Glimmering

The Pyramid itself was so huge it seemed almost extraneous, a monolithic backdrop to the street. He thought of what he had heard someone say on TV, shortly after the Pyramid opened but before the first waves of failed terrorist attacks directed at what had, so far, proved to be an inviolable structure. That it was like a hive, that the Pyramid had been constructed with hivelike precision and efficiency and speed. That, despite the myriad restaurants and boutiques and studios inside, despite the theaters and offices and all the galleria trappings of upscale commerce, it did not seem to have been designed with human beings in mind.

“Sir?”

Another moment before Trip remembered that he was “sir.” “Uh, I dunno. I mean, probably not long. I’m just picking someone up. We’re going to the museum.”

The driver nodded, then popped her door and slid into the street. An instant later Trip’s door opened and, with a flourish, she beckoned him out.

“They’re expecting you, sir? Security’s tight here.”

Trip’s throat contracted. “Yeah.” His voice came out in a whisper, but the driver seemed satisfied. She smiled again and pointed at the building’s immense maw, the doors changing color to keep pace with the rainbow sky.

“Well, I’ll be here!” Once more she took her place behind the wheel. Trip swallowed, shoved his hands into his pockets, and forged on into the building.

He had to go through a metal detector and a crowded disinfectant chamber, where a yawning woman in a surgical mask gave him a perfunctory blast of Viconix.

“Any recent infections?” She glanced at his face and hands. A masked guard held a dog that sniffed Trip perfunctorily. Trip smiled at the dog; then, as the guard motioned him on, went through the door, into the Pyramid. And outside.

He gasped, stopping so quickly that he was immediately buffeted by more people hurrying by.

“Watch it, asshole,” someone hissed. Trip stepped aside, blinking in amazement.

Overhead, the sun shone radiantly in a blue sky. Golden sun like the first day of summer vacation, sky so brilliant it was like blue paint thrown into his eyes. A faint warm wind was blowing, just enough that Trip could feel the hair on the back of his neck stir. The breeze smelled sweetly of earth and pine needles, and fresh water. Beneath his feet the ground felt uneven. But it was all there, branches of trees moving against very high thin white clouds, light exploding behind leaves and limbs in a thousand rayed parhelions. There were people everywhere, hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, walking and running and talking animatedly. Most of them were expensively dressed and masked, in what looked to Trip like evening clothes, or outfits for a costume party; but other people were wearing ostentatiously casual outdoor clothing, the kind you bought at L.L. Bean once upon a time, or from catalogs that pretended to outfit expeditions.

And there was not the cacophony of sound he might have expected: instead all those voices spiraled up and out of earshot, like doves loosed in an auditorium. He stood with his mouth open, as though to catch rain upon his tongue, his eyes closed because you can’t look into the sun. He felt dazed with unthinking joy. It wasn’t until someone else elbowed him, though with an apology this time, that he opened his eyes and began looking around with intense curiosity, suspicion almost, trying to figure out how it was done.