. “The safety feature prevents a total collapse of the building by isolating the excess force onto the lowest section of the structure, thereby protecting the Tower’s residents.”
“Wait, you’re saying that the bottom floor… was crushed?”
“Well, that’s certainly one way of putting it. Alternatively, you might say that the building’s safety systems worked exactly as intended.”
“But how is that protecting the residents?”
“Well, you’re still alive, aren’t you?”
“The people on the ground floor aren’t!”
“A terrible tragedy, that is true, but think: they died so that you, and all the other residents above them, could live. What a privilege. It truly brings a tear to one’s eye, doesn’t it?”
“This is insane!” William cried.
“Now, now,” Nimrod sneered. “Let’s not get all excited, eh? After all, what would you prefer that we do next time around? Your sentimentality is admirable, it really is; but if we don’t deploy the safety feature on the bottom floor, then the entire Tower might collapse. And you don’t want that, do you?”
William swallowed. “No, I don’t.”
“Attaboy. Now, I’m terribly sorry that this has happened at such an inopportune time—I know how awful it is to have one’s sleep interrupted—but perhaps you should go back to bed. We’ll send some drones to replace your windows, clear away the mess and replace any damaged items—all gratis, of course—oh, and they’ll update your apartment number too. Should be sorted by the time you wake up.”
“What? Why does my apartment number need to be changed?”
“Ah, well, I’m afraid you’re no longer on the 278th floor of the Tower, William—you’re on the 277th. Now, go and get some sleep, my good man. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
William hung up the phone, rubbed his temples, then dragged himself back to his bedroom.
“Did Nimrod tell you what happened?” William asked as Esmerelda wandered into his apartment, bleary-eyed.
“Yes, and I heard the drones doing repairs this morning. It’s terrible, isn’t it?” she yawned, settling herself on his sofa and staring out of his newly fixed windows. “We paid for views from the 278th floor, and now we have to make do with views from the 277th.”
“No, it’s not just that,” William hissed in an exaggerated whisper as he checked the corridor outside, bolting the front door. He rushed to join her on the sofa.
“This safety mechanism: it’s built into all floors of the Tower, not just the lower ones—and every time it deploys, we get one floor closer to the bottom. One day…”
The tiredness instantly wiped itself from Esmerelda’s face, replaced by equal parts fear and determination.
“It could be us…” she finished.
“What the hell do we do?” William asked, keeping his voice low. “I can’t leave the Tower, it would ruin me financially—not to mention it’d be social suicide.”
“Shush. I’m thinking.”
William nodded, rubbing his hands anxiously.
Esmerelda bit her lip. “I have to move to a higher floor.”
“But I asked Nimrod—prices of new apartments skyrocketed overnight. I think everyone else had the same idea.”
“How much?”
William mumbled a very, very large number. Esmerelda’s eyes narrowed.
“I know,” William added. “It’s exorbitant.”
“It’s good business sense. But there’s no way I’ll be able to afford that. Unless…”
Esmerelda closed her eyes, running the sums. Then, out of nowhere, she flung herself in front of William, landing on one knee, her hand extended.
“Marry me,” she commanded.
“I’m sorry?”
“The Tower offers a discount to married couples moving into single-bedroom apartments.”
“You can’t be serious…”
“If we pool my assets with your trust fund—”
“Wait, how the hell did you know about my—”
“Listen to me William!” she growled. “I am the only chance you have of getting off this godforsaken floor, do you understand me? So, unless you want to be crushed into pieces like those plebs on the lower floors, you’d better take this offer right now—before everyone else figures it out and the prices go up even higher.”
William swallowed, his mouth remaining cracked and dry.
“Well?” Esmerelda asked, extending her hand closer. “Do we have a deal?”
William walked amongst the stacked boxes that had been carefully shuttled up to the newly finished floor overnight. The furniture, a beautifully complementary combination of their previous apartments’ décor, matched their new home perfectly. Yes, it was a little more cluttered than his old place, that was to be expected; besides, he preferred his living space to feel full. Empty space left him uneasy.
The last remaining drone stood in the kitchen, adding the finishing touches to a fruit bowl arrangement with spotless white gloves. She inspected the composition, then, noticing William’s presence, nervously waited for his approval. He nodded. She quietly shuffled out of the apartment, avoiding his gaze.
His wife perched on his sofa—their sofa—deeply engrossed in a financial report on some distant emerging market. He sat down next to her, admiring the glorious 312th-floor vista, safe at last.
“What do you think of the view?” he asked with a satisfied grin.
She seemed to not hear him and continued to scroll, silently. That was alright. He already knew the answer to his question. It was perfect.
