The Various Architects

1. The Dreamer

I've always assumed as bizarre as dreams can get, there is still some part of them that must be based in reality. Upon waking and having analyzed and considered this dream I was surprised that at no point while dreaming did I consider that this to be ridiculous. It begins somewhere in Europe. In France I am assuming, although the building in question was called The Parliament. The Parliament was a set of many, which made the act reasonable, if it could at all be called that, perhaps I should say "considerable" instead. The Parliament was not neo-gothic like the Houses of Parliaments along the Thames, but rather a Beaux-Arts style with a kind of Mansard roof--a typical French federal building, with the foyer at the front and two wings that expanded symmetrically on either side. Nonetheless it was well known that this building once belonged to the United States, somewhere in the midwest, such as Detroit, or perhaps Washington, DC. Yes, now that I think of it, the heist had to have its end in an easterly city of stature of the United States. Of course it was Washington, DC.

Somehow my friends and I came across the idea that this building could be unhinged from its foundation using explosives appropriately placed at several positions in the back and on either side. With enough force, we could uproot it and launch it from its de facto quarters of Paris, France to its original birthplace, Washington, DC. There were a few problems with the idea, although the thought of unhinging the building with explosives was, in my mind, unquestionably sound. For one thing, this was no doubt illegal. But here the heroic quality of the deed outweighed its illegality, as I reasoned. It was illegal, but so are many other acts, and although they are against the law that doesn't mean they shouldn't occur or that they don't take place. If the building was returned to its rightful home successfully--and it was imperative that we be successful--then all question of law would be absolved in the fact that we were heroes and a wrong had been made right.

The other problem with this was the question of success. As I said, I was without doubt that we could release the building from the ground and catapult it into the air (it never crossed my mind, for instance, that by using explosives, the building would simply crumble); the difficulty was getting it to land in its true birthplace, Washington, DC. If it were to land in, say, Detroit, then our efforts would be in vain and surely we would receive a maximum prison sentence--one of those sentences that almost seems laughably, impossibly long.

Nonetheless, the risks were not so great as to stop us from attempting this feat, and finally the day came that we had the explosives in place. We parked ourselves toward the top of the ceiling of the building, using the clerestories as our windshields. Once the building became unhinged, we could use the architrave as a steering wheel by gripping certain parts of it. What followed was not so much the actual event, but the video that had been taped, edited and later on viewed many times while reminiscing about this heist. The video was in color, but the quality had that old-timey feel so for instance, car chases were humorously sped up almost as a reminder that the viewers are not watching reality, but perhaps "taped" reality. There were long shots of silence that gradated into the sound of increasing RPMs of an engine as the building sped past the camera, down avenues and boulevards, skirted trees which exploded in a mist of foliage and, turning corners, nearly careened into other buildings. As was expected, the police and the military were eventually involved and we were trailed by not only government agencies, but angry French citizens protesting the heist of their beloved Parliament building. Our explosives were effective however, and though we came dangerously close, we finally reached the Pacific Ocean without being apprehended.

The car chase video was over and now, as evening set in and a full white moon lit the calm waters, there was a feeling of imminence. Our course and destination had been determined in two ways: the building was headed for its final resting place and it skipped gleefully over the ocean as a flat rock skips over a calm river with long, graceful bounds ; secondly, we were also bound for either imminent doom or legendary status. Once the building landed, there would be no more avoiding apprehension, and it was just a matter of how we would be perceived by the public, as heroes or grand-theft criminals. If the majority of the public thought what we had done was right, regardless of the law, by returning the building to its rightful owners, then we would be free and celebrated. If not, we would certainly spend a lifetime in prison, the more likely fate which I was now carelessly resigned to. I considered all this as we moved up to the roof to look out at the ocean beneath us.

Still, I became increasingly frightened as we neared our destination. Day came with troubled thoughts: I was now convinced that the idea that we could return the building with explosives was folly. If anything it would land in some random spot in the midwest. Even if we landed in the city, it certainly would not land in its true home, where the foundations remain buildingless. But then, it happened, and we landed, tinkered like a penny circling its final destination, and settled just a few feet from the original foundation. For all intents and purposes we had succeeded!

In my dream, weeks went by and to my surprise we were hardly covered in the media, neither as villains nor heroes. Except for a short, unimportant article in the San Francisco Chronicle, we were largely ignored. I made vain attempts to reach out to the New York Times, until finally someone contacted me and said they had already covered our story the day it happened. When I searched for it, I could find nothing. My dream ended as I was left to sift woefully through the stock footage that had now been long shelved and archived, the video that documented the chase through the French streets. Those times seemed long gone and now I had realized the ultimate punishment, not three lifetime prison sentences, nor hard labor, nor exile--but obscurity...