They called it the New City. Set in the mountains in a place few thought possible, its citizens were of the New Way, mandating no lowly queen or king but a Beautiful Way for all. This made the New City a destination for peoples from lands near and far. Only one little problem remained: the ground under the city contained poisonous gas and the more they built on it, the more gas was released. At some point it was an issue that would trump its very existence.
They knew this but said, "But just look how beautiful life is for everyone!"
All who counted anyway, for many were the slaves who labored underground among the gases, directing them away from the Good Life enjoyed by the privileged. The slaves were bribed with the promise of an eventual life above ground so then they could be the masters of profit. In this way greed was trusted to bind them all from high to low. The world was made perfect - except no one told the gases.
High in the mountains a poisonous cloud gathered deep in the gathering doom, fed each passing second by the New City's growing weight of desire. As the skyscrapers reached higher, the gases pressurized the underground canyons, requiring more and more slave bodies to divert the poison from the good citizens' lives. Soon, more were living below ground than above it.
"But just look how beautiful life is for some!"
Then one day a prophet came down from the mountain with news of the poisonous cloud. "The poison is in nature's hands now, you have no say in its path of wrath. Repent and put all your efforts into dissipating it before it's too strong to stop! Otherwise you will have to abandon your land." But the good citizens had important plans made and hopeful lives to live they did not want interrupted. So they trusted the devil's oldest lie: that to disprove the prophet meant to disprove their reality.
A Political Man of clever argument said to the prophet: "Look up and tell me what you see!"
"Clear blue sky."
"Exactly! It's people like you who are the real problem, always stirring up imaginary trouble, trying to make life hard. Now shut the fuck up!"
This started a vigilante political movement named the STFU party scouring the city for any and all defenders of the cloud of poison, dogmatically demanding proof in the sky before they give proof of the eye, the only accepted kind. "We are the true patriots. Damn those who question our ways and our great city! There are some who seek only to criticize but we are the holders of truth and shall relentlessly attack its enemies!" A mad furor erupted in applause.
The STFU party proved most popular with the many seeking salvation by simply voting for the cloud's non-existence.
Until one day a small part of the cloud broke off and descended over one of the most precious places in the great city, wreaking death and devastation. For the first time the City new true fear: fear of themselves and the need to change. The STFUer's were duly panicked - but perversely savvy. "Don't let fear persuade you! Be brave! We must stick to our Good Ways at all costs! It is the slaves who caused this problem. Butcher them for their treachery!" And the slaughtering of innocents commenced.
They can't blame their precious selves so they have to kill somebody
Many other solutions were tried and died in vain. No matter how many "bad people" were killed, life never got better. In fact, a permanent haze drifting from the cloud landed on the city, choking its residents and killing the weakest among them. And still it was said, "There's no other way for us to live." A Mandate of Responsibility was handed down: Breathe less air. And thus the good citizens wreathed great pity around their necks.
But nothing could stop the tightening fear constricting their hearts. No one wanted to leave - but no one wanted stay either! "Give us change without change!" the cry went out. A New Hero God Leader emerged, promising to give them all that they asked. But when reality did not change for the better the masses deeply divided on definition of said reality. Those who believed life had actually changed demanded faith in the New Hero God Leader, those for only blindly building more called for a return for the old ways that never left.
A few - the outlandish, the radical, the too absurd to believe - called for finding a solution to the cloud of poison at all costs - the rest united in hatred for those of that ilk. Oftentimes it was posed: Why are we getting angrier and angrier?
Poppy flowers of denial seeped into their sleepy heads begging for a new reality. The New Hero God Leader climbed up the weathervane tower and through a triumph of the will turned the vane from south to east, indicating the cloud was now headed away. "See! Problem solved! I have stopped the panic and brought you change without change." He made impassioned speeches to trust his politic narcotic, berating and scoffing at nonbelievers, his firm conviction lying in the selling of reality as the only true hope.
Some were of a different religion: "God will never hold us accountable for our actions! If He does not fix our world, He does not exist!" Some demanded an apology: "I don't care which way the weathervane points, the wind blows south. And yet I see no cloud! Everyone's lying but me! Our city is actually fine!" Some clung to the New Hero God Leader, imploring trust in his straight teeth and manicured hair. In these ways the good citizens hoped to escape responsibility.
But of course yet came the Killing Wind, the angel of death. The City being in a natural low point drew in the fatal poison, leading the cloud to hover and settle. Was this the end? Heated arguments drove the populace to madness, murdering over words, choking throats of dissent. As fresh air ran out, the stronger strangled the weaker to grab the remaining good gasps. A few left the city, mocked and derided as they headed for the harsh life off the beloved mountain where the city dwellers steadfastly refused to give aid lest they be proven wrong in their choice to stay.
But as always, nature had the last laugh. In dying breaths the fate of Nature was cursed and reviled but really, who ever asked them to build on poison?
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