A random person on the street...
Oct. 3rd, 2009 01:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vaxjediAll roads used to lead to Rome. That's because Rome built the damn things themselves.
All roads lead to the City now. Not because the City built them, though. The roads built the City. This is where all the roads cross. Every road in this world, and the next, and the last, passes through Axis Mundi. Very few people ever notice that. They're too busy going places to know where they are.
I have a loft in one of the 'scrapers, on the corner of Indra and Styx. I'm not sure what floor it's on. Really, I don't think that the concept means much in a 'scraper. There's just the basement, the places up in the Skyline and the infinite stretches in between. The elevators are fast if you know where you are going. It's not much, but it's mine. I don't actually crash there very often. I've got a lot to do that takes me up and down Styx and it's easy to forget I've got a place to stop at. And, I'm always forgetting my keys.
Life on the streets of the City is a hard life. Sure, there are gangs, there's crime, there are drug dealers and streetwalkers (both the kind that sell themselves and the kind that don't). But that's not why it's rough. Everything is here, on the streets. Here or in one of the Worldscrapers. You can't hide from anything in the City, because it's all here, somewhere.
Most people just keep their eyes on the road. That's easy to wrap their minds around. But it doesn't change the fact that everything they don't want to see is somewhere, waiting at a stoplight.
Things work differently here. There are lots of people here in the City. All of them, in fact. But none of them are human. That's easy to see when you aren't looking at the road. Human is just a placeholder. Just like the word 'driver' or 'consumer', human is a two-dimensional word. See the little stick figure dude on the crosswalk sign? That's a human. 'Human' is just a placeholder. You can stick to the street signs when you are on the road and all you care about is the road. But that won't make it once you step foot onto the sidewalk. Two-dimensional doesn't cut it.
All roads lead to the City now. Not because the City built them, though. The roads built the City. This is where all the roads cross. Every road in this world, and the next, and the last, passes through Axis Mundi. Very few people ever notice that. They're too busy going places to know where they are.
I have a loft in one of the 'scrapers, on the corner of Indra and Styx. I'm not sure what floor it's on. Really, I don't think that the concept means much in a 'scraper. There's just the basement, the places up in the Skyline and the infinite stretches in between. The elevators are fast if you know where you are going. It's not much, but it's mine. I don't actually crash there very often. I've got a lot to do that takes me up and down Styx and it's easy to forget I've got a place to stop at. And, I'm always forgetting my keys.
Life on the streets of the City is a hard life. Sure, there are gangs, there's crime, there are drug dealers and streetwalkers (both the kind that sell themselves and the kind that don't). But that's not why it's rough. Everything is here, on the streets. Here or in one of the Worldscrapers. You can't hide from anything in the City, because it's all here, somewhere.
Most people just keep their eyes on the road. That's easy to wrap their minds around. But it doesn't change the fact that everything they don't want to see is somewhere, waiting at a stoplight.
Things work differently here. There are lots of people here in the City. All of them, in fact. But none of them are human. That's easy to see when you aren't looking at the road. Human is just a placeholder. Just like the word 'driver' or 'consumer', human is a two-dimensional word. See the little stick figure dude on the crosswalk sign? That's a human. 'Human' is just a placeholder. You can stick to the street signs when you are on the road and all you care about is the road. But that won't make it once you step foot onto the sidewalk. Two-dimensional doesn't cut it.
