In bed that night I invented a special drain that would be underneath every pillow in New York, and would connect to the reservoir.

Whenever people cried themselves to sleep, the tears would all go to the same place, and in the morning the weather man could report if the water level of the Reservoir of Tears had gone up or down, and you could know if New York was in heavy boots.

And when something really terrible happened – like a nuclear bomb, or at least a biological weapons attack – an extremely loud siren would go off, telling everyone to get to Central Park to put sandbags around the reservoir.

from “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer.