Work Text:
The House passed from owner to owner rather more rapidly than an ordinary house. Helped by low prices were always low as the seller was eager to move away quickly when they came to realize what it was that they bought. It still took wider society some time to learn about the house, despite how undeniable its peculiarities were to those who lived inside it they were too far outside the realm of consideration for anyone who did not experience it for themselves. Still, eventually enough people did experience it and produce enough evidence that the story became more than a suburban legend. Proof would come in the form of a lawsuit. Listing failure to disclose ‘the portal to the twisted nether realms and the monster within.” Attention was brought widely. Claim two was dismissed on technical grounds. Evidence for the first was persuasive.
It is at this point that our story takes a turn, and what might have been a dull years long court process was circumvented by a man with more money than sense buying out the financial interest of everyone involved. Separately, he bought the houses of the neighborhood at above market price, though this is less generous than it seems at first as the market had been quick to react to the news of the unique features of the House. Next, through a combination of public pressure, cajoling, and perhaps some bribery, he got the city council to change the zoning regulations on the land. Open now to industrial use, He could begin construction. Time and effort were now all that was needed.
For a few months there was a bustle of activity as crews raced each other to complete their assigned structure, one nuclear power plant and one massive “atmospheric distillery”. On top of ordinary compensation, the man had promised a bonus to the team that was finished first. Rationally it seemed like a rather unfair race, with the power plant being slowed down by regulatory compliance issues that even this incredibly rich man could not buy his way out of. Yet the other team had its own issues; the workers, especially those working on aspects of construction interfacing with the house tended to quit at a much higher rate than normal. Obviously the man tried to discourage this quitting, sometimes working at the border line of legality. Ultimately The man even found himself resorting to offering higher wages to keep people on the project.
Laborers leaving remained an issue all through construction. Eventually some started to protest the project, though it was never enough to force the work to stop. At times the stories they told did dampen enthusiasm. Visceral tales concerning something that was watching them inside the House. Evidenced at time by injuries sustained by a worker. No, it was just nerves from working inside the unnatural space. Obviously injuries from negligence blamed on a scapegoat that wasn’t even there. Work would continue, everything will work out in the end.
Despite these setbacks work was eventually completed. Operations on the power plant was finished first. Not just to supply the distillery but also sell some excess power to the local grid. Next the distillery was ready to operate, it was a complicated web of pipes and temperature control units designed to funnel its production down one very large tube that led into the house quite some distance. Official explorations had discovered a spiral staircase that was quite deep and served as the perfect location for the outlet. This had been quite the boon to the project, good news only slightly tempered by reports of eyes an odd reflection seen a few flights down.
Relevant machinery was inspected, all the seals were checked and double checked, and everything was made ready. Everyone held their breath as the main power switch was flipped, and everything sprang to life. The air was pulled into a super cooling chamber and liquefied, all the unwanted components were then distilled away until only the carbon dioxide was left. Unrelenting cold then solidified this into dry ice and sent down the primary tube. Reliable and well made, the machine worked, pulling vast quantities of carbon out of the atmosphere, undoing a small measure of harm that the industries of man had inflicted upon the climate. Never mind some reports of an angry scream coming from inside the labyrinth it was probably just a machine, machines make noise.