Colson Whitehead: The Intuitionist

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Seven, please.

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Lila Mae has a new room. It’s a good size. Enough room for a desk anyway, and that’s what is important. It looks out on a factory.

She writes a sentence and then scratches it out. Sometimes she almost gets his voice down but then it flutters away and it takes her some time to catch it again. The biggest problem, she finds, is nailing Fulton’s voice as it appears in Volume Three of Theoretical Elevators , as opposed to the arid academic voice of Volume One and the aimless mystic voice of Volume Two. The rhythms of the first two books have been scored into her brain. The optimism of this new book is taking some getting used to. She has to recalibrate. Luckily, she’s just filling in the interstitial parts that Fulton didn’t have time to finish up. She knows his handwriting. The most important parts are there. They just need a little something to make them hang together. Seamlessly.

She stretches in her chair. She likes this new room. They might find it, they might be coming for her once they figure things out. But that won’t be for a while. There’s time to move on and find another room. And there are other cities, none as magnificent as this, but there are other cities. They’re all doomed anyway, she figures. Doomed by what she’s working on. What she will deliver to the world when the time is right.

They are not ready now but they will be.

The elevator in the notebook fragments Marie Claire sent to them is not perfect, but it’s pretty good. After Marie Claire gave her the rest, the former elevator inspector sent them the parts they didn’t have. Once they break Fulton’s code and hieroglyphics, which should take them a long time without the key she possesses, the elevator should hold them for a while. It is not perfect but it’s pretty good. She particularly likes the cab design, which takes care of engineering necessity without sacrificing passenger comfort. Just like they did in the old days. This third volume of Fulton’s truly understands human need, she’s found. The elevator she delivered to Coombs, and then to Chancre and Ben Urich, should hold them for a while. Then one day they will realize it is not perfect. If it is the right time she will give them the perfect elevator. If it is not time she will send out more of Fulton’s words to let them know it is coming. As per his instructions. It is important to let the citizens know it is coming. To let them prepare themselves for the second elevation.

The windows of her room look out on a factory. She likes that. She feels bad for the buildings these days when she sees them. Because they are nothing like what is coming.

She’s the keeper.

Sometimes in the room she thinks about the accident and its message. Much of what happened would have happened anyway, but it warms her to know that the perfect elevator reached out to her and told her she was of its world. That she was a citizen of the city to come and that the frail devices she had devoted her life to were weak and would all fall one day like Number Eleven. All of them, plummeting down the shafts like beautiful dead stars.

Sometimes in her new room she wonders who will decode the elevator first. It could be Arbo. It could be United. It doesn’t matter. Like the election, their petty squabbling feeds the new thing that is coming. In its own way, it prepares them.

She returns to her work. It didn’t have to be her, but it was. Fulton left instructions, but she knows she is permitted to alter them according to circumstances. There was no way Fulton could foresee how the world would change.

She returns to the work. She will make the necessary adjustments. It will come. She is never wrong. It’s her intuition.