DAY 13, COLLABORATION DAY, book 4, building

COLLABORATIONS DAY. You can build a sandcastle on your own. Together we can build a town. Together we can restore our planet, it said on a banner which hung above the entrance to the Compound. It was Sunday. Kids Hours was underway in the Front House Theatre. The COLLABORATION DAY events were full of inspiring energy, hands on action, working together, creating together, discovering what others had to offer, finding overlaps and opportunities to collaborate, and that on streets, in parks, and even on rivers across the UK. All project businesses offered open doors at the Compound, in their workshops and at the many additional pop-up workshops, also across the UK. Big favourites were the pop-up book stations, pop-up TwoWheels workshops, pop-up HighFly stations, pop-up Original Instruments tents, pop-up dot.workshops, pop-up Ingbars, pop-up Soap Opera gardens with their Opera Bars. In all places, the project businesses worked hand in hand, and invited visitors to get creative, too. In Hyde Park, the Business Expansion Team and over three-hundred artists from London had created a huge installation which illustrated the connections, collaborations and synergies between the town project businesses. On the always involved Trafalgar Square, heated discussions about the nature, ubiquity and uselessness of competition dominated at the square-wide board game where collaboration was the only way to win. In several major cities, members of the project teams held speeches, mostly on topics relating to collaboration within businesses, some relating to collaborations with the town project teams. On the seventh floor of the Central Building, plans for the final week were shaped, and around four in the afternoon, Alice left the Compound to meet Princess Felicitas who had invited her for a stroll in the princess’s garden. ‘Ah, Alice— May I call you Alice?’ ‘Yes, you may, your royal highness.’ ‘Ah, don’t say that! I like the thought that you have no idea whatsoever about protocol.’ Alice chuckled. ‘Ah, Alice, can you believe it, I had to remind my press office, and the press in general, that you are required to give me and my grandmother updates, on a regular basis, because that’s part of the deal between us.’ ‘And here I was thinking this wasn’t just a business meeting.’ ‘Oh, Alice Adler. I’d ask you here every day if I didn’t know you need every minute to fight for your town. I so—’ ‘—You don’t know?’ ‘Know what?’ ‘Parliament voted against the town.’ Princess Felicitas stopped and stared at Alice. ‘They did what?’ ‘They voted against the town. Friday night.’ ‘They didn’t tell us! How dare they!’ ‘Maybe they didn’t want to bother you over the weekend and will tell you on Monday?’ Princess Felicitas shook her head, fire in her eyes. ‘This is not the end! Alice Adler, this is not the end!’ Alice smiled. ‘Hell, no. I’m stubborn enough to keep fighting to the very last second.’ ‘And I will think of something,’ Princess Felicitas said. ‘No one angers a princess! No one!’ After the stroll in the garden, a cup of tea in the library, and Princess Felicitas’ repeated assurances that she would get officially angry if necessary, Alice took her leave, briefly visited the collaborations installation in Hyde Park and then left London with Raiden to return to Jellybridge. Alice and Raiden had nearly reached the estate when the news reached them that Tom, the person who had made the town project possible and who had walked out on them just before the campaigns began, had met with the president of the United States — who was known to despise the town project, and even more so the project businesses.

© Charlie Alice Raya, book 4, building, 2025