EGGCORN

His jaw spasms. His legs twitch. Shifting on his seat on the standpipe protruding from his building, he shouts, “I built this to last! My building can withstand the rain. And the phages. Not like you!”

Ignoring him, the commuters slosh by on the sidewalk. There are no shakes for them because they have functioning full-face masks for the phage surges. There are no burns or blisters from the rain for them either because their clear, full-body outerwear suits are wholly intact.

“In your bubbles,” he says, his teeth grinding, “you won’t last. You’ll pop. Like bubbles!”

His neck jerks to the right, forcing him to look at the cars wading through the rainwater. Their headlights are faint in the murky green-gray. Their horns barely pierce the drumming rain. His chin jolts down, forcing him to gaze under his hole-riddled outerwear suit at the synthetic board on his lap. In erratic print the compiboard reads: Need money for mask repair.

The k in mask is pixelated because of the rain that leaks through the holes in his suit. The k is no worse than the other letters. His handwriting used to be impeccable, but because of his faulty mask, his muscles aren’t his anymore.

His hand trembling, he checks his phone and sees, through the phone’s cracked screen, that the message Ready to Receive Payment still flashes. Today is a good day. While the walking bubbles don’t pay him any attention now, someone earlier did. Someone gave him a deposit. Not much. But he got a donation. And the rain is gray. The pain is less when the rain is gray. Not like it is when the rain’s black or yellow. With yellow or black rain, his skin wouldn’t just be blistering where the rain trickles in. It’d be melting.

REEREREERER!

The phage surge siren blares. The lights on his building and on the other buildings on the avenue go from blinking green to flashing red.

Fighting his jerking arms, he reaches under the hood of his outerwear suit to lift his mask from his neck. He pulls apart its clear, gummy membrane and stretches its strap over his head. He manages to set its warped view-through shield over his eyes and press its red sealant edges to his forehead, cheeks, and jaw. Although his mask is faulty, it still offers some protection. The shakes won’t be his only problem, though, if he doesn’t get moving.

He puts his phone in his pocket. He folds the compiboard and tucks it in his waist belt. Squeezing his elbows to his body, he tries to make himself small, but with his tremoring, rain keeps finding the suit’s holes. He winces with each drop. Soon his whole body will be a puckered, green-black mess.

He lurches his way to the side of the building, around people reaching under their suits’ hoods to secure their masks over their faces. A woman stares up at his towering building. He examines his building too. The Aguille. An architectural feat. His nanotech glass is stronger than steel, airtight, and refracts the little light the gray days drip into thousands of rainbows. He’s proud of his work.

He looks at the woman again. She isn’t putting on her mask. There are so many like her now. She thrusts her arms through the armholes of her outerwear suit to unfurl the sleeves. She looks at the sky, her arms stretched up as if asking why. As he totters by her, she begins convulsing.

He moves faster. He can’t be like her. Audney needs him.

His shoulders shuddering, he passes the ornamental buttresses he devised to hide the narrow setback he marked as decorative in the public plans. To distract the passersby, he made the nano-glass arches sparkle like sunlit waterfalls he saw in a historic photograph.

In the setback, shielded from sidewalk traffic, there’s a crystalline lunette. This lunette that’s just big enough to crawl through isn’t in the public plans.

There were many plans and many construction crews.

He pushes his arms through his suit’s armholes to extend the sleeves. He shoves his quivering hands into the suit’s gloves; then, after a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure no one’s watching, he lifts the lunette’s window. On any other building lifting the window without an app would be impossible because decades ago, during the Great Retrofitting, poly-nanotech that requires an app to operate was layered over all buildings’ exterior facades and internal walls, ceilings, and floors as protection against the accelerating phage surges and increasingly potent rain.

He crawls through the lunette, dropping the window behind him. He waits for the sucking sound that signals the lunette is sealed. Then he inches forward to a tunnel where he can stand. He closes the door to the crawlway. As he waits for his nanotech to erase the door’s outline, he places his shaking hand on the tunnel wall, relishing the feel of his creation.

There was no new construction. Not since the Great Retrofitting. The perpetual burning rain made it impossible. Until his building. He was clever. He infused the Aguille’s materials with his nanotech in a warehouse, and as the materials were assembled at the construction site, the nanotech in each component locked in with the next, erasing all seams where appropriate—along walls, ceilings, and floors—and providing more protection than the Great Retrofitting’s poly-nano layering design. Much of the building he kept secret, but his nanotech’s composition and algorithm were breakthroughs he shared with the investors to get them not only to fund this project but to inspire them to build more.

But they didn’t build more. This fortress, with its own water purification and power systems, designs of which he also shared with the investors to encourage citywide improvements, is the last building that went up. The investors didn’t listen as he described how the system of interconnected, nano-layered filters and tanks that neutralize the rain’s acids could be implemented on a larger scale. They didn’t listen as he explained how his design to store energy from footfall could be retrofitted into existing homes. They didn’t listen because they got what they wanted—the patents for his designs, and this building, where they’re sure they’ll survive if the city implodes.

He knows they won’t survive, though. Only the building will.

Once the crawlway door’s concealed, he staggers down the tunnel. White lights blink on with his jerking steps. There are three other camouflaged doors in this tunnel—two along the tunnel’s gray walls and one disguised by what looks like a dead end. Emergency exits are what one crew thought they were building here. Another thought they were constructing air shafts.

The first door he passes requires a hard push on the bottom to release the nano seal. It opens to stairs that lead to the roof, where he built a saltwater pool and an aquaponic farm, elements of the building’s rain filtration and acid neutralization system. The pool and farm are encased in a protective dome that Building Management keeps programmed to reflect a sunny, cloud-swept blue horizon during the day and a star-filled, moonlit sky at night—the stuff of dreams.

To keep up his health, twice a week, late at night when the pool is closed to residents, he climbs the stairs with fitful steps for a swim. After he catches his breath at the top of the stairs, he pushes on the wall that opens into a utility closet lined with shelving for towels. He grabs a towel when he creeps through the space. His swims never last long. It’s not the sting of saltwater that cuts his swims short (he knows the salt is good for his wounds). It’s the generated night sky that makes him ache to return to her.

The secret stairs lead to another place: a door to a closet in the apartment he was bequeathed for architecting this building. There’s no risk of the apartment’s current occupants discovering the door because of his seamless nanotech and the built-ins he installed in the closet to further the ruse. Sometimes he stops on the stairs and presses his forehead to this door. They spent many nights together just beyond it, their talk and laughter barricading them from the world.

When they married and she moved in, only then did he show her the hidden door and what was beyond it. As he expected, she understood why he built this place. Like him, she loves reading. And of all the things to read on their compireaders, world history books and essays are their favorite (with ones about historic gardening a close second for her). She knows families like hers in buildings like this will be natural targets for frustrated rage when the tipping point is reached. And if history taught anything, there’s always a tipping point.

Holding her hand that first night, he took her up the stairs to the rooftop. He explained how he placed the security cameras throughout the building to conceal his movements. He showed her the second invisible door in the tunnel that, with a push on its top right corner, opens to Restaurant Himmel’s kitchen. He showed her the oversized compiboard he had installed, not only to prevent restaurant equipment from being stacked against the door but to facilitate the development of the menu that reflects the day’s harvest from the aquaponic farm. Fresh vegetables and real fish, rare treats, are why Restaurant Himmel, which only serves building residents and their guests, is so popular.

Sometimes, late at night, using the secret passageway, they’d sneak into the kitchen for dessert. As they nibbled on the day’s offering, she’d laugh and tell him he was brilliant, but not as brilliant as the pastry chefs here. He’d agree.

Now, when he sneaks in for food, he skips the pastries. He can’t bring himself to eat any without her. But he still studies the scribbles in the margins of the compiboard so he can share them with her: Rax is a loser. Table 7 is the worst. Pig-lady strikes again!

How they laugh at these notes.

That first night, when he took her to the last door in the tunnel, the one that looks like a dead end, he pushed hard in its center to open it. He then led her down the short hallway behind it to another door, this one invisible too except for a keypad disguised as a thermostat.

“I added a code here. For extra security.”

He blushed when she asked what the code was.

“I changed it after I met you,” he said. “0228.”

“The day I first laid eyes on you,” she said, grinning.

It was the building’s grand opening, the evening before the big move-in. Future residents were in attendance, dressed in tuxedos and gowns, their clear outerwear suits and masks checked at the sanitization lobby, where everyone pauses under blowers and ultraviolet lights upon entry. His breath caught when he looked up and saw her in her gauzy peach dress. She was standing on the ballroom’s mezzanine. Her copper-colored hair was swept up in loose swirls. She held a champagne flute to her chest and threw back her head and laughed when someone in her group said something.

He watched her laugh. He watched her as people congratulated him on the building. The people swarming him eventually drew her attention. She looked down and raised her glass to him. It was in that moment he recognized who she was: the daughter of the building’s lead investor, Darrah Edmar, a man whose money pulses through everything.

“You were handsome that night,” she said as he entered the code.

“I hope I still am.”

She laughed. “Of course you are.”

“You, my love, were a breath-stealing sight that night,” he said. “Now you make my heart stall.”

She giggled. “Will you show me this place already?”

Because they came from indoors, he didn’t do this that first night, but now, his hands shaking, he presses the button in the sanitation entry box. The blower and ultraviolet lights snap on. When they turn off, he pulls his suit’s sleeves in and thrusts his trembling arms back inside the suit’s body to undo its internal zippers. With the zippers open he’s able to push the hood up and over his head. He steps out of the holey, stretchy suit and hangs it and his mask on a hook. He sets the compiboard with his plea for donations against the door and turns the blower and ultraviolet lights on again to neutralize any acids or phages that found the openings in his gear. With the sanitation process complete, he slides the other door in the entry box open.

The construction crew that built this space thought they were building another set of staff quarters. It takes a lot of hands to maintain the building, so he was never questioned. These rooms weren’t on the next set of plans.

Standing inside their sanctuary, he remembers the first night with her here vividly. He showed her the kitchenette with its cupboards where he stores the induction burner, icemaker, and water distiller. He remembers demonstrating the coziness of the table for two by taking a seat.

“Did you always expect a guest?” she teased.

His face warmed. “I’m not embarrassed to say that I hoped you’d join me here, love.”

“Not embarrassed? Why the red cheeks then?” She laughed. She eyed the overstuffed chairs in the corner with a lamp between them. “Two reading chairs?”

“After our first Sunday reading fest, I got the second,” he said, blushing again.

“That explains why they don’t match.”

“They’re both gray.”

“Yes, that’s a shame. What those chairs really need are footrests.”

He stares now at the bright sunflower-patterned footrests she selected (she loves the sunflower exhibit at the Botanical Museum). How many hours they could have spent sitting next to each other, perusing their compireaders, their feet perched on her sunny footrests.

That first night she proclaimed, hands on hips, that in addition to footrests, the space needed a garden, so he installed a hydroponic unit, and under her tutelage he learned to grow peppers, lettuces, and tomatoes.

He checks on the current batch now. The wall garden gurgles as he squeezes a tomato. Almost ready. He remembers being stunned that he hadn’t thought to install a garden before her suggestion. This was a place for emergencies. While the cupboards in the kitchenette are stocked with nourishment and beverage cubes ready for reconstitution, he should have known fresh vegetables would be welcomed supplements.

He breathes in the life straining toward the grow lamps and remembers how, after she assessed the main room that night, she inspected the bathroom next. Laughing, she stood in the shower and said there was plenty of room for two. When he showed her the bedroom, she wanted to test the bed, but he insisted she see the rest first.

Laughing, she trailed him to the last room.

“What is this place?” she asked, examining the vents covering the walls and ceiling.

He explained that his first plan for this room only had two vents, ones large enough to crawl through to escape to higher floors in an emergency.

“Why the other vents?” she asked.

His face warmed again as he confessed that as he started thinking about emergencies and being trapped here if the building was overrun, he felt claustrophobic. It became harder to breathe in here, so he had more vents put in. He made a plan where this room was labeled as one of the building’s central air purifiers.

“And there is a purifier,” he said. “But instead of blowing clean air into the building, it draws air from the highest floors, purifies and oxygenates it, and then spreads the air through these rooms. These vents only connect to the highest floors. In case the rain breaches the lower levels. The rain won’t, though.”

“Get in?”

“Nothing can get through my designs. But just in case. You know. It’s always good to have an exit plan.”

She hesitated. “Do you hear that?”

“What?”

“Shhh. Listen.”

He did as instructed and heard barely audible murmurs. He couldn’t believe he’d never noticed this before. Mortified, he said, “I didn’t put the vents in to eavesdrop.”

She laughed. “I know.”

“It was easier to connect the vents to already existing ones,” he said, trying to explain.

“You can’t hear what they’re saying. It’s just soft sounds.” She pressed her ear to a grate. “This is the Whisper Room.”

“The Whisper Room?”

“It’s peaceful. The soft voices.” She smiled at him. “For a creative genius, you’ve disappointed me, though.”

“Why’s that?” he asked, chuckling.

“The same boring white vent covers? Really?”

For months they searched for vent covers. Vents became obsolete with the Great Retrofitting since the poly-nano layers encased everything, and newly installed air-chillers in every room became the norm. He had to have all the boring vent covers, as she described them, in the Aguille custom printed since he reintroduced the central air concept in his designs. They searched obscure shops and often paid high prices for the covers they found. Some shop owners found their quest curious. It was clear they weren’t Scavengers trying to reach material quotas. She told them they were for art. With her infectious laugh, the shop owners didn’t need convincing.

They swapped out the white covers with the ones they found—brass ones, brushed steel and bronze ones, all of them patterned with squares, triangles, or curvy lines. She then procured a dark-blue chaise lounge designed for two with opposing headrests. This was delivered to his apartment, and together they hauled it down the secret stairs in sections. After they reassembled the chaise lounge in the Whisper Room, she set the walls, floor, and ceiling to black, using the decorating color app he designed for his building.

“Isn’t it too dark?” he asked.

“Not dark enough,” she said, turning off the ceiling light.

The only light was what seeped under the door once she closed it.

“It’s like floating,” she said. Her silhouette reclined on the chaise lounge. “In an ocean maybe.”

He stretched out next to her. “Really?”

“Listen to the waves. Look at those star-filled galaxies,” she said, pointing to the vents catching the faint light in the room.

The soft murmurs were like the once-calm ocean waves in old films, and the reflective metallic vent covers against the black walls and ceiling did make it feel like they were adrift under a foreign night sky that, because of her presence, was far lovelier than the nighttime roof dome.

Thinking of her, he moves to push his long, gray hair out of his eyes. His hands flop in the air. He steps inside the Whisper Room, hating what he’s become.

“Hello, love,” he says.

Hi, Alvis.

Even though she sleeps, he can hear her. He places a trembling hand on the clear, glowing case she slumbers in, a Cryargus, the cryogenic pod brand used on destination-less spaceflights. These spaceflights, advertised as being for intrepid explorers, are just a way to succumb for the rich. Deciding not to mask during a phage surge, like the woman on the sidewalk earlier, is the common person’s out.

Audney looks like she did ten years ago when she reclined in the box. She teased him then that she’ll be an enchanted sleeper like in fairy tales. He wishes he can touch her but there’s no cure. He won’t wake her to pain.

“Did you have sweet dreams, love?” he asks.

Such nice dreams.

It’s no surprise to him that she has good dreams here in her favorite room, where she can hear the hum of people. He sleeps on the chaise lounge to be by her. He brought the table in here too so he can eat with her. If the room was larger, he’d bring in the reading chairs. Only one will fit in the space, though. He can’t separate the pair.

“It’s a good day,” he says. “Got a donation. Can you believe it?”

Stop going out.

“You know that’s not an option. If there’s an emergency, we won’t get far if I don’t have new equipment.”

The irony that he needs a new mask and suit to survive begging for them isn’t lost on him but there’s no choice.

I don’t like it.

“Don’t worry.”

You’re still staying nearby?

“Yes, love.”

Early on, fearing he’d be recognized, he went far from the building to beg for funds to replenish their stocks. He got caught in black rain once during a phage surge. At least the rain wasn’t yellow. He wouldn’t be here now, he’s sure, if it was yellow. That day, before he could make it home, the rain burned holes in his suit and damaged his mask. The shakes from phage exposure set in then. He’s not sure if he’ll ever fully recover. He sticks close to the building now. With his sores and growing hair (his twitching hands make giving himself a trim too risky), there’s no worry that someone will recognize him now.

I hate you suffering, Alvis.

“Please, love. Stop worrying.”

Steal a guest’s outerwear suit from the sanitation lobby.

“You know people working here would get in trouble.”

He hears her sigh.

I know. With me in this box—it’s pointless anyway. If there’s an emergency.

“We’ve talked about this. I’ll wrap your box in a blanket, so no one can see you. I still have the hand truck. We’ll find somewhere to hide.”

There’s nowhere to hide.

“You’re being pessimistic.”

She sighs again.

To change the subject, he asks, “How about a report?”

She asked him, soon after the new vent covers were in place, if a vent connected to her father’s apartment. When he confirmed that there was a link to the main vent that branches to the rooms in her father’s suite, she said she wished she could hear his conversations. He reminded her that the vents aren’t for eavesdropping.

“I wouldn’t do that to others,” she said. “But my dad? He isn’t good.”

“That’s a fact. There’s no need to confirm it.”

“He’ll be involved in what’s coming.”

“Hearing conversations won’t change anything.”

“But we’d have more time to prepare.”

She had a point. Nourishment cubes have a long shelf life, but the inventory needs periodic refreshing. Knowing when to refresh would be good.

“We’d have to amp up the vibrations,” he said.

An idea sparked. He bought an e-stethoscope. It worked. Her father’s vent is high up and requires standing on the chaise lounge to reach it. Because they listen often, they keep the vent’s cover off. They learn the most on Thursdays, when her father plays billiards with his acquaintances. She thought dark scheming happened at these get-togethers. She was right.

Through campaign donations her father and his acquaintances control the elected Planners and therefore the city. They fuel unnecessary consumption through clever marketing and regulatory bypasses. Everyone needs more things, more conveniences. Her father and his friends make sure people know they need more because more buying means more money. Resource implications are irrelevant. Their focus on satisfying today’s gratifications, maximizing today’s profits, is erasing the future. They know this. It doesn’t matter. It won’t be them left to survive on what, if anything, remains.

Before their eavesdropping Audney used to try to coax her father to do good. He relented at times, supporting admissions-free days at the museums, donating to vocational schools (workers are needed, he mused). Despite these drips of generosity, she could never convince him to do more. She always loathed her father. She loathed him even more after listening to the vent. Alvis shared her feelings.

But there was a time when he thought her father might be an ally.

After they married, her father insisted they have dinner together at Restaurant Himmel once a month. At one of these dinners, her father, sipping his cocktail, waved the waiter away when he came to refill their waters.

“There’ll be a cure,” Alvis, continuing his fight with Audney, said. “Be optimistic.”

“You sound like the never-ending subway line displays. ‘Know-how. Optimism. Gratitude.’ It’s bullshit. You know that,” she said, shooting her father a look Alvis feared said too much. They knew her father and his friends were behind the new feel-good campaign selling their illusion: All is great in the city; the future is bright. People consume more when happy.

If her father saw anything in her glance, he didn’t show it. He studied the ice in his drink.

“It’s not bad believing in know-how and optimism,” Alvis said, needing something, no matter how dubious, to cling to. “With know-how, they’ll find a cure.”

“More like n-o—no-how.”

“Please, Audney.”

“The pain’s too much. I can’t stand it.”

“Then we’ll preserve you.”

“So I should go to Wizenland and hop on a destination-less spaceflight?”

“No, here. We can preserve you here.”

She sighed. “Up there. Here. It’s pointless. And expensive.”

“It’s not pointless. We’re buying time until there’s a cure. Darrah,” he said to her father, “you’ll help, right?”

Her father sipped his drink. “Losing your mother…” He cleared his throat. “I’ll help if you want this, Audney.”

“Please, Audney,” Alvis begged.

Her bottom lip trembled.

“For me.”

A tear slipped from her eye. “Fine. If you need this, Alvis. Fine.”

Darrah purchased the Cryargus, and for a few months he visited their apartment weekly to check on his sleeping daughter. He and Alvis would talk during these visits about mundane things, like the day’s menu at Restaurant Himmel. One day Alvis, feeling like there may be a bond forming between them, ventured beyond the restaurant’s specials. He asked why the patents for his designs hadn’t been shared yet so the city can benefit.

“It’s not an optimal time to sell those,” Darrah said.

“Optimal?”

“We’ll get more for them when things are dire.”

“How can things get more dire than they already are?”

“You two are so similar.” Darrah sighed. “It’s not time for the patents. But it is time to say goodbye.”

“Then good night,” Alvis said, swallowing his frustration. He stood to see him out.

“No. It’s time to say goodbye to her.”

“What? Because I brought up the patents?”

“It’s just time.”

“There’s no cure yet.”

“Are you really so naïve, Alvis? Profits for the treatments are optimal. Why would they change the model?” He shook his head. “I gave you what I didn’t have with her mother: time to come to terms with this. To cope. It’s time to let Audney go.”

“No,” Alvis said.

“Pick a date to wake her. It’s happening.”

He left before Alvis could argue. Alvis packed the things they cherished most then. The quilt of faraway galaxies her grandmother made that he sleeps under now. Their matching sunflower mugs. Their compiphotoalb that displays pictures from their wedding day back to their childhoods. How they love looking at these old pictures. She was the first to notice that her smiles during her grand birthday parties and dress-up affairs were always flat compared to his childhood smiles that, despite the not-so-grand backdrops, were always bright. He loved his parents and they him. It showed. Missing his parents (they both died—his father when he was at university, his mother soon after), he grabbed his outerwear and mask (he wishes he’d thought to grab hers too—he could use them now) and hauled their things through the closet and down the hidden stairs. After deactivating her pod’s tracker, he strapped the pod to the hand truck he stole from the restaurant and bumped her down the stairs too. The monitoring bands around her head, waist, and limbs held her tight, but still he apologized to her with each jostle.

He listened to her father’s vent daily after that. There was a commotion when her father and Building Management realized he and Audney were missing. Someone asked if the Securers should be alerted. Holding his breath, he listened as Darrah, sounding mournful, said to let them be. From his voice he knew his daughter’s illness was hard for him too.

He doesn’t deserve your sympathy. Not then. Not now. He froze our assets, remember? To make us surface like drowning rats.

“You’re right.” He had to steal a phone and create false accounts because of her father.

He hears her sigh again.

What about that report?

He grabs adhesive and the e-stethoscope off the table, and steadying himself, he climbs onto the chaise lounge. He turns the e-stethoscope to its most sensitive setting, presses it to the vent floor, and secures it there with the adhesive. He doesn’t trust his trembling hands. Clanking might draw attention. He inserts the earpieces. He hears the boy. Her father, after telling his acquaintances that he was tired of living in history, remarried and had a son three years back.

“Your baby brother is by a vent, love.”

It is a good day.

“What tat?” the boy asks.

“That’s a cat,” the Caregiver responds.

“Cath?” the boy repeats, sounding confused.

“Yes, a cat. We can see some at the Natural History Museum.”

“We go?”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“What tat?” the boy asks again.

“They must be looking at pictures,” Alvis says to Audney.

He’s a clever one.

“That is…” the Caregiver says. “Oh, I know. It’s a baby tree.”

“Thh-ree?”

“Tree. We saw trees at the Botanical Museum. Remember?”

“Thh-ree baby?”

“What are they called?” the Caregiver says. “Eggcorns. That’s it.”

“Egch-corn.”

“No, eggcorn.”

Alvis wants to shout that the Caregiver is wrong.

Eggcorn. Acorn. No one listens. No one ever listens.

“I know.”

Besides, it doesn’t matter, Alvis.

“Nothing matters anymore, it seems.”

It’s too late for things to matter. You know that.

“You’re right, love. You’re right.”