Rising City, Crashing Sky Story

There was a city split by class, the sections were simply named by the locals Uptown and Downtown. Uptown was for the rich and Downtown was for the poor. A denizen of Downtown couldn’t afford to enter Uptown. And a denizen of Uptown wouldn’t dare enter Downtown as it was dirty and sad.

One day, a beggar wandered into Uptown, the rich denizens saw his dirt-stained and tattered clothes and his bare feet and looked at him in disgust. He sat on a busy corner’s sidewalk, set down his coffee can, and held up his sign. He waited a few hours and got nothing. He received a lot of dirty looks.

A little girl asked her mother, “Can I give some money to this poor man?”

“No, we don’t associate with his kind,” the mother replied as they passed the poor man. She pulled out her phone and took a picture. She then called the police.

Two officers dressed in black came over and escorted him off the premises.

“Sorry, sir, but you can’t do this here,” one officer said as he carried him away.

“Your kind is not allowed here. Now take your coffee can and sign and go back where you came from,” the other officer said.

The rich denizens cheered as they took him to the edge of Uptown. The poor man walked back to his hut in Downtown. He was greeted by his family when he arrived.

“Did you get any money from the rich people?” asked his wife.

“No, honey, they kicked me out of town,” the man said.

His children came in and he showed them the empty can.

“Maybe next time?” Marigold, his daughter asked.

“There won’t be a next time,” the father said.

“Looks like we won’t be eating dinner tonight again, kids. Now go to bed,” their mother said.

The kids walked to their rooms in displeasure.

“What are we going to do now?” asked his wife.

“I don’t know, honey, I don’t know,” he replied.

They hugged each other tight.

Protesters barged into Uptown’s city hall and the mayor’s office. They demanded something to be done about the beggar. The mayor informed the mob that the police notified him of the incident earlier. He ordered the chief of police to make them patrol the edge of the downtown area.

“But we have an even better idea,” the leader of the mob said as she unrolled a blueprint onto the mayor’s desk.

“Oh, but how much will this cost?” the mayor asked.

“Does it matter?” Leslie, the leader of the mob, asked back.

“We still have a budget to abide by and how will all of this happen?” the mayor questioned as he pointed at the pillars on the blueprint.

“Well, first we evacuate the citizens — -” Leslie said before the mayor interrupted her.

“Where would we evacuate everyone?” the mayor asked.

“Let me finish, then demolish the buildings and start building the pillars to hold up the new city. Next, the platform to hold said city will be built and forthcoming the construction of the new buildings,” Leslie finished.

“I’ll set up a meeting with the city council tomorrow and I’ll let you know in the next few days,” the mayor said.

“Okay, think about it,” Leslie said as she stuck a sticky note with her number onto the blueprint.

Leslie and the mob left the mayor’s office.

A few weeks later, Marigold the poor man’s daughter looked out her window. She looked up and saw tall pillars rising into the sky. She woke up her parents and they rushed outside. They witnessed cranes with wires lifting the pillars. The family and other denizens of Downtown hurried to the center of the city and saw a fence surrounding the construction and destruction. They peeked through the holes of the fence and saw the rubble of the once beautiful Uptown. Buildings were now pieces of brick and concrete. Streetlights were knocked over and gravel filled the streets and sidewalks instead of cars and rich people. In the center of the rubble were construction men were holding the pillars in place.

“What’s happening, mommy? Why did they destroy the city and why are they putting up pillars?” Marigold asked.

“I don’t know, sweetie, we’ll just have to wait and see,” her mother replied.

The poor people walked back to the shacks.

And every morning for the next few weeks, they looked out the windows and tilted their heads up to see more pillars being putting up.

Eventually, the gigantic circular platform was placed on top of the pillars. Buildings and roads were then constructed. Once the new city was finished, they put in an extremely tall elevator to get to the top.

A few years later, a now ten-year-old Marigold woke up in darkness as the new city blocked out the sun, so she went back to sleep. Hours passed and she woke up again still in darkness. She walked outside to see the glorious metropolis high in the sky. Light formed around the skyscrapers. She went back inside.

The denizens of Downtown renamed their town Undertown as it was below Uptown.

Decades into the future, Tulip, Marigold’s granddaughter wakes up for school. After she got ready, she walked to school and looked up at the now hovering city. (The rich people developed the hovering technology and didn’t need the pillars anymore.) It still blocked out the sun, but she was used to it.

Uptown’s population grew and grew over the years, so they built more buildings and created more stories on the pre-existing buildings. Over time, the city lowered in the sky, so they raised the city higher.

But eventually, the structure of the city couldn’t handle it anymore. It crumbled and cracked under the pressure. The entire city fell out of the sky and crashed back onto the ground, killing hundreds of thousands of denizens of both Uptown and Undertown. The survivors decided to put aside their differences and rebuild the city into a utopia, where no one would be judged by their class or income.