About the Author Misha Firer is a 25-year-old writer from Russia. After fighting in the Israeli Army & getting high in Amsterdam, he incidentally wound up in Berkeley, California. This year his short stories, essays and columns have appeared or forthcoming in BIG News (2), Laundry Pen, NuVein (2), Paumanok Review, Pink Chameleon, Rose & Thorn, Scarlet Letters, Slow Trains (2), Struggle, Taint, Vestal Review and WordRiot.

The city of Zaraz is perfectly constructed, structured and standardized. In fact, its architects claim their creation is flawless: all until it comes to its inhabitants, whose human nature is far from ideal.

The city had been built in its entirety before the first residents stepped in and occupied its super-efficient apartments and started to use its super-modern facilities.

The architects had to reinvent their project once the city was inhabited and started living its turbulent life outside the course laid out by their perfectionist mathematical minds.

After much remodeling and tedious reconstruction the architects realized that there was a definite need for an outlet for human irrationality, irresponsibility and irrelevance. The architects conducted tests to discern the most insubordinate category of the city's inhabitants. It turned out to be singles of marriageable age.
It was anonymously and universally decided to use that group of city dwellers to drain the city of its pervasive violence, vandalism, apathy and unreasonableness.

For that purpose Singles Day was devised, promoted and implemented. On the sixteenth day of the month of February, the city streets were deserted save for single people age eighteen and older. They were not required to follow any laws and permitted to do whatever they deemed in their personal interest for the duration of twenty-four hours.

The first year, the single people filed out to the streets and spent their day cautiously exploring the new possibilities, not fully believing that they could do whatever they wanted to, ridding themselves of norms, conventions and standards. They circled around one another, not sure whether to fight or make love or just go home and wait for normality to return with the sunrise.

The second year they were bolder by far, more outspoken and pro-active. There was an explosion of irrational activity as the single people began to burn fires in the middle of the streets, to chant weird songs and dance around naked. As the night dwindled away, the singles merged into couples and the couples indulged their sexuality. There were occasional eruptions of minor violence, mostly among males over territorial transgressions and over possession of the females.


The singles, most of whom were not single anymore found it hard to return to order the next day. But they were lured back by the amenities and comforts of their ultra-modern city life, so convenient for creating a family.

Nine months later there was a baby boom, and the city's hospitals overflowed with women in labor.

As the architects analyzed their annual demographic data, they realized that a daylong outlet of irrationality and madness improved city life, making it much more orderly, safe, secure and efficient than the year before. They decided to maintain Singles Day, as it had a pharmaceutical effect on the city in general, not only on the singles.

The next year some unexpected things happened during Singles Day. Considerable bloodshed ensued over insignificant incidents, and major acts of vandalism were conducted against private property. There were burglaries of apartments and business offices.

But with the dawn the violence either stopped or was extinguished by the police force, which according to the architects' law, avoided infringing on the wild singles event. There were more fires; there were many rapes, and many cracked skulls. Summing up, there was a bit more commotion than the architects had bargained for.

A strange discovery awaited the city. It was announced in the newspapers and over the radio that not all of the Singles Day victims were actually . . . single. There were a few married men, and married women who attended the event despite a prohibition against it.

Nine months later there was a second baby boom. Again, there was a surprise in waiting for the city's inhabitants. Randomly conducted DNA tests proved that about a third of the babies didn’t have a genetic connection to their mothers’ husbands.

The showdown was swift. The statistics collected by the architects proved that the city’s order had deteriorated over the course of the year. This deterioration they linked directly with the Singles Day that had run terribly amok. With not much deliberation, the architects decided to abolish the Singles Day event, as its unanticipated consequences had obliterated the desired effect.

On the eve of the sixteenth day of February the following year, the city fell ominously quiet. No passer by dared to go out in the street, no cars rushed by, no businesses were open.

But at twelve a.m., in the stark darkness, slowly, cautiously, looking around in dread, people began to file out into the street. Single, married, old, young. Gradually, the squares, streets and back alleys were filled with the city's inhabitants.

There was not much going on. The people were waiting, perhaps for a signal to start doing something or another.

Finally a shabby fellow with the guilty face of a fallen angel clambered on a parked car, and shouted out the key phrase seemingly everyone wanted to hear.

“Let Singles Day commence!”

And so it commenced.

In the course of one night, the whole city became single in pursuing its long-subdued anarchic obsessions.

When the architects awakened the next day, they found their flawless creation lying in ruins.