A Shower of Applause

The splendid city was made of marble and music; its foundations of mud and marshland. And so month by month, millimeter by millimeter, it slumped back into the murk and mire, and minnows splashed in the maze of its streets.

People waded through the waist-high water. Ministers in mold-damp miters prayed for a miracle, but pattering rains were merciless. Damp seeped into their minds and bubbled up in misery. The merchants squelched into the plaza that spread before the mayor’s palace, then merely ankle-deep, and spoke their misgivings. “Our city is stricken with a malady for which there is no medicine,” said one. “We must move, or else submit to a monstrous fate.”

The mayor mulled over their words, and in the morning replied: “My friends, you are mistaken. Malingerers who sputter about disaster speak from malice. They must be muzzled, made outlaw, yes, even murdered. We must show no mercy for such madness! Instead, make merry, for our city is a marvel, our millennium just begun.”

Raindrops cascaded from the brim of his hat, like a shower of applause.