During the first tremor, the concrete structure felt like rubber, the beams undulating about half a meter up and down. Something reinforced concrete shouldn't do.

Suddenly everything stood still, one second, two... calm.

Then, again the swaying, the swinging of the lamps, objects falling and glass shattering. This time the structure cracked and crumbled like a cookie. The ceiling curving down met the floor that collapsed into the void, and instantly that feeling of vertigo and that thunderous roar.

He never lost consciousness, he had fallen sitting and his tailbone hurt, but there was no blood, at least in the parts he could touch of himself.

—Alive —said Federico—, and in one piece, he said, rejoicing.

He reached out his arm and touched the ceiling. Sitting as he was, he leaned to grab his phone, his tailbone sending another jolt of pain. He carefully sat back up and turned on the phone's light. He was in a cavity with a sloped ceiling. Standing up was impossible.

Turning off the phone he listened carefully. Nothing. He waited ten more minutes, patiently, until a spontaneous scream came from his throat.

—Here! —But there was no answer.

—Help! Anyone? Help, help... help! —He heard... nothing.

He turned on his phone again and called his girlfriend. She didn't answer.

He called his friend George. Nothing either.

He called the doorman of his building. Was there nobody?

He was about to call another friend when doubt struck him:

—How long will the phone battery last?

He checked its charge status and saw it was at 65%.

Anxiously he searched online for his battery's duration. "Two days awake", the manufacturer said. What would "awake" mean? On, working, viewing a page but without downloading or sending data over the network..?

He decided to wait for a more appropriate hour to keep calling. He remembered he had to be positive.

—They'll get me out soon —he told himself without much conviction.

Now another fear struck him:

—How long will the air last in this hole? —he said, fearing the worst. He had always struggled to be positive.

He mentally calculated the capacity of the prism where he was. Base times height of the triangle, divided by two; times the length of the prism... He had 18.96 m³.

He remembered once going three days without eating, no problem. He thought he could also go without water. Or maybe not.

He searched online how many liters of air a person needs per day "7,200 to 8,600 liters" said the magazine "Muy Interesante". He had enough for more than two days, but with luck more air would enter from outside through some crack. There were always gaps between the debris.

He had an idea. He connected to his favorite social network.

Soon his message was filled with 'likes'.

—Idiots! What good are their damn 'likes' to me? —he thought.

But a huge wave of solidarity began. He saw the message had 4 Retweets. Soon there were 12.

—Well, at least they're spreading it —he thought, calming down a little.

People started replying, but they were stupid messages, like:

None of those displays of friendship were of any use to him now. He didn't even bother to reply, possessed by a growing rage.

He saw in the tweets that firefighters were making efforts to rescue a puppy from the ruins.

That was the last straw.

He tweeted it. Although he had barely published it, he regretted it.

—"The world doesn't want crybabies" —He remembered. He had read it somewhere.

One of the replies to his tweet, from a certain @mrdube said:

Federico thought he had to change that ridiculous alias.

—In reply to @mrdube

—He regretted it. What did the name matter? Now those things didn't count. The only thing that mattered was that they were trapped there.

He replied.

At least he used his real name, unlike him who hid behind the alias of a Terminator. He felt ashamed.

A woman named @Carolfem joined the conversation.

What the hell do I care now about feminists and cat-shit pickers? —Federico thought, deciding to ignore her. In another situation he would have given her a good "burn".

—Said Dube, also ignoring @Carolfem.

What were swala? He wondered. But it wasn't worth finding out. Deep down it didn't matter to him whether they were elephants or warthogs.

Said Federico, taking revenge on the said Dube.

But as happened 80% of the time, he immediately regretted hitting the tweet button.

Why did he have to ruin the satisfaction of someone trapped like him? He imagined him black, poor, an immigrant. He thought he must have crossed the entire African continent and all of Europe risking his life to achieve his dream, that of his family, of his entire village, perhaps.

Federico Monti. He felt bad. Would they remember him with affection? Dube was right, they were no longer men, nor messengers, nor architects, they were just two aliases on a social network.

There would be no more opportunities to be men with status. But they were not equal.

—We are not equal —he thought—. Dube, at least, faces death happy with his humble achievements, while I face it with stupid, misguided goals and disproportionate dreams, always unfinished. Always with goals out of my reach.

For a moment, he thought he had the secret to happiness.

—When I get out, I'll set small goals, like the man who came from the south. And I'll have a full life.

Suddenly he felt a heavy tiredness. His butt hurt, his shoulders hurt, his neck... He was thirsty.

He looked at the clock on his phone. 1:30 h, he swallowed saliva and felt his dry throat, he decided to turn it off to not drain the battery and sleep.

Maybe the rescuers would arrive while he slept...

It was his second day in that odious niche.

He turned on his phone and checked the time. 5:31 h, too early, but a good time to call. Everyone would be at home.

He called his girlfriend.

A laconic:

—"The number you have called is switched off or out of coverage area". —It replied.

Better to wait for a more convenient time.

The same would happen with everyone.

He dedicated himself to configuring his phone to use less battery. He lowered the screen brightness, disabled automatic video playback, adjusted all the settings he remembered.

He looked at his message from yesterday. It had 125 retweets, 42 Replies and 500 likes. He eagerly went through the replies looking for someone who would tell him they were trying to rescue him. No.

There was another tweet from a tweetstar. 202 replies, 1.2K retweets and 1.3k likes. It was about a compliment. He tried to assume that it wasn't about him being less important, but that social networks are like that: spaces for fools to show off their wit and be applauded by worshippers of nonsense.

But his explanation wasn't able to quell his rage. He felt hatred towards human stupidity. Knowing that he himself had been part of the sheep for a long time.

The hours were endless. At 9:00 h, peak audience time, he posted the message again.

This time he took a "selfie" and published it in the tweet. His face looked a bit eerie in the middle of the darkness, the shape of the cavity couldn't be appreciated.

—I made a silly face —he thought—. I shouldn't have smiled. Although it wasn't about smiling or not, it's that I'm not photogenic, I wouldn't support anyone with that face... —But it was too late, the tweet was published.

The almost immediate response came from @LondonFire. Federico assumed it was the firefighters' account.

Finally. For a moment hope returned. He wasn't hungry, but he was very thirsty. God, he would give anything for a glass of water. Unable to help it, he prayed briefly and promised that if God rescued him, he would dedicate his life to others, overcoming that selfishness that had been his north.

He checked his phone:

—"Battery status 33%". —He knew it. The manufacturer had cheated him. The battery life wasn't as advertised. He made a mental note not to buy that brand again.

He decided to sleep to make time go faster.

He woke up and didn't know if it was day or night.

He turned on the phone. A whole day had passed and he hadn't even noticed. He was glad, but soon doubts assailed him.

—What if these were his last hours?, why was he wasting them sleeping? Sleeping was like being dead.

He turned on his phone again and had a message from @mrdube.

He couldn't believe it. This was unfair. Weren't the firefighters coming in from above? How had they rescued the black guy who was 8 floors below? It made sense that he would be first.

He felt hatred for the firefighters, hatred for Dube, for himself...

But as the third day faded away, he accepted the inevitable. The damned firefighters would follow orders from some idiot. Dube wasn't to blame.

—"Battery status 12%". What was the point of continuing to call? He had never liked goodbyes. He was weak. And the firefighters knew perfectly well where he was. Calling wouldn't make them arrive faster.

—He looked at his message to the firefighters. — "... than any other institution." — What a suck-up! —He thought.

Then he remembered one of his maxims.

—"Trust in the Virgin and don't run" —he thought, remembering another stupid saying. Negotiating with God hadn't yielded results either. He smiled bitterly.

At least Dube had achieved his dream. Coming to England, finding a good job, sending money home. But he had achieved nothing. He went to university thinking that would solve his life. He left his friends and parents to succeed in a shitty job that served for others to kill swalas, whatever they were.

Too many unfulfilled dreams, too many absurd goals. His life passed before his eyes in eternal seconds. His childhood happiness, playing in the street of his neighborhood. His first kiss. The first day of university. His mother's face and him telling her — I have to find my own destiny, because you're not going to solve it for me.

—Oh, how stupid —Why would he have said something so cruel?— Mom! —A raw scream, brought him back to the primordial womb.

96 hours had passed. They didn't expect to find anyone alive, the newspaper headlines said.

Firefighters and rescue workers would already be at home, in the comfortable monotony of their lives, letting their own time slip away.

He didn't care about dying. He deserved it. If he had stayed alive he would have continued wasting his life, hurting those who showed him affection or inventing senseless goals that would have led him to frustration. Yes. It was better to end it. Was reincarnation really true? Absurd.

There were no more sirens, only truck horns and reverse warning beeps.

Huge machines could be heard chewing the concrete, like tyrannosaurs breaking their prey.

And stones falling on the metal boxes of the dump trucks.

His hole began to fill with dust, his dry mouth already, tasted of the earth that he would soon be part of. He decided to sleep to make time go faster.

THE END