Pylons

'Jesus, what is that noise?', W. says on the phone. 'Are they still building up there?' They're still building.

They've been driving pylons into the earth, I tell W. And great cranes have gone up, the drivers in their cabs on eye level with me, on the twelfth floor.

Great drill shafts 100 foot high, boring slowly through the layers of soil and rock. The new buildings will be bolted to the earth by the pylons, that's clear. The new buildings will be driven into the earth, and will drive upwards from the earth, silver-windowed, steel framed, ready for the future …

They're keeping the facades of some of the old buildings, I tell W. The elaborate entryways, some doorframes and ornamentation: the Victorian shell around the new obscenity.

Because they've hollowed it out, the university, I tell W. They've drilled out its core. They're cored it out just as they will core us out. Because they're going to scoop out our insides, that much is clear. They're going to unscrew our skulls and dig out our brains. They'll chip out our teeth – our yellow teeth – and replace them with veneers.