The sun rises.
The sky responds by turning an Imperial shade of violet. Same answer, every day.
It is, once more, time for the day to begin. Time for the people to get up and about.
To go to bed and sleep the night off.
Time for the city to awaken.
This is the Heart of all Things. Its people are the Residents. They are all aware of this.
And they are all aware that the entire world is aware. This is the Heart of all Things. The planes that arrive, that have arrived all through the night, are not just machines carrying homo sapiens sapiens to some random town, they are syringes injecting the only nutrient the city needs, they are fuel pumps delivering the only form of energy the massive arrays of concrete, steel, glass and bricks will ever crave. The highways are veins the sidewalks nerve strings.
The Heart of all Things beats with the footsteps of millions and millions of people.
All roads lead here. All manner of goods can be purchased here, every street is a country onto itself, every block a continent. The people do not need to connect, they do not need to know that they cannot help but connect. Every living thing is connected here, no one person can stand up and claim leadership.
This does not stop them from trying. Humans will always seek control, especially over those things that they themselves have created. And humans will always seek not to be controlled by anyone outside of themselves.
The Heart of all Things was designed with the latter in mind, it is as anarchistic as a two-year old without his medication, as free as a bird and as destructive as a raging mob.
It is a raging mob, it cannot be anything else, it is a backdrop, an interactive environment, a just cause and so many other things.
Far beyond melting pot, far beyond good or evil, dirty old man or guardian angel.
Nightmare or dream, it matters not. Some are drawn, some are forced. Some commute.
Some are tourists. It matters not, the city, the Heart of all Things, doesn’t care. It feels only a footstep, a rhythm, a beat and a pulse, feels only human, cat dog cow bird.
Distinguishes only rarely.
Even though you think you are using it, to whatever end, it is almost certain that the city is taking something back. Your health. Your money. Your footsteps. Your children.
And after you die it will remain. After your funeral, after the speeches have been thrown out and a whole new generation has sprung forward and forgotten you, after all this someone will still write poetry about the city. Guidebooks. Novels. Short stories.
Even after it’s sunken into the ground and the last isotopes have faded away, even then humans will gather to talk about the Heart of all Things, and they will build a new city in its image. At this point you will have been dead for centuries and the world you knew will be gone.
But humans will gather, larger cities dwindle and smaller cities flourish as they receive the surplus, the excess population.
The sun has risen. It is now, not before and not after, but now. We can all relate to now.
This is home. This will always be someone’s home.
And someone’s dream.
