Plink.
Hard at work at his bulky glass desk, Fortium reached out with his forefinger and thumb and picked up a small pebble of plaster, unexpectedly deposited in front of him. His eyes rose to the ceiling. There. He could make out a small fissure from which the chunk had dropped. Why had he never seen that before? Was it new?
Just below the level of hearing, he could feel a subsonic thrum come and go, as if a mammoth beast were thrashing about in the basement, or a distant storm were brewing. He looked at the liquid in his cup of redleaf tea – and the surface was rippling ever so slightly.
Fortium rose to his feet, concerned. His fingers played with the string of engineered crystal beads he wore at his neck, part of his equipment as Director of Unison, arguably the most critical bureau for the safety and security of the City. It relayed to his synapses the same worrying omen that his own senses had been signaling. And the reverberation grew.
He swept back the deep blue cape of his official uniform and strode to the stained glass double doors, flinging them wide. Stepping out onto the balcony, Fortium held a commanding view of the heart of the metropolis, from his perch a dozen floors above. Beautiful, ancient, the very architecture spoke of a wise and flourishing culture. He held his hand to his brow to block the red sun’s glare, and watched.
The rumble was now obvious to all in the plaza below, no longer just a queasy ill-ease in Fortium’s stomach. And was that a crack forming in the foundation stone of the Memorial Arch? That monument had stood in the City for centuries. By the Eternal Muse, it would not come crashing down on his watch!
Panning back, Fortium summoned a mindgaze of the fifty-odd Tunesmiths that were distributed across town. He could see each of them: cleaning house, woodworking, feeding livestock. But each was also Singing, lending their support with a rich diversity of tones across varying scales. Words were optional, as long as the biomusical emanations continued.
— because the City would crumble otherwise. Perched as it was on the outer rim of a crater of a quake-ridden planet, only Singing would maintain it. Walls would fall, yes, and the very atmosphere, captured and held in place by the thousands of Tunesmiths among dozens of Cities, would seep away.
Something was wrong. Several of the Tunesmiths were quiet, mumbling their notes, or silent altogether. Dangerous! Fortium knew what the tolerances were. If a significant enough portion of the Ensemble were not contributing —
“What’s going on out there?” he bellowed, pulling images of just those several delinquents into his gaze. “Your melodia is falling below critical threshold. Disturbances are showing everywhere!”
One Tunesmith spoke for the rest. “Fortium, we attended a symposium last evening, mindhosted by the Credible Society. They presented compelling evidence that Singing was not in fact responsible for maintaining the environment. They said it was all propaganda spread by secret power brokers in order to subjugate –“
“The Credible Society! Do you listen to every conspiracy theory out there?”
But it was too late. Graceful towers collapsed, aqueducts fissured and exploded, the very ground erupted. In Fortium’s last moments, he sincerely hoped that the other Cities would survive. But the Credible Society did have worldwide — well, credibility.