Construction Site

The Construction Site: South of downtown is the construction site. A skyscraper frame is laid out, but not finished. It’s dead quiet, unlike downtown, where you can sometimes hear Denizens huffing as they walk or their voices beckoning. There are high-power lights on impossibly tall stands that wobble back and forth precariously. Plastic tubes, cinderblocks and steel beams are stacked atop one another, with no regard for whether they might fall over. Huge containers are all over the site, a small shed in the center. Inside the shed is a table with a blueprint for the building, which changes after you read it. The measurements shift, the geometry changes and the units switch. There’s a shift bell which sputters to life and rings if you look at the print for too long and Workmen begin to file out of the containers in massive hordes.
Workmen are, again, human, but with spindly arms, down to bones, huge swollen stomachs, quashed chests and hunched backs. They wear overalls that disguise their equally spindly legs and wrap over their bulbous gut, they all wear hardhats and mumble as they walk, their faces expressionless with grey skin. Occasionally, they cough and wheeze, sometimes their legs give way and their egg-like bodies crack in half. No blood spills out, just dried organs and chalky innards. The rest of the workmen just continue moving, stepping over the dead. As a result, there are a number of dead Workmen all over the site. If a Workman sees you in the shed, he coughs to other Workmen, who stop and turn to look at you. They stare at you, waiting for you to leave the shed. If you do, they take hold of you and begin to pull you towards the skyscraper. You can resist, often pulling their arms off, as they have almost no strength, but there are so many of them and they are relentless. Eventually, they will tire you out and drag you to the elevator, taking them up to the top level, not yet constructed, the elevator held aloft by a thin criss-cross of steel beams. They push you out first, watching expressionlessly as you fall from the top level straight down. A vat of wet concrete awaits you, the whole building being built on one. As you try to swim to shore, the concrete sets and, eventually, either Lopers or Denizens will come and find you.
If you can avoid the shed, you can see the Workmen in their containers, staring at TV screens, cycling between hundreds of different still-frames of female Workmen in various stages of undress. Still, none of the workmen smile or acknowledge anything. They simply stare at the screen.
When the bell eventually rings, the Workmen leave their containers. They take the elevator to the top, as before and walk out, one at a time, falling into the wet concrete. Slowly, the wet concrete rises until the bell rings again. They go back to their containers until the concrete dries, whereupon the bell rings again and the Workmen begin to scrape away the now risen concrete and start over. The old concrete is collected and ground finely into a new concrete solution and poured into the same central hole.
At twilight, a different bell will ring and the Workmen will leave their containers again. This time, they will walk away from the construction site. If you follow them, they will go outside the city, along the ill-kept highways and simply keep walking. Should you continue following them, the fog becomes thick and heavy until dawn, where the fog lets up to reveal the city in front of you, the Workmen marching towards it. By 6:45, whatever Workmen did not die on the walk are back at the construction site and walk back into their containers, waiting for the bell to ring again.
At night, the Workmen leave and you can find some Denizens at the construction site. They stay away from the high-power lights and are sure to leave before the Workmen arrive, whom they fear. Some Denizens spend time caressing the dead bodies of Workmen, some cooing softly, some crying, but still mostly moaning and grunting, occasionally trying to reassemble the corpses. Before the Workmen arrive, most of the dead will be carried off by Denizens.