They changed the name of the terrifying Gaping Maw to the Atrium of Breath and it was the place chosen for the first collaborative building project. The frightening and dangerous mouth had gone away and what was left was a massive, reverberating space with infinite potential. The plan was quite crazy: to erect a garden-city that goes up inside the Maw, using the old taste buds for the base and the moist air for growing huge hanging mushroom farms. It would have been a really nice gesture of cooperation and at the same time a practical way of getting more living spaces and food.
Elara's sketch that Benny saw was only one of the many that were submitted to the Stewards. Her concept of blending living organisms landed her a place on the junior construction squad. Benny was there as a site mental state supervisor during the building and in the end, he got to work with her.
They were on some scaffolding fabricated from sturdy tree sap and mushrooms, very high above the floor of the Maw. The air was really fresh and cool, with the scent of wet rocks. Underneath the scaffolding, groups of Symbiote weavers and Sanctum builders co-operating to guide living mushroom ropes to circle around huge, tooth-like structures thus creating a living frame for the platforms that they will build later.
"The trick is how things vibrate together,Elara said, but her voice was very weak in the huge hall. She indicated a rope that was trembling. "The god's jawbone has a certain shake to it. If the thing that we build is doing the same shaking, it will get louder, and that could cause breaking. If the counteracting thing is working, it will quiet everything down. We have to get it just right."
Benny tried to catch the feeling by closing his eyes. He could sense the very low and indistinct hum of the old jawbone—like a memory of chewing, of tasting all the things. It was quite slow and regular. After that, he felt the building operation's more rapid vibration: the sound of the use of tools, the noise of the growth of the stuff, the workers' hard thinking process.
"They aren't talking," he said very softly. "The bone is singing an old tune. The building is singing a new one. They're just… on top of each other."
"So we need someone to translate," Elara said. "A tune that connects them." She took out a small flute made from a mushroom stalk. "I've been trying things out. The network reacts to sound, to what you mean to do. Maybe we can add a third song. Kind of like a conductor."
She played a note, low and clear. It went far and wide. Benny felt it went through the mental air like a clean line in all the noise. The jawbone's hum seemed to… listen. The busy buzz of the building changed a little, starting to go with the note.
She played a simple tune that connected the two, part earth sound, part growing plant sound. Benny, feeling brave, started humming along, matching the tone not with his voice, but with what he meant to do, his talent for listening turned into a gentle way of putting something out there.
Together, their sound—flute and Benny's hum—made a short-term field of good vibes. In it, the building sounds and the bone-hum started to match. The shaking rope stopped. The workers below felt it too, like things got easier, like things fit together.
It only lasted while they played. When they stopped, the different sounds started to drift apart again. But they showed it could work.
A foreman, who used to be a Taste-Guard sergeant, climbed up to them. Looking at Elara's flute and Benny's face, he asked, "What did you two just do?"
"We conducted," Elara said.
The foreman grunted. "Well, do it some more. It felt better. Made the plant on pillar seven finally stick." After that, he walked away.
They were always there: the girl with the flute and the quiet boy who hummed with the rocks. They weren't doing something big like Maxine's switch or the Terraform loops. It was a little thing they did every day. A talking-it-out with vibrations.
In the evenings, they compared what they'd learned. Elara showed Benny how to "listen" to what the mushrooms wanted to grow. Benny showed Elara how to tell how people were feeling from the echoes around them.
"You're a connector too," Elara told him one day, as they watched the first platform, a huge mushroom-cap thing, being set in place in the field they'd made. "Between the old pain and the new peace."
Benny looked at the growing city in the mouth. "I think we all are now. Whether we want to or not."
The Atrium of Breath was developing, not rapidly as a god would have done it, but in a slow and steady manner. Two teenagers, making music to help a jawbone and a dream learn to sing the same song, were at the center of it.