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Babel
Tishri 6th, 2038
Centuries after the Great Deluge, there was still work to be done to mend the world. Only the LORD could do fire’s destructive work with rain. Many homes had been lost. Many souls had returned to dust. Those who still remained tethered to the mortal plane paid their penance in labor. All who breathed were busy.
Architects often found themselves busier than most. Many dwellings needed repair, refinement, or replacement. As building resources in the region dwindled, it became harder to convince the builders to continue. Humanity had resorted to migration. They recognized that this was simply God’s way of telling them to start over, and they had. For the past 700 years or so, Shinar was where they called home.
Ahnna of Susa had walked the Earth for about two centuries. She was much too young to have witnessed the Flood firsthand, but the after effects had shaped her to be who she was- an architect. Her family had urged her against pursuing this trade, as they believed it was not her place. When she asked them who designed and built Susa’s library that provided knowledge, who had forged the grand aqueduct that gave the town water to drink, and who had erected the temple of worship that their family prayed in, they admitted it was her. She had corrected them, stating it was God who gave her the gift of building, and it would go against God to waste such a gift. When she heard of the opportunity awaiting her in Babylon, she headed west in a wagon that she had built.
The city of Babylon was much larger than Susa, and far more grand. It was built one the Perath river with a clear appreciation for natural beauty. It featured an all-encompassing wall that stood proud over the buildings. The buildings, which were plentiful. There were many citizens, and each must have lived in a marvelous home. All sorts of trees and small plants grew in abundance around the city. It was said that a sublime garden where the greens hang above the walkways awaits somewhere in the city. Ahnna only took a moment to admire the city before heading to the Northern Palace. Her purpose was to work.
The palace interior was, much to Ahnna’s surprise, rather dull. The city seemed so grand; it was hard to understand why the inside of the palace seemed so barren. It was devoid of any interior designs or colors. A disheveled man holding a large sheet of paper approached from a far off stairwell.
“What business have you here?”
“Ah yes,” Ahnna turned to the man, “I’m here for work. I plan to speak with King Nimrod.”
The man tilted his head, and his eyebrows tilted in a similar fashion. “For what purpose?” His inflection elicited a sigh from Ahnna.
“I am an architect. The king had called for people such as me for a grand project.”
Silence poured into the room, but soon drizzled away.
“Is this the truth? Are you certified? By the LORD?”
“May God bathe me in hot lead before I tell I lie.”
“Alright… chill.”
Ahnna recounted her architectural feats with the man, called Ned, while he escorted her through the palace halls. She told him of the library, the aqueduct, and the temple, all still standing back east in Susa. Ned nodded his head every so often as she spoke, though, she couldn’t be too sure if he was listening.
The two approached a large double door entrance. On the other side stood a broad man towering over a table littered with what looked like city schematics. He could be no one other than the king. His stature was intimidating and he wore a terribly focused look on his face. Ahnna almost thought about turning around and returning another time.
“Enter.” Ahnna could swear he heard thunder, though she found it to be Nimrod. She did as she was told and looked back to find that Ned had disappeared.
“I’m here for the building project?” She wasn’t really sure what else to say. ‘Good morning,’ she figured, was a phrase reserved for idle conversation. No good ever comes from being idle.
Nimrod inspected Ahnna and began to stroke his beard. “You haven’t come to carry bricks. You do not seem fit for such labor. You must be an architect.”
“It’s true, my king. I’m certified by the LORD.”
“Yes, that’s great, child.” Nimrod looked out the window towards the city, “How good are you with heights?”
Ahnna jerked her head back slightly, as if the question stuck her physically. “Uh… heights do not concern me.”
“Interesting…” Nimrod looked back at her, “what does concern you?”
Once again, Ahnna gave a physical reaction to the question. It did not take her too long to answer, however. “Idle hands” was all she said.
Nimrod packed up the papers on the table and placed them in a satchel before walking Ahnna out of the room. She couldn’t help but notice that Nimrod could, if he pleased, wrap his entire hand around her skull and completely annihilate her. ‘Idle hands’ was a an answer given in haste. Perhaps she should have just said ‘massive hands.’
Ahnna had been introduced to the work site at the center of Babylon. The project seemed to be the physical manifestation of ambition. Nimrod had explained that there was to be a tower built; one high enough to breach heaven. The tower was already much taller than anything Ahnna had seen, though it was far from complete. Even the base floors were much wider than an entire city block of Susa. The idea of a tower that could reach heaven flooded her mind with fascination. She’d seen God in the miracles of everyday life, in herself even. She had never seen God personally.
She thought such an honor was not meant for her and became skeptical. As Nimrod gestured for her to travel up the stairs of the tower, she figured it was not her place to question the king’s wishes. So long as she was using her gift, she was following the will of the LORD.
“Much work is to be done for such a project, wouldn’t you agree?” Nimrod walked up the stairs in a stride that skipped about three steps at a time with ease. Ahnna had to jog to keep pace. “I don’t think God would imagine us being able to complete it.”
“If God wants the tower to be completed,” Ahnna huffed between breaths, “then we will complete it.” As she reached another stair landing, she could hear Nimrod sigh.
The walk to the top of the tower seemed to rival the walk to the tower itself from the palace. The rooms within the tower also seemed strange. They connected to one another in ways that were almost labyrinthine. She wanted to ask why they took the interior stairs when there was a sloped path that curled around the tower, but she took the opportunity to study what type of structure she was expected to build. At the top, wooden scaffoldings stood high over the existing part of the structure. There were small cots and tents that some workers seemed to live in. Ahnna suspected that this place would be her home. Nimrod and Ahnna walked to the edge of the tower and looked at the southern half of Babylon.
“Soon my hand will touch even heaven,” Nimrod stated.
Ahnna nodded and walked towards the other architects, hoping she could help make that sentence a fact.
Tammuz 24th 2051
Work on the great tower had been steady for a little over a decade. It’s size has almost doubled since Ahnna first arrived. She’d done great work, and alongside other architects such as Ned, many bricklayers had assumed the tower was near completion. However, it was obvious that heaven was much further beyond their grasp than they had imagined, and many of the workers began to lose hope for the project.
“Hey!” A cry came from an outer room where the sunlight poured in. Ahnna, Ned, and a small group of other architects rushed over to the voice, passing through a supply room, two hallways, and a sleeping area. When they had approached the room they noticed a carpenter working on some scaffoldings to build the next few stories. Ned was about to speak before everyone noticed a wooden pole on the floor slowly rolling towards the opening and out onto the sloped path.
“It’s leaning” the carpenter stated. This was a problem. It was a problem that birthed greater concern.
Later that evening, each architect sat around a table somewhere near the upper floor eating a freshly baked bread from the ground level and fish caught from the river. Most of the food had been prepared many floors down, so by the time it arrived for the workers at the top floor, it had become cold. This was something Ahnna had eventually gotten used to. She’d stopped eating for pleasure long ago. Her only pleasure was to serve the LORD, and the best way for her to do this was to figure out how to keep the tower upright.
Arithmetic is as important to building as water is to life. Cubit rods and counting stones were used to measure the supposed tower lean based on the weight of each brick, their placement, and any other factor that seemed to contribute to the lean. Eventually, after a couple of hours of calculation, everyone had come to a sum of about 2.52 degrees of lean. The number was much more drastic than they had anticipated, but physically inspecting the tower revealed that straightening the floors would only take about 4 months of work, as only the upper floors were affected. The real problem became how to keep the floors straight.
After all of the calculations, everyone realized that the food had gone cold, and some flies had been at it. With a new task to overtake in the morning, Ahnna had already lost her appetite. No one seemed quite sure how to keep such a structure straight at such heights. No structure of this caliber had ever been built before. Before Ahnna could suggest asking God, it was Ned who had eventually come up with an idea.
“We erect a tower within the tower’s center,” he said.
Mahalile, an architect responsible for designing interior rooms stood up slowly. “Under the assumption that such an idea would work,” he took a slow breath before continuing, “we would have to reconfigure the placement of all rooms in the tower’s center to accommodate it.”
“We could place the interior rooms within the inner tower and use its walls as a counter balance to push in the opposite direction of the outer tower’s natural lean.” Ned began to motion with his hands what such a lean would look like. “Of course, the interior tower would lean as well, but we could use the exterior walls as a counterbalance.”
“This ludicrous idea does not sound stable!” Mahalile shouted. “This is a grand structure meant to pierce the sky! It is not some pile of rocks and sticks for you to balance in the desert!”
Ned rolled his eyes, almost as if to catch a glimpse of his thoughts. Just about everyone had been used to Mahalile’s neigh say nature. “Will we begin work on this idea in the morning?”
Everyone agreed. Everyone but Mahalile. Ned had experience with forging spires, where Mahalile seemed to only be experienced in forging discourse. Such pettiness would only slow the production of the tower, and Ahnna would avoid it as oil avoids water. She took her plate of food and tossed it outside, hoping it would go to a lesser animal. Seconds afterward, she hoped further that it would not land on someone’s head.
Nisan 3rd, 2083
Even the birds seem as ants. The tower’s production had proved steady, and the hands building it seemed steadier. Ned’s counterbalance idea not only worked, but gave the floors that included it a special beauty. Though it made navigating the tower more difficult without the schematics, it kept the tower straight for three more decades of building.
The temperatures were becoming more difficult to bare. Many builders had been given coats made of thicker pelts to combat the more frigid air. Surely, humans were not fit for the environment in the sky.
Surely, humans were not fit for heaven.
Ahnna shook away any thought in her mind that went against her purpose. She continued to transport her schematics to the highest floor via the exterior slope when a gust of wind stole them away from her. She screamed as she tumbled back down the slope a few feet and noticed that her schematics had been swirling rapidly beside the tower. They almost appeared to be possessed. As the pages flew, they slowed with their decent.
“I understand,” Ahnna whispered softly. “Thank you, LORD in heaven showing me this.”
She no longer had use for those schematics. They would have hindered the production of the tower. She’d come to the realization that wind moves faster in the sky than it does down below. The wind moved much as the water did in the Perath river. The tower acted as a log interrupting it’s current. If the tower was to continue standing, if it was to clear the sky and into heaven, the current needed to be redirected. Ahnna of Susa, designer of her hometown’s grand aqueduct, would know just how to do it.
Iyyar 29th, 2088
Built into the tower’s walls in the spaces that divided the floors, Ahnna had designed a vent system that dispersed the air around the structure. She then proposed that the openings to the exterior slope, at least on the floors where the wind was at its fastest, be shut to prevent small eddies from forming between the gaps of the interior and exterior towers. Such winds would damage the structure significantly. By closing off the exterior slope and directing traffic into the main staircase inside, navigating the tower became even more complicated. However, no one could deny that the tower teetered much less. It was a necessary sacrifice if humanity were to get to heaven. Ahnna soon found work easier than containing her pride.
Adar 13th , 2116
After a whole 78 years of production, it was easy to see the full breadth of progress. While building, many people have retired, having worked their whole lives on the project. After the flood, there were fewer and fewer people like Ahnna and Ned who could expect to live in their prime health for up to 8 centuries or so. 78 years was about as long as a mortal human could hope to live lately. Many of the builders who left may never see heaven. Ahnna hoped they would at least rest proud knowing that they helped humanity reach such a blessed goal.
Ahnna had not heard from her family in about 50 years. She figured that it was harder for messages to travel all the way up to the top of a tower so grand, but she had found that they had stopped sending her messages altogether. The last letter she received from her parents were sopping with spite as they detailed how arrogant she was to be a part of such a project, how naïve she was to think she was capable to reaching God in heaven, and how selfish she was to not come home with a husband and a child. She was their only child, and she was the only way their legacy would continue, they’d tell her. When she’d sent the letter stating that God intended for their family line to die with her, the letters stopped coming. She had only realized then, many years after, that she probably wasn’t worth the parchment anymore. The thought bothered her about as much as gnat.
With newer builders coming in who were unfamiliar with the project, days had been taken out of the week to go over the routine, the layout of the floors. The builders each seemed hesitant, but eventually they’d get to work setting up newer pulley systems to send materials upward. It was hard work, but it was honest work. People had been treated fairly throughout the tower’s construction, which was sadly somewhat of a rarity. Nimrod must’ve figured that a stressed, weary worker was about as good as a dead one.
“How much do these bricks weigh?” Ned, who had been standing at the edge of a window for a couple hours spoke somewhat skittishly.
“About three and a half bags of seed each. Why?”
Ned slowly turned around and rubbed his eyes. “I have never built anything like this tower. No one has.” Ahnna looked back over towards the work site and suddenly found herself tapping her foot.
“And?”
“I think it’s much too heavy.”
“Oh.” Her foot halted, and she faced Ned fully.
The bricks below were, undoubtedly, at their greatest limits. Ahnna never thought to consider how much weight a brick could support per square cubit, because she never had to consider it. If the tens of thousands upon thousands of bricks down on the Earth below should fail to hold the tower up, it could cause a catastrophic accident. The only real solution to this problem was to travel back down the tower and replace the bricks with a stronger material. Ahnna could recall a child’s game in her youth with an objective similar to this crude solution. She hated that game.
“We may be fine,” Ahnna sighed, having told a half truth. “The exterior of the tower has a gradual width decay.” This choice in design was part of one of the original schematics Ahnna had seen over 70 years ago. It had been an artistic choice at the time, but it did greatly alleviate the problem of the load.
“But Ahnna,” she was hoping she wouldn’t say it, “the interior tower has no such decay.” He spoke the truth. “The tower I designed may cause us all to come crashing down.”
Ahnna wasn’t very good in moments that required a gentle touch. She went to put her hand on his shoulder, but she had recently just rinsed it in a washing pan so she settled for words instead. “Maybe…?”
Ned pulled his lips taut before sluggishly sitting at the drawing table. Ahnna began to feel remorse, but ultimately decided that the best way to cheer Ned up was to fix the issue.
Adar 14th , 2116
It was easy. Ahnna drew up a few quick schematics with the help of 3 other architects and solved the weight problem in under 5 hours of moonlight. It turned out that the exterior tower’s taper would eventually meet up with the interior tower’s diameter. The load would then be bared evenly with less materials using a conventional spire design. The problem then became how to prevent the top of the tower from leaning. The solution was to use the tower’s own structural shape to cut the wind force down. They figured that Ahnna’s vent system would become more futile the higher the tower got, so two problems were solved simultaneously by changing the tower’s shape from a uniform cylinder to a three pointed star. They would alternate the star’s orientation every few floors to change the structure’s silhouette, thus reducing the wind force and preventing the tower from leaning.
This design, Ahnna thought, was completely fool proof.
Elul 1st, 2143
Ahnna woke from her sleep, her nose bleeding again as it normally did. Though it was one of the warmest months of the year, the air at the top of the tower was harshly thin. It acted like a knife that seemed to slice her sinuses away. Breathing became more difficult for her, and she couldn’t imagine what it was like for those who hauled bricks and stone around. She had trouble just hammering nails into scaffoldings. Work on the tower slowed drastically, but she was sure heaven was merely a few palms away.
It was particularly silent at this height, save for the constant screaming of wind outside. She could barely remember what it was like to hear the bustle of the large city down below. She couldn’t even see the city at times when the dense clouds were forming. Thinner clouds still appeared overhead where heaven was waiting. Lead waterproofing no longer had to be used on the upper floors as it never rained at that height. At a height just over 5,450 cubits, the tower was officially half as tall as the city of Babylon was wide. When she looked out toward the horizon, she could clearly see the city of Kish. She could also see the Horizon warping into a bit of a bend.
King Nimrod had come to the top of the tower to admire the progress the other night. He coaxed some of the workers to celebrate with him, drinking beers and dancing. He could not get Ahnna to do so. She went right to bed when she was tired, just to get up as early as possible to continue work in the morning, as she always did every day for the past 105 years.
Though that first day of Elul was much different than any other day she had been alive. After she washed her face in a pan of water by the stairs, the sound of wind simply cut out into True Silence. The sudden shift in noise level made Ahnna’s heart sink. She walked up one flight of stairs toward the unfinished and exposed 531st floor. It should be freezing cold, but Ahnna found the temperature warm. She turned towards the north, and fell to her knees. She wasn’t sure what to while shaking in the sight of the LORD.
Her mind failed to comprehend God’s visage. She looked, only briefly, and forgot the image as soon as she’d seen it. In her mind, God’s face seem both foreign and familiar, almost shifting into everyone she’s even known and people she never will. She didn’t dare stare too long.
The door to the staircase had opened and Nimrod appeared. He rubbed his eyes before walking to the edge of the tower and facing God.
“What brings you down to see us?” Nimrod said with a disturbingly cocky tone.
“The trip was short.” God spoke with a voice that had the potential to lull infants to sleep and render them into dust.
“We thought we would meet you part-way.” Nimrod took on a wide pose as some builders who had woken up did the same beside him. Some builders assumed the same cowering position beside Ahnna, confused as to who would be foolish enough to cross God. A little over 50 people joined Nimrod and faced God with hand on hips. They stood tall against the sky. They seemed petty against the LORD.
“Humans built this tower with brick and stone!” Nimrod shouted “If you love us, then why keep us away? Why keep us down on Earth with the rats and the worms?” God did not need to answer. “This celestial spire was built so that we may peer into the gates of heaven. Tell me, LORD, is heaven made of gold, or is it made of clay?” God remained silent. “Humans built this tower together so that we may see heaven together.”
All fell silent for only about a minute.
Finally, God spoke: “Then you will part.”
Suddenly, the shrieking wind returned, and with it came the frigid cold. The force of the wind knocked Ahnna around a bit before she could understand what had happened. She squinted her eyes and peered into the distance where God appeared to see massive black clouds rolling in. The wind was much worse than it had ever been, and it flung wood off of the scaffoldings at some of the builders. A rope had wrapped itself around someone’s leg, causing them to trip and fall straight off the tower. Ahnna forced herself to her feet and bolted for the stairs. Once everyone made it inside, she shut the door hard.
“Is everyone okay?” she asked while trying to catch her breath.
“Ishi?” someone responded in the back. Everyone turned to him.
“Zer?” someone else mumbled.
“Wo ting bu dong…” another person chattered.
“Na jaane…”
“Ani lo mewin et se! Chasor al se bewakascha…”
Soon everyone began to babel in nonsensical manners over one another.
“Nobody here makes any sense!” Ahnna couldn’t help but yelling. The situation, every bit of it, was too much for her to fathom. Suddenly, a builder she somewhat recognized walked up to her with a composed look on his face. He put a hand on her shoulder.
“Qedet, dewa netjer en etj.” his words were calm, almost as if speaking to a child, “em heset net.”
It was apparent to Ahnna that everyone had gone insane. God might have punished the people who stood with Nimrod by taking away their speech. Ahnna walked over to her tent and noticed that her hands were shaking. She collapsed onto her cot.
For the first time ever, she had seen God. The sight was ever-frightening, and though she tried to look away in person, the experience will forever plague her dreams. She should have felt honored, but a festering seed of guilt began to tear away at her insides. She clawed at her scalp and whaled a pained and pitiful sound into her pillow. She had worked a lifetime on what was apparently an abomination. The thought stole her away.
“Ahnna, are you okay?” a familiar voice spoke in familiar words.
“Ned?!” she managed cough. “Where have you been?”
“I overslept.” Ned stretched his arms as two people walked by, speaking to each other using no words Ahnna could discern. “Sounds like they didn’t get any sleep at all.”
“Ned, I saw God.”
“Oh have you? How’s he been?”
“I am serious!”
“Yeah?” he pulled some unleavened bread squares from a pouch and helped himself.
“The LORD came down and Nimrod, the damned idiot, started to chastise God! Who does he think he is?”
“Uhh…” Ned chewed one some bread before continuing, “the king? You probably should not be talking about him like that.”
“God…” Ahnna sat up, “came down, angry, that this tower had been built.” She tried not to start crying again. “We’ve slighted the creator of all things.”
“You’re being dramatic.” Ned patted Ahnna on the back and offered her a bread square. “This isn’t the first time God got mad at us, and it certainly won’t be the last. Besides, he promised not to flood the Earth again, so we won’t have to worry about that.”
Out of nowhere, lightning struck the tower some hundred floors below, rattling the tower a bit. The bread square in Ned’s hand fell to the floor shortly after.
“Oh. Oh my.”
“God will wipe this tower clean from Earth as a mother wipes spit from the lips of a child.”
“Can you…chill?”
Ahnna could not stop shaking. She rubbed her hands together and began searching around the room for nothing in particular. She bit a wound into her lip she could not stop tasting. Everyone who walked by seemed to be gibbering, though they were able to hold conversations with some who gibbered similarly to them. People who once worked in groups stood far from one another in favor of those they could understand. It would seem that everyone was divided by speech itself.
Ahnna was somewhat thankful that she could understand Ned. She didn’t particularly care for him, but he was a knowledgeable architect and he did good work when he wasn’t being somewhat of a nuisance. She’d spent 105 years working with him, though. She’d known him longer than she hadn’t. She’d been around him longer than her own family.
Thinking about her family tore her up again. Her parents were right. The project was arrogant. She was naïve. She was selfish. Without any warning, Ahnna had turned over and expelled her stomach contents out onto the floor. Ned slowly closed his bag of bread and tried to help Ahnna to her feet. It was hard for her to hold herself up, but she eventually teetered over to the wash pan to wet her face and rinse out her mouth. A heavy gust of wind passed through the hall and into the room, knocking over small tools.
“We need to get out of here,” Ahnna said with a raspy pain in her throat. “This place sickens me now.”
Ned turned over to the nonsense babel in the other room. “Yeah, it’s time to go home.”
Ahnna flinched at the word ‘home.’ This ever growing structure had been her home for quite some time. It wasn’t like she could return to Susa; her parents would obviously not forgive her. She decided she’d think more about it when she returned to ground level. Ned and Ahnna didn’t bother breaking their tents down or moving their work items. Ned grabbed his bread and water, and Ahnna took her books and papers. Her eye glanced over one of her schematics and she noticed something.
The writing was completely illegible.
She tried to squint and she rubbed her eyes, but it was no use. The writing made no sense to her. She pulled out the last letter her mother and father sent her and had the same trouble understanding it. Oddly enough, the writing itself didn’t actually look any different. Ahnna simply couldn’t parse what it was saying. Her whole understanding of words had been changed.
“Ahnna, do you remember where the main stairs are?” Ned called from a room far down the hall. Ahnna pushed past a few workers who each said something to her that she didn’t comprehend to get to Ned. She looked at him and opened the door to her right, only to find that it was filled with brooms, buckets, ropes, rags, and anything else she’d expect to see in a closet.
“Mahalile would know,” she said. “He designed the interiors. Wherever he is.”
Ned walked around the rooms, occasionally trying to ask one of the builders where the door was, only for them to give him a weird stare. Eventually, he found the door to a minor staircase that should lead down at least 5 floors. Ahnna followed and tried to parse the drawings on her schematics. She figured she would make a map out of the drawings, but it was Mahalile’s floor plans that would be more useful.
A small group of builders pass by and enter a doorway just to the left of the staircase into what appears to be the main staircase. Ahnna and Ned eagerly follow the group, as they appear to know the way out. It made more sense that the bricklayers knew the layout more than the exterior architects who spent most of their time building the walls, or helping carpenters with scaffoldings, or solving complex equations on paper. They’ve spent so much time looking up, it was going to be hard for them to get down.
After walking down 20 levels or, the group diverged from the main stairs to a set of hallways. Ahnna and Ned figured they could easily just continue down the stairs until they got to the ground floor, but it seemed that wasn’t the case. As they continued walking, the staircase suddenly ran into a left turn onto one of the floors and stopped there. Lightning struck the tower again, this time the rumble lasted much longer than before. Ahnna and Ned began to run, hoping they could escape the tower as quick as possible.
Kheshvan 12th, 2143
Ahnna had been counting the days she’d been stuck trying to escape the tower with Ned in a book she’d been keeping as a journal for years. All of its previous entries had become useless, despite it being her own writing. It had been over two months since God came down and divided everyone’s tongues. It was clear that some people knew their way down the tower to an extent.
Apparently, during construction while alternating the tower’s silhouette every few floors or so in order to combat wind force, the interior floor plans had been completely redesigned every few floors or so. The same plans could have been used if Mahalile had just rotated the orientation with the tower, but he instead decided to make brand new orientations. Even before God confounded the speech of all her co-workers, Ahnna found it difficult to communicate with that mystery of a man. Doors that should lead into halls instead lead into rooms, and doors that should lead into halls sometimes lead into more rooms. Often times, a staircase would be found in what should be a closet. Following people who seemed to know where to go only worked for so long until it would seem they were lost too. Randomly opening doors until you found stairs was the only way to descend.
This process should have only taken hours, maybe a day or two, but not two months. The major contributor to the time delay was trying to help other people out. They’d come up to people and they’d speak, but they wouldn’t listen. Pointing seemed futile if the reason for it made no sense. Some people didn’t understand what it meant to be beckoned to. It all became more stressful, and everyone became hungry. People had to sleep more often, and sometimes the search for stairs became a search for leftover rations. Luckily, some leftover crates contained bread, however stale, and some barrels contained water or beer.
It began to rain again, and Ahnna had to wonder if God would truly keep his promise not to drown the Earth. It might be better if God did just drown her. She found nothing more frustrating than opening a door to find the same broom in it.
One man opened a window with a large cloth sheet over his head. Ahnna’s eyes widened at the sight. Before anyone could stop him, he jumped. Ahnna knew of the large eddies the wind created beside the building. The man’s idea was bold, but it would be futile. She could hear him scream as he tumbled in the sky. It was the only think should could understand from someone who didn’t speak as she did.
“Architects, there you are.” It was Nimrod.
“You! Nimrod!” Ahnna was furious.
“That is my name, yes.” Nimrod sighed. “Why are you not down below?”
“We can’t find our way out, sir.” Ned admitted.
This caused Nimrod to laugh a twisted, bellowing laugh. Ahnna had half the mind to strike him, but lacked the emotional energy.
“Follow me, you two.” Nimrod walked down the hall, and Ahnna did not hesitate to follow. Despite the fact that she despised his blasphemous ways, despised this tower he had her build, she would not deny a chance to be free of it. “It’s ironic how you two built this place, but don’t know about the lift.”
“The lift?” Ned and Ahnna both said in unison.
“Yeah, where we hauled food and supplies up to you by. The old pulley lift?” He opened a window and pulled at a rope. “It still works. It’s how I got up here.”
Centuries after the Great Deluge, there was still work to be done to mend the world. Only the LORD could do fire’s destructive work with rain. Many homes had been lost. Many souls had returned to dust. Those who still remained tethered to the mortal plane paid their penance in labor. All who breathed were busy.
Architects often found themselves busier than most. Many dwellings needed repair, refinement, or replacement. As building resources in the region dwindled, it became harder to convince the builders to continue. Humanity had resorted to migration. They recognized that this was simply God’s way of telling them to start over, and they had. For the past 700 years or so, Shinar was where they called home.
Ahnna of Susa had walked the Earth for about two centuries. She was much too young to have witnessed the Flood firsthand, but the after effects had shaped her to be who she was- an architect. Her family had urged her against pursuing this trade, as they believed it was not her place. When she asked them who designed and built Susa’s library that provided knowledge, who had forged the grand aqueduct that gave the town water to drink, and who had erected the temple of worship that their family prayed in, they admitted it was her. She had corrected them, stating it was God who gave her the gift of building, and it would go against God to waste such a gift. When she heard of the opportunity awaiting her in Babylon, she headed west in a wagon that she had built.
The city of Babylon was much larger than Susa, and far more grand. It was built one the Perath river with a clear appreciation for natural beauty. It featured an all-encompassing wall that stood proud over the buildings. The buildings, which were plentiful. There were many citizens, and each must have lived in a marvelous home. All sorts of trees and small plants grew in abundance around the city. It was said that a sublime garden where the greens hang above the walkways awaits somewhere in the city. Ahnna only took a moment to admire the city before heading to the Northern Palace. Her purpose was to work.
The palace interior was, much to Ahnna’s surprise, rather dull. The city seemed so grand; it was hard to understand why the inside of the palace seemed so barren. It was devoid of any interior designs or colors. A disheveled man holding a large sheet of paper approached from a far off stairwell.
“What business have you here?”
“Ah yes,” Ahnna turned to the man, “I’m here for work. I plan to speak with King Nimrod.”
The man tilted his head, and his eyebrows tilted in a similar fashion. “For what purpose?” His inflection elicited a sigh from Ahnna.
“I am an architect. The king had called for people such as me for a grand project.”
Silence poured into the room, but soon drizzled away.
“Is this the truth? Are you certified? By the LORD?”
“May God bathe me in hot lead before I tell I lie.”
“Alright… chill.”
Ahnna recounted her architectural feats with the man, called Ned, while he escorted her through the palace halls. She told him of the library, the aqueduct, and the temple, all still standing back east in Susa. Ned nodded his head every so often as she spoke, though, she couldn’t be too sure if he was listening.
The two approached a large double door entrance. On the other side stood a broad man towering over a table littered with what looked like city schematics. He could be no one other than the king. His stature was intimidating and he wore a terribly focused look on his face. Ahnna almost thought about turning around and returning another time.
“Enter.” Ahnna could swear he heard thunder, though she found it to be Nimrod. She did as she was told and looked back to find that Ned had disappeared.
“I’m here for the building project?” She wasn’t really sure what else to say. ‘Good morning,’ she figured, was a phrase reserved for idle conversation. No good ever comes from being idle.
Nimrod inspected Ahnna and began to stroke his beard. “You haven’t come to carry bricks. You do not seem fit for such labor. You must be an architect.”
“It’s true, my king. I’m certified by the LORD.”
“Yes, that’s great, child.” Nimrod looked out the window towards the city, “How good are you with heights?”
Ahnna jerked her head back slightly, as if the question stuck her physically. “Uh… heights do not concern me.”
“Interesting…” Nimrod looked back at her, “what does concern you?”
Once again, Ahnna gave a physical reaction to the question. It did not take her too long to answer, however. “Idle hands” was all she said.
Nimrod packed up the papers on the table and placed them in a satchel before walking Ahnna out of the room. She couldn’t help but notice that Nimrod could, if he pleased, wrap his entire hand around her skull and completely annihilate her. ‘Idle hands’ was a an answer given in haste. Perhaps she should have just said ‘massive hands.’
Ahnna had been introduced to the work site at the center of Babylon. The project seemed to be the physical manifestation of ambition. Nimrod had explained that there was to be a tower built; one high enough to breach heaven. The tower was already much taller than anything Ahnna had seen, though it was far from complete. Even the base floors were much wider than an entire city block of Susa. The idea of a tower that could reach heaven flooded her mind with fascination. She’d seen God in the miracles of everyday life, in herself even. She had never seen God personally.
She thought such an honor was not meant for her and became skeptical. As Nimrod gestured for her to travel up the stairs of the tower, she figured it was not her place to question the king’s wishes. So long as she was using her gift, she was following the will of the LORD.
“Much work is to be done for such a project, wouldn’t you agree?” Nimrod walked up the stairs in a stride that skipped about three steps at a time with ease. Ahnna had to jog to keep pace. “I don’t think God would imagine us being able to complete it.”
“If God wants the tower to be completed,” Ahnna huffed between breaths, “then we will complete it.” As she reached another stair landing, she could hear Nimrod sigh.
The walk to the top of the tower seemed to rival the walk to the tower itself from the palace. The rooms within the tower also seemed strange. They connected to one another in ways that were almost labyrinthine. She wanted to ask why they took the interior stairs when there was a sloped path that curled around the tower, but she took the opportunity to study what type of structure she was expected to build. At the top, wooden scaffoldings stood high over the existing part of the structure. There were small cots and tents that some workers seemed to live in. Ahnna suspected that this place would be her home. Nimrod and Ahnna walked to the edge of the tower and looked at the southern half of Babylon.
“Soon my hand will touch even heaven,” Nimrod stated.
Ahnna nodded and walked towards the other architects, hoping she could help make that sentence a fact.
Tammuz 24th 2051
Work on the great tower had been steady for a little over a decade. It’s size has almost doubled since Ahnna first arrived. She’d done great work, and alongside other architects such as Ned, many bricklayers had assumed the tower was near completion. However, it was obvious that heaven was much further beyond their grasp than they had imagined, and many of the workers began to lose hope for the project.
“Hey!” A cry came from an outer room where the sunlight poured in. Ahnna, Ned, and a small group of other architects rushed over to the voice, passing through a supply room, two hallways, and a sleeping area. When they had approached the room they noticed a carpenter working on some scaffoldings to build the next few stories. Ned was about to speak before everyone noticed a wooden pole on the floor slowly rolling towards the opening and out onto the sloped path.
“It’s leaning” the carpenter stated. This was a problem. It was a problem that birthed greater concern.
Later that evening, each architect sat around a table somewhere near the upper floor eating a freshly baked bread from the ground level and fish caught from the river. Most of the food had been prepared many floors down, so by the time it arrived for the workers at the top floor, it had become cold. This was something Ahnna had eventually gotten used to. She’d stopped eating for pleasure long ago. Her only pleasure was to serve the LORD, and the best way for her to do this was to figure out how to keep the tower upright.
Arithmetic is as important to building as water is to life. Cubit rods and counting stones were used to measure the supposed tower lean based on the weight of each brick, their placement, and any other factor that seemed to contribute to the lean. Eventually, after a couple of hours of calculation, everyone had come to a sum of about 2.52 degrees of lean. The number was much more drastic than they had anticipated, but physically inspecting the tower revealed that straightening the floors would only take about 4 months of work, as only the upper floors were affected. The real problem became how to keep the floors straight.
After all of the calculations, everyone realized that the food had gone cold, and some flies had been at it. With a new task to overtake in the morning, Ahnna had already lost her appetite. No one seemed quite sure how to keep such a structure straight at such heights. No structure of this caliber had ever been built before. Before Ahnna could suggest asking God, it was Ned who had eventually come up with an idea.
“We erect a tower within the tower’s center,” he said.
Mahalile, an architect responsible for designing interior rooms stood up slowly. “Under the assumption that such an idea would work,” he took a slow breath before continuing, “we would have to reconfigure the placement of all rooms in the tower’s center to accommodate it.”
“We could place the interior rooms within the inner tower and use its walls as a counter balance to push in the opposite direction of the outer tower’s natural lean.” Ned began to motion with his hands what such a lean would look like. “Of course, the interior tower would lean as well, but we could use the exterior walls as a counterbalance.”
“This ludicrous idea does not sound stable!” Mahalile shouted. “This is a grand structure meant to pierce the sky! It is not some pile of rocks and sticks for you to balance in the desert!”
Ned rolled his eyes, almost as if to catch a glimpse of his thoughts. Just about everyone had been used to Mahalile’s neigh say nature. “Will we begin work on this idea in the morning?”
Everyone agreed. Everyone but Mahalile. Ned had experience with forging spires, where Mahalile seemed to only be experienced in forging discourse. Such pettiness would only slow the production of the tower, and Ahnna would avoid it as oil avoids water. She took her plate of food and tossed it outside, hoping it would go to a lesser animal. Seconds afterward, she hoped further that it would not land on someone’s head.
Nisan 3rd, 2083
Even the birds seem as ants. The tower’s production had proved steady, and the hands building it seemed steadier. Ned’s counterbalance idea not only worked, but gave the floors that included it a special beauty. Though it made navigating the tower more difficult without the schematics, it kept the tower straight for three more decades of building.
The temperatures were becoming more difficult to bare. Many builders had been given coats made of thicker pelts to combat the more frigid air. Surely, humans were not fit for the environment in the sky.
Surely, humans were not fit for heaven.
Ahnna shook away any thought in her mind that went against her purpose. She continued to transport her schematics to the highest floor via the exterior slope when a gust of wind stole them away from her. She screamed as she tumbled back down the slope a few feet and noticed that her schematics had been swirling rapidly beside the tower. They almost appeared to be possessed. As the pages flew, they slowed with their decent.
“I understand,” Ahnna whispered softly. “Thank you, LORD in heaven showing me this.”
She no longer had use for those schematics. They would have hindered the production of the tower. She’d come to the realization that wind moves faster in the sky than it does down below. The wind moved much as the water did in the Perath river. The tower acted as a log interrupting it’s current. If the tower was to continue standing, if it was to clear the sky and into heaven, the current needed to be redirected. Ahnna of Susa, designer of her hometown’s grand aqueduct, would know just how to do it.
Iyyar 29th, 2088
Built into the tower’s walls in the spaces that divided the floors, Ahnna had designed a vent system that dispersed the air around the structure. She then proposed that the openings to the exterior slope, at least on the floors where the wind was at its fastest, be shut to prevent small eddies from forming between the gaps of the interior and exterior towers. Such winds would damage the structure significantly. By closing off the exterior slope and directing traffic into the main staircase inside, navigating the tower became even more complicated. However, no one could deny that the tower teetered much less. It was a necessary sacrifice if humanity were to get to heaven. Ahnna soon found work easier than containing her pride.
Adar 13th , 2116
After a whole 78 years of production, it was easy to see the full breadth of progress. While building, many people have retired, having worked their whole lives on the project. After the flood, there were fewer and fewer people like Ahnna and Ned who could expect to live in their prime health for up to 8 centuries or so. 78 years was about as long as a mortal human could hope to live lately. Many of the builders who left may never see heaven. Ahnna hoped they would at least rest proud knowing that they helped humanity reach such a blessed goal.
Ahnna had not heard from her family in about 50 years. She figured that it was harder for messages to travel all the way up to the top of a tower so grand, but she had found that they had stopped sending her messages altogether. The last letter she received from her parents were sopping with spite as they detailed how arrogant she was to be a part of such a project, how naïve she was to think she was capable to reaching God in heaven, and how selfish she was to not come home with a husband and a child. She was their only child, and she was the only way their legacy would continue, they’d tell her. When she’d sent the letter stating that God intended for their family line to die with her, the letters stopped coming. She had only realized then, many years after, that she probably wasn’t worth the parchment anymore. The thought bothered her about as much as gnat.
With newer builders coming in who were unfamiliar with the project, days had been taken out of the week to go over the routine, the layout of the floors. The builders each seemed hesitant, but eventually they’d get to work setting up newer pulley systems to send materials upward. It was hard work, but it was honest work. People had been treated fairly throughout the tower’s construction, which was sadly somewhat of a rarity. Nimrod must’ve figured that a stressed, weary worker was about as good as a dead one.
“How much do these bricks weigh?” Ned, who had been standing at the edge of a window for a couple hours spoke somewhat skittishly.
“About three and a half bags of seed each. Why?”
Ned slowly turned around and rubbed his eyes. “I have never built anything like this tower. No one has.” Ahnna looked back over towards the work site and suddenly found herself tapping her foot.
“And?”
“I think it’s much too heavy.”
“Oh.” Her foot halted, and she faced Ned fully.
The bricks below were, undoubtedly, at their greatest limits. Ahnna never thought to consider how much weight a brick could support per square cubit, because she never had to consider it. If the tens of thousands upon thousands of bricks down on the Earth below should fail to hold the tower up, it could cause a catastrophic accident. The only real solution to this problem was to travel back down the tower and replace the bricks with a stronger material. Ahnna could recall a child’s game in her youth with an objective similar to this crude solution. She hated that game.
“We may be fine,” Ahnna sighed, having told a half truth. “The exterior of the tower has a gradual width decay.” This choice in design was part of one of the original schematics Ahnna had seen over 70 years ago. It had been an artistic choice at the time, but it did greatly alleviate the problem of the load.
“But Ahnna,” she was hoping she wouldn’t say it, “the interior tower has no such decay.” He spoke the truth. “The tower I designed may cause us all to come crashing down.”
Ahnna wasn’t very good in moments that required a gentle touch. She went to put her hand on his shoulder, but she had recently just rinsed it in a washing pan so she settled for words instead. “Maybe…?”
Ned pulled his lips taut before sluggishly sitting at the drawing table. Ahnna began to feel remorse, but ultimately decided that the best way to cheer Ned up was to fix the issue.
Adar 14th , 2116
It was easy. Ahnna drew up a few quick schematics with the help of 3 other architects and solved the weight problem in under 5 hours of moonlight. It turned out that the exterior tower’s taper would eventually meet up with the interior tower’s diameter. The load would then be bared evenly with less materials using a conventional spire design. The problem then became how to prevent the top of the tower from leaning. The solution was to use the tower’s own structural shape to cut the wind force down. They figured that Ahnna’s vent system would become more futile the higher the tower got, so two problems were solved simultaneously by changing the tower’s shape from a uniform cylinder to a three pointed star. They would alternate the star’s orientation every few floors to change the structure’s silhouette, thus reducing the wind force and preventing the tower from leaning.
This design, Ahnna thought, was completely fool proof.
Elul 1st, 2143
Ahnna woke from her sleep, her nose bleeding again as it normally did. Though it was one of the warmest months of the year, the air at the top of the tower was harshly thin. It acted like a knife that seemed to slice her sinuses away. Breathing became more difficult for her, and she couldn’t imagine what it was like for those who hauled bricks and stone around. She had trouble just hammering nails into scaffoldings. Work on the tower slowed drastically, but she was sure heaven was merely a few palms away.
It was particularly silent at this height, save for the constant screaming of wind outside. She could barely remember what it was like to hear the bustle of the large city down below. She couldn’t even see the city at times when the dense clouds were forming. Thinner clouds still appeared overhead where heaven was waiting. Lead waterproofing no longer had to be used on the upper floors as it never rained at that height. At a height just over 5,450 cubits, the tower was officially half as tall as the city of Babylon was wide. When she looked out toward the horizon, she could clearly see the city of Kish. She could also see the Horizon warping into a bit of a bend.
King Nimrod had come to the top of the tower to admire the progress the other night. He coaxed some of the workers to celebrate with him, drinking beers and dancing. He could not get Ahnna to do so. She went right to bed when she was tired, just to get up as early as possible to continue work in the morning, as she always did every day for the past 105 years.
Though that first day of Elul was much different than any other day she had been alive. After she washed her face in a pan of water by the stairs, the sound of wind simply cut out into True Silence. The sudden shift in noise level made Ahnna’s heart sink. She walked up one flight of stairs toward the unfinished and exposed 531st floor. It should be freezing cold, but Ahnna found the temperature warm. She turned towards the north, and fell to her knees. She wasn’t sure what to while shaking in the sight of the LORD.
Her mind failed to comprehend God’s visage. She looked, only briefly, and forgot the image as soon as she’d seen it. In her mind, God’s face seem both foreign and familiar, almost shifting into everyone she’s even known and people she never will. She didn’t dare stare too long.
The door to the staircase had opened and Nimrod appeared. He rubbed his eyes before walking to the edge of the tower and facing God.
“What brings you down to see us?” Nimrod said with a disturbingly cocky tone.
“The trip was short.” God spoke with a voice that had the potential to lull infants to sleep and render them into dust.
“We thought we would meet you part-way.” Nimrod took on a wide pose as some builders who had woken up did the same beside him. Some builders assumed the same cowering position beside Ahnna, confused as to who would be foolish enough to cross God. A little over 50 people joined Nimrod and faced God with hand on hips. They stood tall against the sky. They seemed petty against the LORD.
“Humans built this tower with brick and stone!” Nimrod shouted “If you love us, then why keep us away? Why keep us down on Earth with the rats and the worms?” God did not need to answer. “This celestial spire was built so that we may peer into the gates of heaven. Tell me, LORD, is heaven made of gold, or is it made of clay?” God remained silent. “Humans built this tower together so that we may see heaven together.”
All fell silent for only about a minute.
Finally, God spoke: “Then you will part.”
Suddenly, the shrieking wind returned, and with it came the frigid cold. The force of the wind knocked Ahnna around a bit before she could understand what had happened. She squinted her eyes and peered into the distance where God appeared to see massive black clouds rolling in. The wind was much worse than it had ever been, and it flung wood off of the scaffoldings at some of the builders. A rope had wrapped itself around someone’s leg, causing them to trip and fall straight off the tower. Ahnna forced herself to her feet and bolted for the stairs. Once everyone made it inside, she shut the door hard.
“Is everyone okay?” she asked while trying to catch her breath.
“Ishi?” someone responded in the back. Everyone turned to him.
“Zer?” someone else mumbled.
“Wo ting bu dong…” another person chattered.
“Na jaane…”
“Ani lo mewin et se! Chasor al se bewakascha…”
Soon everyone began to babel in nonsensical manners over one another.
“Nobody here makes any sense!” Ahnna couldn’t help but yelling. The situation, every bit of it, was too much for her to fathom. Suddenly, a builder she somewhat recognized walked up to her with a composed look on his face. He put a hand on her shoulder.
“Qedet, dewa netjer en etj.” his words were calm, almost as if speaking to a child, “em heset net.”
It was apparent to Ahnna that everyone had gone insane. God might have punished the people who stood with Nimrod by taking away their speech. Ahnna walked over to her tent and noticed that her hands were shaking. She collapsed onto her cot.
For the first time ever, she had seen God. The sight was ever-frightening, and though she tried to look away in person, the experience will forever plague her dreams. She should have felt honored, but a festering seed of guilt began to tear away at her insides. She clawed at her scalp and whaled a pained and pitiful sound into her pillow. She had worked a lifetime on what was apparently an abomination. The thought stole her away.
“Ahnna, are you okay?” a familiar voice spoke in familiar words.
“Ned?!” she managed cough. “Where have you been?”
“I overslept.” Ned stretched his arms as two people walked by, speaking to each other using no words Ahnna could discern. “Sounds like they didn’t get any sleep at all.”
“Ned, I saw God.”
“Oh have you? How’s he been?”
“I am serious!”
“Yeah?” he pulled some unleavened bread squares from a pouch and helped himself.
“The LORD came down and Nimrod, the damned idiot, started to chastise God! Who does he think he is?”
“Uhh…” Ned chewed one some bread before continuing, “the king? You probably should not be talking about him like that.”
“God…” Ahnna sat up, “came down, angry, that this tower had been built.” She tried not to start crying again. “We’ve slighted the creator of all things.”
“You’re being dramatic.” Ned patted Ahnna on the back and offered her a bread square. “This isn’t the first time God got mad at us, and it certainly won’t be the last. Besides, he promised not to flood the Earth again, so we won’t have to worry about that.”
Out of nowhere, lightning struck the tower some hundred floors below, rattling the tower a bit. The bread square in Ned’s hand fell to the floor shortly after.
“Oh. Oh my.”
“God will wipe this tower clean from Earth as a mother wipes spit from the lips of a child.”
“Can you…chill?”
Ahnna could not stop shaking. She rubbed her hands together and began searching around the room for nothing in particular. She bit a wound into her lip she could not stop tasting. Everyone who walked by seemed to be gibbering, though they were able to hold conversations with some who gibbered similarly to them. People who once worked in groups stood far from one another in favor of those they could understand. It would seem that everyone was divided by speech itself.
Ahnna was somewhat thankful that she could understand Ned. She didn’t particularly care for him, but he was a knowledgeable architect and he did good work when he wasn’t being somewhat of a nuisance. She’d spent 105 years working with him, though. She’d known him longer than she hadn’t. She’d been around him longer than her own family.
Thinking about her family tore her up again. Her parents were right. The project was arrogant. She was naïve. She was selfish. Without any warning, Ahnna had turned over and expelled her stomach contents out onto the floor. Ned slowly closed his bag of bread and tried to help Ahnna to her feet. It was hard for her to hold herself up, but she eventually teetered over to the wash pan to wet her face and rinse out her mouth. A heavy gust of wind passed through the hall and into the room, knocking over small tools.
“We need to get out of here,” Ahnna said with a raspy pain in her throat. “This place sickens me now.”
Ned turned over to the nonsense babel in the other room. “Yeah, it’s time to go home.”
Ahnna flinched at the word ‘home.’ This ever growing structure had been her home for quite some time. It wasn’t like she could return to Susa; her parents would obviously not forgive her. She decided she’d think more about it when she returned to ground level. Ned and Ahnna didn’t bother breaking their tents down or moving their work items. Ned grabbed his bread and water, and Ahnna took her books and papers. Her eye glanced over one of her schematics and she noticed something.
The writing was completely illegible.
She tried to squint and she rubbed her eyes, but it was no use. The writing made no sense to her. She pulled out the last letter her mother and father sent her and had the same trouble understanding it. Oddly enough, the writing itself didn’t actually look any different. Ahnna simply couldn’t parse what it was saying. Her whole understanding of words had been changed.
“Ahnna, do you remember where the main stairs are?” Ned called from a room far down the hall. Ahnna pushed past a few workers who each said something to her that she didn’t comprehend to get to Ned. She looked at him and opened the door to her right, only to find that it was filled with brooms, buckets, ropes, rags, and anything else she’d expect to see in a closet.
“Mahalile would know,” she said. “He designed the interiors. Wherever he is.”
Ned walked around the rooms, occasionally trying to ask one of the builders where the door was, only for them to give him a weird stare. Eventually, he found the door to a minor staircase that should lead down at least 5 floors. Ahnna followed and tried to parse the drawings on her schematics. She figured she would make a map out of the drawings, but it was Mahalile’s floor plans that would be more useful.
A small group of builders pass by and enter a doorway just to the left of the staircase into what appears to be the main staircase. Ahnna and Ned eagerly follow the group, as they appear to know the way out. It made more sense that the bricklayers knew the layout more than the exterior architects who spent most of their time building the walls, or helping carpenters with scaffoldings, or solving complex equations on paper. They’ve spent so much time looking up, it was going to be hard for them to get down.
After walking down 20 levels or, the group diverged from the main stairs to a set of hallways. Ahnna and Ned figured they could easily just continue down the stairs until they got to the ground floor, but it seemed that wasn’t the case. As they continued walking, the staircase suddenly ran into a left turn onto one of the floors and stopped there. Lightning struck the tower again, this time the rumble lasted much longer than before. Ahnna and Ned began to run, hoping they could escape the tower as quick as possible.
Kheshvan 12th, 2143
Ahnna had been counting the days she’d been stuck trying to escape the tower with Ned in a book she’d been keeping as a journal for years. All of its previous entries had become useless, despite it being her own writing. It had been over two months since God came down and divided everyone’s tongues. It was clear that some people knew their way down the tower to an extent.
Apparently, during construction while alternating the tower’s silhouette every few floors or so in order to combat wind force, the interior floor plans had been completely redesigned every few floors or so. The same plans could have been used if Mahalile had just rotated the orientation with the tower, but he instead decided to make brand new orientations. Even before God confounded the speech of all her co-workers, Ahnna found it difficult to communicate with that mystery of a man. Doors that should lead into halls instead lead into rooms, and doors that should lead into halls sometimes lead into more rooms. Often times, a staircase would be found in what should be a closet. Following people who seemed to know where to go only worked for so long until it would seem they were lost too. Randomly opening doors until you found stairs was the only way to descend.
This process should have only taken hours, maybe a day or two, but not two months. The major contributor to the time delay was trying to help other people out. They’d come up to people and they’d speak, but they wouldn’t listen. Pointing seemed futile if the reason for it made no sense. Some people didn’t understand what it meant to be beckoned to. It all became more stressful, and everyone became hungry. People had to sleep more often, and sometimes the search for stairs became a search for leftover rations. Luckily, some leftover crates contained bread, however stale, and some barrels contained water or beer.
It began to rain again, and Ahnna had to wonder if God would truly keep his promise not to drown the Earth. It might be better if God did just drown her. She found nothing more frustrating than opening a door to find the same broom in it.
One man opened a window with a large cloth sheet over his head. Ahnna’s eyes widened at the sight. Before anyone could stop him, he jumped. Ahnna knew of the large eddies the wind created beside the building. The man’s idea was bold, but it would be futile. She could hear him scream as he tumbled in the sky. It was the only think should could understand from someone who didn’t speak as she did.
“Architects, there you are.” It was Nimrod.
“You! Nimrod!” Ahnna was furious.
“That is my name, yes.” Nimrod sighed. “Why are you not down below?”
“We can’t find our way out, sir.” Ned admitted.
This caused Nimrod to laugh a twisted, bellowing laugh. Ahnna had half the mind to strike him, but lacked the emotional energy.
“Follow me, you two.” Nimrod walked down the hall, and Ahnna did not hesitate to follow. Despite the fact that she despised his blasphemous ways, despised this tower he had her build, she would not deny a chance to be free of it. “It’s ironic how you two built this place, but don’t know about the lift.”
“The lift?” Ned and Ahnna both said in unison.
“Yeah, where we hauled food and supplies up to you by. The old pulley lift?” He opened a window and pulled at a rope. “It still works. It’s how I got up here.”
Pics
That was an enjoyable one. Of course everyone kinda knows this story, but I liked your take on it.
Also, we seem to have quite a few stories set in the ancient times in this round...
Also, we seem to have quite a few stories set in the ancient times in this round...
In the off-chance that this is actually someone's effortful and genuine attempt at an entry, I apologize. But as it stands, I am 90% sure this is either a crackfic with an intentionally ridiculous amount of typos (I have written down all that I found, but it's not worth my effort to organize it here unless the author is genuine) and a non sequitur ending, or it was an attempt at a fic that the author wrote without ever hitting the backspace key or scrolling back up once and gave up on by the end, but for some reason still submitted to the Writeoff.
In either of those two cases, I would really prefer that this kind of story not be submitted in the future. Against my better judgment, I actually put the labor into reading it all the way through, thinking it might just be an amateur writer I could offer constructive criticism for. Now, instead, I feel like I wasted my time for nothing.
An actual review, in case this is a legitimate attempt:
This story reads as one random minor obstacle after another. None of the characters have any depth to them, apart from—possibly—the MC. Even then, we're given a lot of backstory about her that bears no relevance on her future actions in the story, and worse yet, the MC doesn't seem to be much more than a passive observer (and an occasional problem solver for minor obstacles). Lesser loose ends or hints of greater significance, such as Mahalile's vehement disagreement with the central tower plan, never have any hope of being addressed again. The major loose ends, such as King Nimrod's place in this all—why he wants to pierce the heavens, why he suddenly took a stand against God at the end, why he was seemingly placed into the same language group as Ned and Ahnna, why he's coming in through the window through a pulley at the end and then just ending the story right there—are not even tied off. None of the interminable descriptions about central tower-laying, or wind circulation, or three-pointed starring, has anything to do with the story's momentum.
If I can say one good thing, besides the token service done to Ahnna's motivation as a character, it's that the ending scenes where Ahnna and Ned are trying to escape the tower produce some degree of a tense atmosphere.
But yes, let us not forget the typos. Typos typos typos! Here are just a random few I found:
"Ned rolled his eyes, almost as if to catch a glimpse of his thoughts. Just about everyone had been used to Mahalile’s neigh say nature."
"The temperatures were becoming more difficult to bare."
"The tower acted as a log interrupting it’s current."
"The thought bothered her about as much as gnat."
“But Ahnna,” she was hoping she wouldn’t say it, “the interior tower has no such decay.”
"She wasn’t sure what to while shaking in the sight of the LORD."
"In her mind, God’s face seem both foreign and familiar, almost shifting into everyone she’s even known and people she never will."
In either of those two cases, I would really prefer that this kind of story not be submitted in the future. Against my better judgment, I actually put the labor into reading it all the way through, thinking it might just be an amateur writer I could offer constructive criticism for. Now, instead, I feel like I wasted my time for nothing.
An actual review, in case this is a legitimate attempt:
This story reads as one random minor obstacle after another. None of the characters have any depth to them, apart from—possibly—the MC. Even then, we're given a lot of backstory about her that bears no relevance on her future actions in the story, and worse yet, the MC doesn't seem to be much more than a passive observer (and an occasional problem solver for minor obstacles). Lesser loose ends or hints of greater significance, such as Mahalile's vehement disagreement with the central tower plan, never have any hope of being addressed again. The major loose ends, such as King Nimrod's place in this all—why he wants to pierce the heavens, why he suddenly took a stand against God at the end, why he was seemingly placed into the same language group as Ned and Ahnna, why he's coming in through the window through a pulley at the end and then just ending the story right there—are not even tied off. None of the interminable descriptions about central tower-laying, or wind circulation, or three-pointed starring, has anything to do with the story's momentum.
If I can say one good thing, besides the token service done to Ahnna's motivation as a character, it's that the ending scenes where Ahnna and Ned are trying to escape the tower produce some degree of a tense atmosphere.
But yes, let us not forget the typos. Typos typos typos! Here are just a random few I found:
"Ned rolled his eyes, almost as if to catch a glimpse of his thoughts. Just about everyone had been used to Mahalile’s neigh say nature."
"The temperatures were becoming more difficult to bare."
"The tower acted as a log interrupting it’s current."
"The thought bothered her about as much as gnat."
“But Ahnna,” she was hoping she wouldn’t say it, “the interior tower has no such decay.”
"She wasn’t sure what to while shaking in the sight of the LORD."
"In her mind, God’s face seem both foreign and familiar, almost shifting into everyone she’s even known and people she never will."
Okay... Non-sequitur ending aside, I do think this is a genuine entry. The author may have just run out of time. Although >>Paracompact's comment has certainly given me something to think about...I'm gonna stick with my gut and say this is serious business.
This story struck me as one that is trying to have its cake and eat it too. And when I say "cake" what I really mean is "architecture." Coming from someone with a background in architecture and building codes, rest assured that the architects in this story will be losing their licenses. Designing/building one floor at a time is crazy as it is (although I can forgive this for the sake of the story), but re-aligning floor assemblies using a counterweight is insane because that would only cause the floors to bend, rotating some star-shaped storeys won't significantly reduce wind forces at such a height, unless the storeys are so skinny that there's no room for camps, and the load-bearing capacity of the base of your structure is never ever an afterthought. And it certainly can't be fixed with Jenga-style revisions (side note: that reference was on point, though, I loved that).
But whatever, right? It's the Tower of Babel, it's a Legend, I'm supposed to just enjoy it for what it is without bringing architectural principles into it. But in my defense, you started it. If you're going to call your main character an architect and bring actual science into this then I think it should all work.
But that's enough about that. Para also makes good points that the characters don't have much depth as well. The only one I see having much of a personality is Ned, but his doesn't make any sense towards the end. I liked his nonchalant attitude at first—I liked his "chill" comment a lot the first time we saw him, for example. The second time, though, it's so out of place. I'm supposed to be tense, and this guy is pretending there's nothing wrong for the sake of a joke, undermining the situation.
I'm also going to have to dock some points for not being as original as other stories. This is framed mostly inside an existing story, and the things that you've added in don't quite hold up. And pretend I made a pun here about lofty heights, or... a structure that's about to collapse.
But anyways, thank you for writing, and good luck in the shakedown!
Edit: I forgot to mention, you may have noticed I didn't go after the vents idea. There's something in that. I mean, they would have to be huge vents for friction not to cause the exact same issues, but that fits with the larger-than-life attitude that this story is structured around, so I think it works.
This story struck me as one that is trying to have its cake and eat it too. And when I say "cake" what I really mean is "architecture." Coming from someone with a background in architecture and building codes, rest assured that the architects in this story will be losing their licenses. Designing/building one floor at a time is crazy as it is (although I can forgive this for the sake of the story), but re-aligning floor assemblies using a counterweight is insane because that would only cause the floors to bend, rotating some star-shaped storeys won't significantly reduce wind forces at such a height, unless the storeys are so skinny that there's no room for camps, and the load-bearing capacity of the base of your structure is never ever an afterthought. And it certainly can't be fixed with Jenga-style revisions (side note: that reference was on point, though, I loved that).
But whatever, right? It's the Tower of Babel, it's a Legend, I'm supposed to just enjoy it for what it is without bringing architectural principles into it. But in my defense, you started it. If you're going to call your main character an architect and bring actual science into this then I think it should all work.
But that's enough about that. Para also makes good points that the characters don't have much depth as well. The only one I see having much of a personality is Ned, but his doesn't make any sense towards the end. I liked his nonchalant attitude at first—I liked his "chill" comment a lot the first time we saw him, for example. The second time, though, it's so out of place. I'm supposed to be tense, and this guy is pretending there's nothing wrong for the sake of a joke, undermining the situation.
I'm also going to have to dock some points for not being as original as other stories. This is framed mostly inside an existing story, and the things that you've added in don't quite hold up. And pretend I made a pun here about lofty heights, or... a structure that's about to collapse.
But anyways, thank you for writing, and good luck in the shakedown!
Edit: I forgot to mention, you may have noticed I didn't go after the vents idea. There's something in that. I mean, they would have to be huge vents for friction not to cause the exact same issues, but that fits with the larger-than-life attitude that this story is structured around, so I think it works.
>>Samey90
>>Miller Minus
>>Paracompact
Hey, thank you for taking the time to read this and sharing your thoughts and words!
Due to time constraints, this story ended up not taking the shape I had originally hoped. The abrupt ending came from me slapping a few sentences to the tail of what I had and submitting it with the last 20 or so seconds left. The title was even rushed onto it. I was hoping to make the title a linguistic pun of the Hebrew word for 'tall'.
The major part of this story was supposed to be about how the main character escaped the tower she helped create. The major obstacles were supposed to be the fact that she couldn't understand anyone else in the building, and the fact that the oblong revisions were counterproductive in the case of a fire drill. It ended up being 1/4th of the whole story in the end which, uh, makes it fall pretty flat. I also didn't get a chance to flaunt all of the details I wanted to incorporate into it, and the details I did get a chance to flaunt were half baked.
Anyway! I studied my linguistics books and went online (admittedly on Wikipedia, especially for the bible stuff) for all the language and history related details in the story. Each month is part of the Hebrew calendar, which has a theme applied to it that I tried to incorporate. The languages used in the middle portion are romanized translations of languages like Amharic, Egyptian, Sinitic (specifically Mandarin) Hebrew, and for fun I added in Basque and a secret special language. I love languages, and they were supposed to be a large part of the story!
I had to look pretty much everywhere to get an accurate portrayal of Babylon and its size, but an old humanities text provided a pretty decent reference. The architectural knowledge I have is incredibly limited, so I hoped my mechanical drafting and physics knowledge would carry me over while I glanced at maybe like, two google pages about the Burj Khalifa and the Shanghai Tower. I should have studied skyscraper construction a tad more. I wanted to bring science into this legend because it would be cool.
As for the characters' lack of depth, that was either my inexperience as a writer, the fact that my story is pretty much cut in half, or both. I usually try to show character through dialogue, and I don't know if that's a bad practice or not so I cut the dialogue short.
Oh, as for my overabundance of typos: those were just typos. I couldn't get anyone to read over the story with me, and I was out of time. Perhaps it was careless, but I figured it was better to submit something rather than nothing at all. Next time, I'll divvy up my efforts differently!
Again, thank you for reading!
>>Miller Minus
>>Paracompact
Hey, thank you for taking the time to read this and sharing your thoughts and words!
Due to time constraints, this story ended up not taking the shape I had originally hoped. The abrupt ending came from me slapping a few sentences to the tail of what I had and submitting it with the last 20 or so seconds left. The title was even rushed onto it. I was hoping to make the title a linguistic pun of the Hebrew word for 'tall'.
The major part of this story was supposed to be about how the main character escaped the tower she helped create. The major obstacles were supposed to be the fact that she couldn't understand anyone else in the building, and the fact that the oblong revisions were counterproductive in the case of a fire drill. It ended up being 1/4th of the whole story in the end which, uh, makes it fall pretty flat. I also didn't get a chance to flaunt all of the details I wanted to incorporate into it, and the details I did get a chance to flaunt were half baked.
Anyway! I studied my linguistics books and went online (admittedly on Wikipedia, especially for the bible stuff) for all the language and history related details in the story. Each month is part of the Hebrew calendar, which has a theme applied to it that I tried to incorporate. The languages used in the middle portion are romanized translations of languages like Amharic, Egyptian, Sinitic (specifically Mandarin) Hebrew, and for fun I added in Basque and a secret special language. I love languages, and they were supposed to be a large part of the story!
I had to look pretty much everywhere to get an accurate portrayal of Babylon and its size, but an old humanities text provided a pretty decent reference. The architectural knowledge I have is incredibly limited, so I hoped my mechanical drafting and physics knowledge would carry me over while I glanced at maybe like, two google pages about the Burj Khalifa and the Shanghai Tower. I should have studied skyscraper construction a tad more. I wanted to bring science into this legend because it would be cool.
As for the characters' lack of depth, that was either my inexperience as a writer, the fact that my story is pretty much cut in half, or both. I usually try to show character through dialogue, and I don't know if that's a bad practice or not so I cut the dialogue short.
Oh, as for my overabundance of typos: those were just typos. I couldn't get anyone to read over the story with me, and I was out of time. Perhaps it was careless, but I figured it was better to submit something rather than nothing at all. Next time, I'll divvy up my efforts differently!
Again, thank you for reading!