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...in one thousand rooms, identical as postage stamps, churning out one million words per hour. Leviathan-sized presses with quadruple-expansion engines, enough electrical cable to engirdle the world three times, and reams and reams of paper!"
"Hurray!" shouted the Councillors, and the rapping of their knuckles became deafening.
"We'll flood the market!" cried the Mayor. "The Spirit of the Age impels us! Good God, think of it. There'll be nothing else to read!"
"Synergy!" squealed the littlest Councillor, squirming in a fit of apoplexy.
His Worship quelled him with a hard stare, then tenderly patted back the thirty strands of mayoral hair. "The past is finished," he resumed in a more sedate tone. "The future is around the corner."
"A noble vision," waxed the partisan press," has unfolded in our civic halls". The opposition editorialized soberly, "We fear we may be building a white elephant." The public, entertaining no such doubts, was electrified.
Illustrious architects flocked to compete for the prize. Damayanta Murti, a Hindu princess, came in a chariot drawn by swans. This royal-blooded architect had first won the adpratoion of the architectural world with the design of her mother's summer palace in Darjeeling, in onyx. Todd Burton of San Bernardo, California, arrived by glider. He was a pioneer of holistic architecture, believing that buildings should harmonize with the rhythms of the universe.
THE JURY was appointed. As much as His Worship the Mayor would have preferred to dominate it personally, he was a wily enough politician to realize that in the interest of impartiality the chair must go to a puppet. He hit on the inspired notion of having the Littles Councillor elected by consent of Council. Six other jurors were selected: a famous novelist, an unknown poet, the director of the architectural academy, an engineer, a developer, and a benighted soul called a "layperson," who was yanked off the street still clutching her shopping bags and with her car keys dangling from her mouth.
The Littlest Councillor hosted a dinner party for the jurors at his home, where His Worship showed up "by chance." It was late in the evening before they departed in various states of inebriation, the poet pirouetting, the engineer breaking off in mid-song to notice the stars. The Littlest Councillor climbed upstairs and into his pyjamas.
"Ready for bed?" asked his wife.
"In a minute, pet. I'll just get a glass of water downstairs, and check the locks."
In the kitchen, he heard a light rap at the patio window. When he drew back the curtain, he nearly jumped out of his skin, for he saw a black face with two ghostlike eyes staring in at him. "Who is it?" he called through the glass, tightening his grip on the fireplace poker.
It turned out to be Yarmouth Banginda, a young architect....
NOTE: All illustrations and photos
have been removed from this article.
More articles from Queen's Quarterly
Against scaffolding.(Poem)(Brief article), March 22, 2008
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