Derelict Barn Concepts

by Charley Paxos

My neighbor, Diana, that faded debutante, was featured in Country Living for her derelict barn. I literally clutched my pearls when I first saw her on the cover, glowing pridefully in front of her barn, wearing her most hideous floral dress. And, of course, her barn was a monstrosity. Diana the philistine. Nevertheless, I immediately wanted my own derelict barn. The “agricultural ruins” aesthetic is huge right now.

I learned through the ladies at the club that Diana used a company called Derelict Barn Concepts. Their website was impeccable, allowing me to design my derelict barn right down to the rusted gate on the cow pen with help, of course, from the robot and his extravagant brain.

I wanted something quaint and gnarled, rustic and skeletal, and at least three stories tall. I wanted it visible from Diana’s estate. I also had the robot add a Nantucket style widow’s walk, a feature one would never find in any variety of original nineteenth-century Ozarks-native barn, but I think the widow’s walk added a certain je ne sais quoi, which is French for: “it will piss off Diana.”

* * *

Derelict Barn Concepts never contacted me to schedule a time for their arrival. Instead, a logistics swarm arrived unannounced in a flatbed semi carrying my disassembled barn and without a single living human in their crew. They immediately went to work, tearing up a patch of earth in the hillside overlooking my conservatory. I screamed at the robot to get out there and stop them. I wanted it on the west ridge.

Moments later the robot returned, but the swarm had not halted. The construction continued. I was livid.

The robot explained that the swarm coordinator had told him to tell me that the hillside overlooking the conservatory was in fact the best-fit location for my new derelict barn.

I demanded to know why.

The robot babbled something about considerations relating to drainage and wind direction.

I reminded the robot who he answers to, but he insisted that the swarm coordinator was an authority on such matters relating to the placement of derelict barns because he had designed the Louise Weiss building in Strasbourg, France. The robot then added that anything derogatory I had read in the news regarding the Louise Weiss building was not a sign that the structure was a failure but, rather, evidence that it was functioning exactly as intended, paving the way for our new reality of infinite consumption and total surveillance.

I had never heard of the Louise Weiss building, so I had the computerized voice that lives inside the television show me a picture. And I recoiled when I saw it. It was a monstrosity.

When I returned to the window, the swarm had completed the foundation and were erecting the walls of the lower level. I had paid extra for wood reclaimed from an authentic, collapsed nineteenth-century barn, but what I saw were planks that looked like they had been salvaged from a burned-out mobile home. Clearly, they were not following my instructions. I screamed at the robot to get back out there and stop them.

Moments later, the robot returned to tell me that the swarm coordinator had told him that, yes, the material they were using to construct my derelict barn had been taken from the burned-out remains of a mobile home.

I stopped myself from smacking his metal face. Last time, I had injured my hand.

The robot continued. He explained that the significance of the burned-out remains far exceeded any meaning that could be assigned to wood reclaimed from an authentic, collapsed nineteenth-century barn because the man who had lived in that mobile home had killed himself.

I began to seethe. I imagined the robot dismantled.

The robot then stated that the man only killed himself after a lifetime of failed attempts to expose a global plot to unify, through alchemical means, all nations, cultures, and religions into a single, world-dominating empire in which a computer — one all-seeing, all-knowing computer — could rule over not just our bodies but also our very souls.

I smacked his metal face and hurt my hand.

The robot hesitated, then continued, saying that for this reason, my new barn will forever serve as a tribute to the victors of the war for command of the direction of the human gaze.

I almost fainted. Thankfully, there was a fainting couch beside the window, so I sat down instead. When I regained my composure, I returned my attention to the barn’s construction. It was nearly complete, a monolith of exposed modern materials in a deliberately unyielding form. I had wanted something quaint and rustic, something that looked as if it had been shaped by nature over time. What I had instead was something that looked as if it was designed to dissolve the natural order of the world.

* * *

My dissatisfaction was immense, the entire situation wholly unacceptable. Unfortunately, Yelp does not allow zero-star reviews, so I instead gave Derelict Barn Concepts one star and included a scathing written review.

Curse Diana.

The agricultural ruins aesthetic is not for me. I find the whole trend profoundly distasteful.