Fragments of something larger? Whatever. If it was supposed to make sense to you, you’d understand it… “This establishment is an importer of fine teas,” she says, “and none better on the High Street, I can assure you as much. We have tradition to uphold. We are perceived by the community in just such a way that deviation,” it is as if she plucks the word from the air with her fingers, drawing it down into her argument “is unacceptable.” “Certainly, certainly.” The man says, sniffing loudly from the side of his nose. He is wringing his hands. “I’ll take my goods elsewhere then, shall I?” Her eyebrow quirks with near imperceptible subtlety. “Yes. You certainly shall.”
Fragments of something larger? Whatever. If it was supposed to make sense to you, you’d understand it… “Eighty-four thousand people live in this little city, yet fewer than five hundred have been found worthy – be that worth of economic success or hereditary right – to own land. Are we so backwards that we have bestowed so much on so few? Are we so backwards that a mere fraction of our population is able to live beyond the indignity of stacked hovels spacious enough for no more than a small cot and a few chairs? We must look at those relative palaces, built clutching the banks of the river, and ask: by what right?” – Harold Gaben, Ersatz Dystopia
Fragments of something larger? Whatever. If it was supposed to make sense to you, you’d understand it… “There is Grass here!” She is surprised. “But…” “It is contained. It has been here a very long time. One might almost say it has been tamed.” His hands are clasped, hung gently at about the height of his navel. “How?” She squats to examine it more closely. “Why?” “The Garden was once a powerful collective. We did what we pleased.” He is humble. “Those days have passed, but our arts have been preserved here in our grounds.” “But the Grass? He allows it?” “He,” the monk spreads his hands wide, but does not say the name, “does not know.”
Fragments of something larger? Whatever. If it was supposed to make sense to you, you’d understand it… I’d like to steal a boat and float down that river someday. I’d like to drift on out to the coast, passing direct from the city, nodding by the rolling grasslands, skirting under the boughs of trees grown too close along water, and wending a leisurely pace to somewhere new. Likely, if I was not stopped by the guards at the wall, or lugged alongside a trawler further downstream, I would not make it beyond the Morokin Ports a half-day’s travel away. I’d be stopped and put to work in a mine and this river would be lost to me.
Fragments of something larger? Whatever. If it was supposed to make sense to you, you’d understand it… The apprentice puzzles. “What do you see when you look into the night sky?” “I see nothing. I see perpetual darkness. I see a black void.” Thoughtful pause. “If there is nothing to see, why look?” “The first to arrive wrote of the absence of lights in our night sky. They yearned for something more than the nothingness we now know. Thus, they built the great lens.” “Yet we observe nothing?” “The question is not of seeing the void. The question you should ask,” he replies, “is if there should be something more than nothingness. And why there is not.”
Fragments of something larger? Whatever. If it was supposed to make sense to you, you’d understand it… Flapps Bridge stands ancient and is half-sheeted in panels of colourfully oxidizing iron alloys that give it a pre-Tempest era aesthetic. The North Congress spans the breach between the low industrial lands surrounding the Dokyards and what is now the military regimental complex on the cliffs overlooking the city. Hoddall Pedway is a narrow rail in the shape of a grand arch, strung of modern alloys and built for foot traffic between populous Southbend and the mass employers clustered in the ports. And nearby, Keys Draw links the shouldering business of the Promenade with the shippers south across the river.
