The Architect's Dream (a children's story)

"The last few months have been very trying on my soul", said the architect. "And as summer passes and autumn approaches, there is nothing left of my foundation but a shell of brick and mortar". The architect was a very famous person. He lived in a time where no one studied math, or science, or history or politics – just art. He designed and made buildings, cities, machines and monuments. In fact, he was so popular and had such a reputation for his creations that he forgot his own name! He was simply referred to as “The Architect”, and everyone knew who he was. He was a lofty person, always losing himself in his sleep with grand visions of building the most magnificent machines. He had a vision -

"To build a monument to time is my dream", he said. "And it will be shaped like an hour glass with nothing in it but dead leaves. A slowly burning match will be thrown in and the glass will contain a fire - a flame that proves that there is no time left to gain. The ashes of the past will float and fall through the glass, collecting at the bottom into one soft blanket of nothingness".

He became very satisfied with the idea, as he realized that to waste time was the harshest penalty one could endure. So he locked himself up in the basement of his own home to design this grand memorial to time. No light could enter. There was no difference between night and day. So he drifted, unaware of his surroundings; delusional and numb to the chilly weather.

The architect became distracted by his work. What was there to share with others besides lofty dreams that had long ago been thrown away? To him, the answer always was to construct monuments that no other man could ever make, to attach his own legacy to things greater than himself.

He built his hourglass and everyone loved him for it. The people loved him so much for his monuments and they wanted him to build an even more spectacular one.

He decided that he would build a ship - one that would set sail on its maiden voyage and never return. Of all the places in the world he could be, none of them made sense but the landscape of the deep ominous sea. He wondered what it would be like to build a cathedral on water, one where people can come to worship but never leave.

"I will build a monument to Mother Nature, the cruelest architect of them all!", he said. "Because my love for God will only be realized when I am…", and he never finished his sentence. But he designed the magnificent ship and it took over 10,000 people to build it. He felt satisfied. “As long as this ship remains, my legacy will endure”, he thought over and over to himself. The cathedral-ship was called Aldine.

That night, in his sleep, he had a vision. The architect saw a double headed lion laying next to a beautiful woman playing a piano. The sound was a bit eerie, but it was also quite beautiful. The melody was vaguely familiar to him, he could only think about his past. He felt content just to listen. And as she played her song, the angel's hands turned blue. The architect became unsure of what was happening or what he was seeing. Then the song took a turn for the worse. The lion let out a long pitiful roar and the angel's hands began crumbling on the piano keys. First her fingers, then her palms, then her forearms, and dear God how horrible a sight it was! Once her body fell to the ground and shattered into pieces, there was nothing left but dust. The lion picked himself up, almost as if he was just waking up from a slumber and then lazily walked away. The top of the piano flew open as several large gold colored gears began rising out of it. And as the gears started to wind, a dreadful grinding sound and smoke filled the air. The architect began to choke.

The architect woke up to find himself in a small bed. It was unfamiliar to him. It was actually his own bed! And next to him was a phantom of the woman he once loved. She would always lay there, and never left him alone. The phantom always seemed to follow the architect, haunting him while he slept. He rarely ever felt rested. He hated her and screamed loudly, only to quickly return to his sleep. The air was stale and his bed was damp from sweat.

The architect was back on the Aldine. Everyone was preoccupied with various tasks, running about the deck with no order. Well, there was an order – but too much order! So much order that it was chaos! And in the center of the ship was a hill with the monument. Soldiers and sailors and workers and helpers moved about like ants in a maze of underground tunnels. Except, there were no tunnels, just the large deck of the ship. The ship's Captain appeared out of the cluster of people and approached the architect about his next task. The Captain was an ordinary looking person, soft spoken, with honest eyes. The architect’s next mission was an important one, as it involved the prolonged success, sake and overall glory for freedom loving peoples across the world - or so he was told. The Captain had chosen the architect for the mission because the people loved his monuments so much. It only made sense that the future of the ship lay in the hands of the creator the Captain thought. They put him in a metal underwater suit with a glass window for his face. It was orange and at the top of his head was a large hose, connected to,. well nothing actually. It was just there to make sure he would be able to breath.

The crew lowered the architect in the ocean very slowly. He had never been fully submerged in water before, but it seemed to him that it would be similar to falling out of the sky. So down they lowered him, into the darkness of the deep waters. Finally, after two minutes and nineteen seconds, he made it to the ocean floor. He pulled out his special underwater flashlight and it lit up everything around him, and to his surprise a house was right in front of him. It was very plain looking, almost like something he had seen in a movie. Just simple white with a couple of windows. He approached the house and opened the door. As he stepped inside, the architect noticed that there was no water anywhere! His feet were walking on a surface as dry as a desert. Everything was in black and white - the architect could find no color anywhere. The house was completely empty. It was not as easy to walk around in the suit, but he did not take it off for fear that he would not be able to get back to the ship. There was a large chandelier hanging from the center of the atrium and the floors featured black and white checkered tiles. Directly across from him was a long staircase that winded along the wall up to the next floor. He began climbing up the staircase. The first step was the hardest one to master, and the last one was not even there.

As the architect reached the top of the winding staircase, he faced a narrow hall. A doorway appeared on the right side. The door itself was slightly cracked, letting out just a little bit of light. So he approached it with caution, tip toeing in his big heavy iron suit. The walls had striped wallpaper and the floors were wooden planks, but still everything was black and white. He pushed open the door and in the middle of the empty room was an oval rug with a large chest on it. It was a fairly ordinary looking chest; similar to ones he had seen in many people’s homes. Perhaps a buried treasure he thought? Or maybe an artifact that would explain some unsolved mystery. He felt proud that he had made it this far and in front of him was his goal. To have his future posterity in plain sight was a feeling unimaginable until this point. So he unlocked the hinges of the chest and slowly opened it… Immediately, hundreds of waves of light came crashing out! Bright colors began filling the room. The waves spilled out and painted the walls, the floors and ceiling. The architect leaned over to look inside of the wooden box. What he saw inside, only the architect knows… But it must have been something truly moving because he began a hysteric laughing. It was a melancholy feeling. His manic laughter quickly turned into a deep sadness and he began weeping. As he turned to leave the room, the house began to fill with water. He had trouble seeing out of his underwater suit but made it down the staircase. A cat sat at the base of the steps, and it continued to sit as the water filled the building.

The architect woke up on the deck of the gigantic ship. Time had ceased for a moment for the architect. Even after making it back to the cathedral-ship, he still felt that he was under water, in the house, in the room, staring into the chest. The crew of the ship was still scurrying about, tending to their orders like they were trained to. Most didn’t even notice that the architect made it back alive, much less remembered the mission he was assigned to do! He saw the underwater suit, but he wasn’t in it anymore.

Some birds flew overhead and made funny noises. The sky was open, there were no clouds to cast any shadows on the ship. He watched the birds swoop in and out of the air in amazement. Although birds had always flown around in the sky, the architect never really paid much attention to them. The way the birds could pitch their wings forward and back to lift themselves higher or lower in the sky, or how the birds could dive like a missile into the water to catch fish, and how the birds fly in a neatly formed shape was miraculous to the architect. He studied the design of the birds, how every part of their body had a purpose. Nothing more, nothing less. But what if the birds were in outer space or underwater? Would they be able to fly as gracefully? He wondered if the birds had ever wanted to fly to outer space…

A lot of the birds would land on the deck of the ship and peck at the ground, picking up the little specks of food that the workers, and the sailors and the soldiers would drop. The birds that lived on the ship were grey in color. This was from flying through the smoke from the engines and from walking around in the dirt on the ship’s floor. These birds would just walk around, bobbing their heads back and forth and then start pecking at the ground. The architect noticed that these birds were not nearly as graceful as the big beautiful ones that flew far overhead in the sky. He got hungry from watching all the birds and found a bench to sit down on and he began to eat his lunch.

In front of him was a row of grey birds pecking away at the ground. They were very mechanical in rhythm, like the arms of typewriter keys pecking away at a blank piece of paper. Sometimes they would flap their wings a little bit and rearrange the order, but then they would just return to pecking away at the ground. Another bird came into view. It looked like the others, but it was white instead of grey. It walked around a little bit and watched the other birds pecking away. It stood there gracefully. This bird caught the attention of the architect. He watched it and thought it was beautiful. Some workers shuffled by, disturbing the birds for a moment and then they went back to what they were doing. Then a big group of sailors came walking by and the white bird got mixed up in them. It looked like it didn’t know which way to go, as it was completely surrounded by people. The grey birds were not mixed up because they were still standing in the same place, pecking at the ground. Suddenly, a gap in the sailors opened up and the white bird walked quickly in that direction. The gap opened because a big vehicle was coming through. The white bird did not see this coming and its wing was run over. It tried to fly away but could not. Then, more vehicles started moving by much faster than the first. The white bird frantically moved about, and avoided the first two. Suddenly, a big cloud of white feathers filled the air and the white bird lay motionless on the ground. The other birds looked over for a moment then continued back to their ceaseless pecking. Some workers came by to clean up the feathers. They scooped up the white bird and tossed it over the ship.

The architect knew what was coming his way. He saw what he had created for himself as a monument to greater things. He could no longer think of any more things to create. There was nothing left to create. There was nothing left to discover or invent. The architect lived in an era where every song that could be written had already been so and every invention had already been made. The only real thing left was time. He realized that he could not waste it, for time was the only mystery left in the world. He realized that all the triumphant monuments in the world could never make up for his unhappiness. He realized that he never had a home. So he decided to abandon the great ship that he had designed and built for Mother Nature. He dove back into the water without his underwater suit on. With only a big gulp of air, he swam with all of his might to the ocean floor. It was really a huge effort for him! But for the first time in his life, he knew where he was meant to be. He swam all the way back down to the house and reached the front door. The doorknob was locked and he pushed on it as hard as he possibly could when all of a sudden – it opened… The angel from his dream opened the door and he fell to the floor gasping for air. He got up and looked around. The angel looked at him and said, "Welcome Home". The house was full of color this time, and in it was the double headed lion, the cat and the white bird (which had a cast on its broken wing). The architect was so happy to have made it! The angel sat down at the piano and began playing a song. It was a good song, and made the architect forget about his past. He had endured through the worst of it, and now realized that the time he had was the most valuable treasure in the whole world. The architect was content and started feeling sleepy. He laid down next to the lion and closed his eyes. The phantoms were not there to bother him in his sleep, as the double headed lion was there to watch over him. As his mind began to relax, and slumber ensued he remembered his name. It was…