I’m the new rock, the new solid, the new stratum of the earth. I’m a hybrid of dust and liquid, a chemical reaction swiftly turning the heat and the softness of a sandy mass to a hard, heavy, geometrical, cold block. For more than one hundred years I’ve spread on the surface of the planet like the symbol of a new world that doesn’t need mud or stone to grow. Now I fasten myself on them and sink them with the weight of buildings, bridges, streets, houses, and airports. They’re all extensions of me, pure synthesis of my elements, made with the gray flesh of my molecules. My soul is steel, a new and improved compound of millennial metals. I’m a miracle, a ghost, for I emerge out of almost nothing with the most flawless hardness and multiply and expand at the mere call of human will. I simply appear there, where requested, and rise into a tower higher than a mountain, or sprawl for miles as a bridge between two shores, uniting that which the Earth had insisted in keeping apart. My surfaces are flat and smooth. [...]
Concrete
in ENCYCLOPEDIA