I.

Monda Foiro was always looked forward to by the citizens of Usonia due to its Golden Age of innovation, now decades past. In recent years, the quadrennial celebration of industrial progress and invention had become a display of gadgets, gizmos, and “manio-machines” (tech that amounted to little more than a fad, such as Uriah Bevan’s flavored tap water).

Nevertheless, Monda Foiro Day (or simply “Monda Foiro”) never failed to draw the majority of Usonia’s population. Long gone may have been the days of marvels that revolutionized transportation, agriculture, and mass entertainment, but the older Usonians remembered such times and still attended out of hope for one last world-breaking invention. 

Others went to revel in the cynicism, mocking and bemoaning the lack of creativity and stagnation of industry. But at the end of the day Monda Foiro was a party, and the youngest Usonians could always count on sweet treats, games, and a lack of parental supervision.

This is how eight year old Jebidiah found himself wandering between the ring toss and pistolo booths, inhaling a wad of blue candy floss, unconcerned that his mother and father were nowhere in sight.

The young boy approached a tent in front of which stood a nice-looking woman wearing what Jebidiah assumed was her swimming costume, though it was sparkling with countless gemstones. She was smiling at everyone who passed, waving them inside the tent. When she met Jebidiah’s eyes, she squatted down and lifted the flap of the tent, revealing an old man on a stage speaking to a group of people seated on benches.

“Hey there cutie-pie,” the woman said, “wanna see what’s possible?”

Her smile was warm and sincere, and before Jebidiah knew it he’d stepped inside the tent. The woman ruffled his hair and gave him a wink before closing the tent flap behind him. Jebidiah sat on a wooden bench, far behind where the main group of about ten onlookers were sitting. 

The old man, who had stopped speaking when Jebidiah entered, waved excitedly for the boy to come closer. “Excellent, excellent!” he exclaimed. “Just in time. Closer boy, you won’t want to miss this.”

Some of the audience turned to look at Jebidiah, but most had their eyes glued to the table on stage. On it sat a potted plant and a contraption that looked similar to a theremin, with a wooden base and a metal antenna sticking skyward out of one end. Out the other snaked a copper wire, wrapped around a silver nail.

“My boy,” the old man said to Jebidiah, holding up the pot which held a sapling roughly a foot long. “Identify this object, if you will.”

Now all the eyes in the tent turned to Jebidiah as he walked to the bench closest to the stage. His breath quickened, lips shut tight, avoiding everyone’s—and especially the old man’s—gaze. 

“A plant,” a man said, clearly growing impatient. “It’s a ruddy plant, let’s get on with it.”

The old man kept his eyes on Jebidiah for a moment before turning his focus to the instrument on the table. “A sapling, to be more accurate,” he said. “To grow into a proper tree in my very own garden one day.”

Now the old inventor looked at the impatient man who had answered for Jebidiah. “And what does a tree sound like?”

The impatient man shrugged, then chuckled when the inventor did not turn his stare away from him. Even the raucous sounds outside the tent seemed to grow quiet as the silence in the tent grew. Suddenly, everyone jumped as a young girl made crackling, creaking noises similar to an oak in a gale.

The crowd jumped a second time when the old inventor suddenly flashed a toothy smile and laughed gleefully at the girl’s outburst. “Very good!” he said, finally turning away from the impatient man. “Excellent mimicry young lady, but I’m afraid I was not clear in my query. Those noises,” he re-created the cracking and creaking, complete with wild gesticulation, much to the young girl’s delight, “they are what a tree says. What I aim to find out with this here device is what their very thoughts sound like.”

He laid the pot on the contraption’s wooden base and flipped a switch on the base's side. The metal rod sticking into the air began vibrating with a low hum. The noise grew in pitch as the rod twitched back and forth more rapidly, until the sound was so high and the vibration so fast that it appeared to be still and silent. But there was a pressure in the air—a slight tug on the eardrum— that let you know the noise was still there, as if a dog whistle was being blown. 

The old inventor raised the nail wrapped in the copper wire. He lowered it towards the sapling. Jebidiah held tight to his candy floss as if the demonstration hinged on it. Somewhere in the distance, outside of the tent, he heard a woman’s voice call out his name. He turned to the tent’s flap, but just then the nail dipped below the soil and all other thoughts went out of Jebidiah’s mind. For the sound that emanated from the vertical rod was unlike anything he’d heard before. And yet he knew instantly that it was not a trick or illusion.

The sound it most resembled was being underwater. The way soft bumps and thuds might sound underneath a lazy creek. There was unrushed movement and reaction in the gentle noise. A methodical rhythm. Somehow it felt true to a hand placed on bark.

The old inventor picked up the needle and placed it in various areas of the pot, touching different roots. All the sounds were variations on a theme. He spoke softly, so as not to interrupt the tree’s thoughts. 

“How does a forest grow?” he said. “Shouldn’t their roots keep growing, keep sucking up all the water and nutrients in the dirt, so that the tree may tower over all other trees? No. The tree is not more important than the forest. The roots talk. Chemical changes, light variation, electrical impulses. If one tree must tell another it has grown too large, does that not make each one an individual? Capable of decision-making, resource management, and self-awareness? The sound you hear is another being’s mind.”

The old man fell silent once more as the soothing, muffled sound of the roots spread throughout the tent.

II.

“Neat, eh?” the nice-looking woman in the swimming costume asked Jebidiah as he exited the tent. Jebidiah nodded as he took another bite of his candy floss. The woman somehow managed to keep smiling as she stuck a cigarette in her mouth, lit it, and inhaled. “Happy Monda Foiro, cutie-pie,” she exhaled.

Jebidiah still had his mind on the old man’s invention as he unhurriedly started looking for his mother and father. But then something happened that was a common occurrence at the fair (at least during its Golden Age): with one mind-boggling invention rattling around your brain already, another demonstration catches your eye with the promise of being even better.

And so as Jebidiah scanned the dense crowd of Usonians before him for his parents’ faces, a flash of light pulled his eyes in another direction. A crowd was pushing their way inside the wooden and creaking Clarke Hall, many with cameras raised over their heads, bulbs exploding. With each flash, the darkened interior of Clarke Hall—which Jebidiah had never seen before—was illuminated. He saw glimpses of a structure so big that the top could not be seen, covered in a heavy green curtain.

Jebidiah could still hear the melodious singing of the sapling in his ears. What if he hadn’t trusted the smiling lady? If he’d never entered the tent, he’d never have known the magic beneath the bark of a tree.

Jebidiah stepped towards Clarke Hall, and two hands immediately fell on his shoulders. He was spun around and looked into the face of his mother, who did not appear happy. After repeated reminders to not leave her side, Jebidiah’s father found and joined them. He, too, reminded the boy to stay close.

Heat spread across Jebidiah’s face. With each reminder from his parents, he felt a tug in the opposite direction. He was eight, after all, and more than capable of looking after himself. But still he nodded and did not protest when his mother took his candy floss away from him and threw it in the bin.

Another flash. This one caught the eye of Jebidiah’s mother. Jebidiah turned. The crowd had made their way inside Clarke Hall, and a presentation was beginning. There were more flashes of light outlining the green curtain, waving gently in the large space. Jebidiah’s mother turned to her husband, then back down to her son, who’s eyes were fixed on the open door. She looked at the blue candy floss sitting on top of a heap of trash. One last exhibit, she resigned, then they would go home.

A dull murmur pulsed throughout the crowd gathered in Clarke Hall. Jebidiah kept inching his way through the adults’ legs, forcing his parents to nudge their way towards the stage.

Standing at the foot of the large structure covered by the green curtain, Jebidiah realized he had no idea how large Clarke Hall was. He could not see the back of the shadowy room, and the ceiling’s rafters were barely discernible in the musty, barn-like space only lit by sunlight.

The room grew even darker as the door shut. The crowd ceased their murmur. Jebidiah jumped when heeled boots struck the floorboards of the stage just as a spotlight hit the green curtain. A tall, thin man with a fittingly thin mustache strode across the stage, smiling brightly. The crowd clapped, but clearly out of politeness. Monda Foiro had produced quite a few celebrity inventors and scientists over the years, but this mystery man was not one of them.

“Salutojn, gesinjoroj, salutojn,” the man said in the Old Tongue through his brilliantly white teeth. He ran a hand along the green curtain as he made his way to the center of the large stage. He clapped his hands together and dragged one boot heel into the other as he came to a stop.

“You do not know me,” he said. “Nor should you. My name is Francesco Fagioli, and this is my first time presenting at Monda Foiro.” Another spattering of polite, almost absent-minded applause, as everyone was staring past Francesco Fagioli at his immense, mysterious creation towering into the darkness.

“I, like all of you, have been inspired by the mission of Monda Foiro from the time I was a child. The mantras of countless creators would ring in my ears as I went to bed, ‘Tomorrow, today,’ ‘If you can dream it, you can build it,’ ‘Forward, onward, upward.’ I will not waste your time on my specific inspirations or the obstacles I overcame to stand before you today. I will merely say that, after over twenty years of ceaseless labor, I’m excited to contribute to Usonia’s next leap forward.”

The crowd had slowly shifted its attention from the mystery of the curtain to Fagioli as he turned and approached the green velvet.

“I chose to unveil my creation in this hall,” he said in a loud voice, facing away from the crowd, “because it is an unfortunate proof of the deterioration of not only this day, but Usonia itself.”

He let his words hang in the musty air for a moment—savoring the silence and stillness—before moving on.

“Does anyone know what purpose Clarke Hall once served? It housed the totality of Monda Foiro. But we failed to maintain it and here it barely stands, perhaps two years away from caving in completely. The wood is rotting, the bolts are rusted, the ceiling leaks and it is somehow drafty on a hot day.”

The crowd chuckled, looking around at the depressing space.

“We use up everything around us until it dies, and then we move on. It is a holdover from the failed empire our ancestors once fled. But we don’t have to accept putrefaction. We are Usonians. If something stands in our way, we overcome.”

The crowd nodded and gave a small murmur of agreement.

“And so I give you a reminder of our potential. A symbol that I hope will inspire the young ones here today…” Francesco’s eyes fell on Jebidiah. “Never settle for a Golden Age of yore.”

With that, the curtain lifted. The crowd let out the collective breath it had taken in, and an air of disappointment filled the room. For underneath the mysterious green velvet was a small, ugly, and unfinished building. It was slightly taller than it was wide, and resembled a cheap tenement under construction. Two of the four walls were only frames, allowing the crowd to see inside to an empty, unremarkable space.

Frencesco smiled. “I see those looks. Trust me, the face of a curtain is often prettier than what it hides. But allow me to explain.”

The inventor took out an oversized, serrated knife from a small sheath at his side and walked round to one of the building’s finished, red-colored walls. He scanned the crowd once with a mischievous grin, then raised his knife and dug it into the wall. Dragging the knife down, bits of the structure cracked and crumbled to the ground. He removed the knife, revealing a thin gash roughly six inches long. Francesco Fagioli sheathed the knife, then turned back to the crowd.

“A storm passes,” he said, “and a tree falls onto your roof. A drunk driver destroys your shopfront. Your foundation shifts and the walls start cracking. Even when there are no accidents, you can always expect rot and decay. People sell you tools, insurance, repair services. But what will happen next year? Another storm, another tree, and more repairs.”

Jebidiah started to grow bored by and unfamiliar with the man’s anecdotes. His eyes moved to the structure. The two finished walls were the only painted surfaces—a deep wine-red. In the dim light the rest of the place appeared gray. But whenever Francesco’s spotlight passed over it, the building proved mostly white. Even the frames didn’t seem to be made of wood, but a material that looked more like ceramic.

As more of the audience grew uninterested in Francesco’s talk of home repairs, their eyes also turned to the building. The longer one looked at it, the stranger it appeared. In addition to it’s red-and-white coloring, the exposed framework was not the typical grid pattern of a house under construction. The joists, columns, and beams were not vertical or horizontal, and seemed to be a construction worker’s worst nightmare. They spread out in an inconsistent lattice like a messy spider-web.

The building was two levels, and through the bare walls one could see the floor of the second story was also unfinished. Though it too consisted of a tangle of the eggshell material, which jutted out at awkward angles and in varying thicknesses.

“What if a structure could repair itself?” Francesco asked, aware that he was losing the crowd. “Turn your attention back to the crack.”

The crowd looked to the wall where Francesco had dug in his knife. Another murmur, and some people stood up. There was a spattering of applause and some camera flashes, but most were confused. Jebidiah was among them, because he was still searching the wall for the crack Francesco had made. But then he realized everyone else was doing the same thing. The wall had mended itself.

“I am no stranger to the skepticism rampant at Monda Foiro,” Francesco said, reveling once more in his captive audience. “I assure you, there is no trickery. With my designs, I aim to give Usonia the ability not to fix itself, but to build a world that needs no fixing. Please, come forward. Do not take the building’s appearance as fragile, I merely wanted to show its inner-workings. Step inside, examine it closely if you wish. And remember the name Francesco Fagioli.”

There was little difference between a magician and an inventor at Monda Foiro, and Francesco had the best act of the day. Jebidiah’s parents were two of the first to stand and cheer for the performance, and took no notice of their son climbing the stage with half of the audience to step inside the structure.

People walked around the outside, stepped through the walls, and ran their hands over where Francesco had dug in his knife. Jebidiah climbed a staircase made of the same off-white material as the rest of the building to the second level. There were only a handful of other people stepping gingerly across the webbed framework that was the incomplete flooring.

Jebidiah hopped across the room from one beam to the next until he was able to closely examine one of the unfinished walls.

The material was not as smooth as Jebidiah expected, running his hands along the bumpy and uneven beam that arched from left to right in front of him. Examining it more closely, it was also porous, revealing a latticed network that mirrored the framework of the entire structure itself.

Jebidiah moved to one of the finished red walls. What would typically be plaster, drywall, or wood was similar to the material that made up the building's frames. But this was smoother and had slightly more give when Jebidiah pressed his hand against it. It was also well insulated, as Jebidiah felt a warmth from the wall even within the drafty Clarke Hall. In fact, the open-face building was such a good insulator that there was a touch of humidity in the room, and when Jebidiah took his hand away it was slightly damp.

Jebidiah looked around himself. The other people in the room had left. He looked down through the fretwork at his feet and saw that there were only a few people still milling about the first floor. The crowd in Clarke Hall was thinning, and Jebidiah knew Monda Foiro was drawing to a close. 

He spotted his parents talking excitedly with a group of people gathered around Francesco Fagioli. His mother spotted him on the second floor and smiled. Jebidiah waved, then giggled as his mother scrunched her nose up into a funny face she often made when she and Jebidiah eyed each other across a room.

His mother turned back to the crowd, and Jebidiah looked once more at the framework his hand was resting on. He closed his eyes and tried to tune out the conversations in the room. He wasn’t trying to listen, though, as much as he was trying to feel what the structure might be thinking.

III.

Jebidiah walked out of Clarke Hall. He looked back at his parents still inside, talking with Francesco Fagioli and others about the practical application of his building materials, the Golden Age of Monda Foiro, and the state of Usonia.

Jebidiah looked around at the rabble of tents coming down and vendors packing their autos. He quickly noticed a familiar pretty lady and an old man. The woman had put on a coat, and she was helping the inventor lift one of the benches that had been in their tent into a truck.

The pair seemed to be working alone, and as such were making slow progress. Their tent had not yet come down, and through the tied-open flaps Jebidiah could see the old man’s contraption still sitting on the table.

After loading the bench, the woman turned around and lit another cigarette. She spotted Jebidiah looking at the tent and waved her fingers at him. Jebidiah waved back, and the woman turned away from him.

Jebidiah snaked his way between the stalls being taken down until he reached the back of the old man’s tent. He could hear the woman talking to the inventor as they loaded another bench onto the truck.

“What’s in Clarke Hall?” she asked, though she didn’t sound so kind when she asked it. “Some flashy manio-machine?”

“Not necessary, Jezebel,” the old man wheezed from inside the truck. “All should be welcome at Monda—”

“Yeah, yeah,” the woman, Jezebel said, “I just don’t believe the next best thing’s gunna come from some schmo at his first Foiro.”

Jebidiah raised the canvas of the tent and crawled inside. It was mostly empty, and he could see Jezebel loading the truck through the open flaps. Jebidiah slowly climbed the stage towards the device.

“We’re not in the business of making the next best thing,” the old man said, causing Jezebel to groan. She joined him as he finished what appeared to be a common expression of his: “We just make the best things we can.”

Jebidiah lifted the device off the table as he saw the woman finish loading the bench and take a final drag of the cigarette dangling from her mouth.

“A little money never hurt nobody, though,” she mumbled, flicking the butt onto the ground and extinguishing it with her heel.

Jebidiah climbed down the stage and pushed the device out of the bottom of the tent, still hearing the man and woman loading the truck. He knew he didn’t have much time before they’d notice the contraption missing.

Racing back to Clarke Hall, Jebidiah darted between the legs of the adults still crowded around Francesco Fagioli. No one noticed the young boy carrying the strange device, but he avoided the spotlight hanging limply in the center of the stage nonetheless. He entered the strange building, climbed the precarious staircase, and set the device on the meshed ground.

Flipping the switch, Jebidiah looked out through the unfinished wall to ensure the sound of the vibrating rod did not draw any attention. As it grew seemingly still and silent, Jebidiah gripped the silver nail wrapped in the copper wire.

He neared the tangled web of arching white beams that made up the exposed wall. He looked through the wall, down at the crowd of chattering and laughing adults. Jebidiah closed his eyes as he neared the nail to the building’s framework, straining to hear, as the old inventor had put it, the chemical changes, light variation, and electrical impulses that might be happening within.

Monda Foiro Day was an especially celebrated affair because the citizens of Usonia were not known to be overly rambunctious. There were few pubs, and even among teenagers excessive drinking or late nights out were simply uncommon. So as Monda Foiro—a relatively draining day for most Usonians—wound down, most were already in their homes, asleep or preparing for bed.

In other words, when Jebidiah touched the nail to the building’s frame, it was not difficult for the sound that emanated from the old man’s device to travel throughout Clarke Hall and beyond, such that most Usonians can still remember what they were doing when they had the immense misfortune of hearing it.

The reason that practically the totality of Usonia stopped to prick up its ears at the sound was not only because of its volume—which, admittedly, was so immense that it caused Jebidiah’s eardrums to rupture. More than that, the sound was familiar. Perhaps only enacted in horror-themed stage and radio plays, if you’re lucky, but everyone can sadly recognize the sound of screaming agony.

Not just one, but several voices erupted from the device, not forming words but shrieking, groaning, and howling in unmistakable pain. Jebidiah immediately dropped the nail, but it simply rolled across the floor. And, as before, it was variations on a theme. A miserable chorus wordlessly begging for relief bounced throughout the walls of the unfinished home and echoed across Clarke Hall.

Jebidiah picked up the nail just as his foot got caught in the webbed floor. He spun as he fell, and felt the nail dig into the finished red well. The screams that had already seemed to crescendo reached new heights, pounding into the boy’s head, and the sound was true to a knife rending one’s skin.

He tried to stand, placing his hand on the wall, and felt where the nail had torn the material. He pulled his hand away to see a smear of red, and though he couldn’t fathom what was happening he somehow had the horrifying, subconscious realization as to why Francesco Fagioli had painted the walls red for his demonstration. He didn’t understand any of it, but somehow knew that earlier it was not humidity that the walls had been damp with. Like the vague outline of a beast, he did not fully comprehend his own terror but it was enough to terrify him anyway.

Jebidiah reached for the device's switch, but in his haste he knocked it into a hole in the floor. It was as if the device itself was writhing on the ground, the nail brushing against the house’s building materials and releasing a torrent of anguish. Jebidiah clapped his hands over his ears and curled up into a ball. 

Suddenly, the screaming stopped and there was a crash. Jebidiah opened his eyes. Francesco Fagioli had lifted the device and thrown it onto the floor of Clarke Hall. He looked up through the walls and floor at Jebidiah, panting heavily.

A crowd of people was steadily streaming back into the room to investigate the sound. Among them was the old man and Jezebel.The man rushed forward, picking up the pieces of his invention. He looked up at Francesco, tears in his eyes.

Francesco stared down at the man, then breathed in deeply and spat on the ground next to him. He looked at the crowd staring at him.

“Don’t let Usonia die,” he said gravely. “Listen. Do you hear anything? I don’t.”

“Is that thing…” Jezebel said, looking at the structure, “alive?”

Jebidiah had not even heard his parents entering the structure, but they were suddenly scooping him up and running out of the building. Holding her son, Jebidiah’s mother turned back to Francesco.

“You said you wanted to help people, you monster! Police! Where are the damn police?” she screamed.

Several men from the crowd took matters into their own hands and rushed towards Francesco. They tackled him to the ground, holding his head down as sirens erupted in the distance.

Francesco looked up at Jebidiah, then to his mother. “You mold your child into a scared weakling who will settle for the memory of a great world as he lives in a squalid one. I mold my children, too.”

Jebediah heard none of this as his ruptured ears were still ringing. He only saw his mother staring at Francesco in horror. Jebidiah turned to see Jezebel, who was resting one hand on the old man’s shoulder as she lit a cigarette between trembling lips with her other. As camera bulbs exploded around them, she caught Jebidiah’s eyes and mouthed that it was okay. He knew it wasn’t. Once more he couldn’t wrap his head around what had just happened, or what it meant for the future. But he somehow knew both he and Usonia would never be the same again.