Dreamland

Sky Scrapers

I've been unemployed for a while and an old friend of mine just got me a job. I'll be working with him structurally testing old high-rise tenements. It's my first day, I'm working beside him. We're on a scaffold near the top of a building, he's showing me what I need to do.

"It's pretty simple, Steve. You just scrape your chisel along the mortar between the bricks until you find a loose spot. Then you chisel out all the loose mortar and see if any of the bricks fall out. If they don't, you mark on the chart to have the mortar redone. If the bricks fall out, you mark the chart with how many they need to replace. See, this section here is really bad," he explains, pulling out big handfuls of loose bricks and mortar.

The scaffold attached to the building starts to shake, and I get worried "Hey Mike, if you keep pulling out all the loose bricks the building will collapse!" I tell him.

"Nah, it's pretty sturdy. Nothing to worry about."

Then the scaffold starts to collapse, it all happens so fast. I manage to grab onto the side of the building and scramble my way to the rooftop. Mike isn't so lucky, he falls to his death.

I'm standing on top of the building, it's swaying back and forth, ready to collapse. I see that I am close to the top of another tenement, and when the building sways in that direction I take a flying leap, grab onto the edge of the other building and pull myself to safety just before the building I was standing on collapses.

The retrofit supervisor walks out onto the rooftop to meet me. "Sorry about what happened to your buddy Steve. One of the hazards of this job, you'll get used to it. At least he got you trained. Hang tight, we'll have a new scaffold up for you in less than an hour and you can start testing the next building..."