Bricks are hard because the constituent molecules are bound. They all hold together and gravity is defied. Randomness, too, is held off. Chaos is stopped so long as the molecules don’t leave their assigned places.

And they can’t do that. The vibrational energy they’d need would be too high. No way over that barrier, except if they all decided to tunnel. And brick molecules can’t all decide to tunnel at once, can they? Without someone to tell them to?

My fingers claw harder into the gritty mortar and a layer of skin scrapes away painfully. Don’t tunnel, I cry silently to the molecules. Don’t. Stay here and be content as a brick. A simple honorable brick among bricks, which holds up roofs and keeps the cold wind off people …

I plead desperately… and somehow I sense agreement. At least the wall doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. In a momentary shiver, the fit is over. I’m left standing here feeling drained and a bit silly, with a dusty brow and filthy hands. I let the latter drop and turn to rest my back against the wall with a sigh.

It is a damp evening. Faint tendrils of fog creep across the twenty yards of parking lot between me and the far fence. The fog curls past like the fingers of an old blind woman—touching lightly the corner wall, the parked cars, the overflowing garbage cans—and moving on.

I start to cringe as a vaporous flagellum drifts along the wall to brush me. Don’t. It’s only fog. That’s all. Just fog.

I used to like fog. It always smelled good. Lots of negative ions, I suppose. Still, here next to the garbage cans the stench must be pretty bad. I wish I could tell.

Laughter feels dry and artificial, yet I laugh. Here I am, suffering something akin to a psychotic break, and I’m worried about my damned sense of smell!

Parmin spoke so slowly toward the end, but cheerfully in spite of the pain.

“…The machines I have shown you how to build will do their part. My former masters, those who hold your world in secret quarantine, will be taken by surprise. They believe you will be incapable of any such constructs for hundreds of your years. You are all to be congratulated for making them so quietly and so well.