The Intuitionist

by Colson Whitehead

Sometimes in the room she thinks about the accident and its message. Much of what happened would have happened anyway, but it warms her to know that the perfect elevator reached out to her and told her she was of its world. That she was a citizen of the city to come and that the frail devices she had devoted her life to were weak and would all fall one day like Number Eleven. All of them, plummeting down the shafts like beautiful dead stars. Sometimes in her new room she wonders who will decode the elevator first. It could be Arbo. It could be United. It doesn’t matter. Like the election, their petty squabbling feeds the new thing that is coming. In its own way, it prepares them. She returns to her work. It didn’t have to be her, but it was. Fulton left instructions, but she knows she is permitted to alter them according to circumstances. There was no way Fulton could foresee how the world would change. She returns to the work.