The Building, part 3

…But on Sunday, everything changed.

I happened to be walking through the town, just a few blocks from the Krimm building. Suddenly, there was a deafening crack that ripped through the air. It was as loud as a bomb, but sounded like rocks being torn apart. I looked toward the building–the location of the sound–and saw that it was falling apart!

Thousands of cracks ran down the sides of the building and chunks were falling off of it, crashing to the ground. It was like the hatching of an egg, with the outer shell of the building explosively falling apart. But when each piece hit the ground, it was surrounded by a cloud of dust and essentially vaporized. It was as if the outer shell of the building were made of mere dust that was barely held together. As the outer wall of the building fell apart, it seemed to cause little, if any damage when it struck the ground. Bits even fell on cars and people, but there was no damage from where I could see. They all seemed fine.

I had become distracted watching the pieces of the shell fall to the ground, throwing up massive clouds of dust, that I didn’t notice what was being revealed. There was another building nested inside the shell. It appeared somewhat normal, except that instead of windows, there were what appeared to be massive eyeballs. There were hundreds of them. It was as if someone took an ordinary skyscraper and replaced every window with an eyeball. They were moving constantly, glancing all over the city, watching everything.

From the central and tall vantage point, it felt like the eyes could see everywhere in the city. The eyes could see almost everywhere, and they were scanning every block, every street, every person. It felt like they could see into every single room in the city. There were hundreds if not thousands of eyes, scanning all over the entire city. I was too stunned by this strange sight to move or look away.

Suddenly I felt a hand grab my arm. I jerked my head away from the building to realize it was one of Krimm’s minions grabbing me.

Before I could speak or ask why he was grabbing me, he firmly pulled my arm to walk with him and said, “Let’s keep moving. No need to look at Mr. Krimm.”

He had a firm grip on my arm for nearly a full block, walking me along briskly until I was more removed from the tower. I could still see it over the top of some buildings, but didn’t have a direct view of it. I felt the eyes on me. The minion said nothing else, he just released my arm with a little shove and returned to his post.

I had no idea what to think and wandered home in a daze.

For the next few days, I was too nervous to leave my house for fear that the eyes would see me again and assume I was doing something wrong. I didn’t want to feel another firm grip on my arm and be moved along, or worse, ‘arrested,’ as I had seen many people be lately. People were confused by this, because as far as we knew, Krimm was not the law. He was not associated with the government, yet he was arresting people as if he had the authority.

I heard one story from a neighbor that the police had resisted Krimm’s minions, and from his tower he saw this, and sent more of his minions as reinforcements until there were so many of them they overwhelmed the police. All the officers were bound with some strange type of rope and taken into the tower. We don’t know what happened to them after that.

We didn’t hear of any other instances of the police pushing back against Krimm. Perhaps they simply acknowledged that he had bested them, that his forces were stronger than theirs. He had the advantage of surveillance; he could instantly see everything happening in the city and direct his men to wherever they needed to go in an instant. The police had nothing close to this, just their walkie talkies.

Krimm’s eyes had won him the city.

Over the following months, more and more people gave in to the power of the building. It was futile to push back against him. You couldn’t get within a mile of the tower without its countless eyes seeing you, and sending men to come stop you.

Fewer people walked on the streets. I heard rumors about tunnels being utilized by citizens to get around more effectively. This lasted a few weeks until Krimm’s men began patrolling them as well. And a little while after that, eyes were installed along all the tunnels as well. Rather than cables or wires connecting them, they seemed to be connected to the tower with the same organic-looking rope that the police had been bound with. It was like a giant vein or organ. The red rope ran along the top of the tunnels, and all tunnels eventually made their way back to the tower.

Even under the earth, Krimm could see everything.

It seemed that this is how life would be from now on, until I had an idea.

to be continued…

e

Day 10 of 100 blogs

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