[Writing] If It Isn't The War, It's The Weather - Chapter One 8/21/25

[Anders48]

Proper urban planning is hard. Even if you think you have access to some kind of special outworlder skills that will help you...well...do the cities on your home dimension seem well planned, hmm? If you're trying to use urban planning to solve a problem that the profession actually has experience with, you might succeed. If you're trying to use urban planning to solve an age old conflict that technically sorta predates the universe...probably not. If you're trying to use urban planning to somehow conduct an exorcism, then clearly you weren't going to listen to these warnings anyway.

This is the testament of one brave soul who forged ahead anyway, braving inquisitors, local zoning ordinances, rival conspiracies of outworlders (some of which even exist!), rivers of blood, boils, locusts, disappearing islands, and local zoning ordinances.

This crackfic interrogation of the nature of multiversal travel is of course mostly derived from Merlin's DHS continuity, crossed over with Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, some nonfiction books about the New Urbanism , and a bunch of half remembered nightmares I had after reading the first two. What, did you expect a story about people from a completely alien universe to make sense?

[Anders48]

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1.1 Introduction

I first studied architecture at Lafontaine University. Don't bother looking for it on a map. Even if you had the 'right' map (unlikely), Lafontaine wouldn't be on it. If Lafontaine was on it, that'd just mean the map was decades out of date. Or maybe I'm wrong, and there is another Lafontaine out there, somewhere. But it wouldn't be the Lafontaine that counted. It wouldn't be Lafontaine, Missouri. Let me be clear: his project is not an effort to build Lafontaine, Missouri. It is not an effort to rebuild Lafontaine, Missouri. It is not an effort to recreate some idealized version of Lafontaine, or erect a monument to it. The place I come from has an old saying: Let the dead bury the dead. We (and by 'we' I mean the Modernists) don't have much use for old sayings. Normally.

But here is our one concession to the ancients: the living cannot bury the dead, for we are too small in number. There are two reasons for this: the obvious one and the important one. I won't bother with the obvious reason. The important one was simple lack of organization, paired with far too much organization.

This probably sounds paradoxical, so let me give you an example from my younger days.

🝤🝤🝤

In Missouri (and also elsewhere) there was a tradition for people who had finished a certain stage of education. We would take our automobiles (a kind of horseless carriage) and go...well, not anywhere, but we'd range as widely as the traipses. On my trip I did a tour of these settlements called Pueblos. There were personal reasons, but I was mainly doing a survey of tribal constitutions.

After I'd left Acoma Peublo (one of the oldest), the problems started. It began innocently enough: I saw a sign on the road telling me that the next exit* was a town called Sardis. It was a strange name, but I'd seen stranger, so I ignored it. Then I saw the sign again, a few miles down. Our municipalities aren't exactly known for their linguistic creativity, so I still ignored it. In retrospect, I can't remember whether I saw signs for any other cities during this period. It seems important now, but at the time I wasn't paying attention.

Then I saw it again. At this point my main concern was that I was somehow going in circles. I briefly stopped at the side of the road to check where I was. I seemed to be where I was supposed to be. I moved on.

Except, I couldn't move on. The next city was also Sardis. The city after that, Sardis. I really wasn't interested in what it was all these Sardises had to offer, so I tried to reverse course. Naturally, it didn't work. This was the first great flaw of our urban planning: Linearity. There was forward, or there was backward. There was no real way to exit to the sides (except via the exit(s) to Sardis). If humanity - our humanity, not yours - had existed in four dimensions** this wouldn't have been as big a problem. Our roads would be layed out on three dimensional 'ground', and could be free to emulate the geometry of the plane as well as that of a line. Unfortunately, we do not live in a four dimensional world. So when I eventually started running out of fuel, I had only one place where I could go.

Sardis was exactly like every other medium-sized city that lies within our southwestern provinces, except that everyone had clearly been dead for - I don't know, a long time. I never studied Forensics much. Not long enough that you couldn't smell them, though. There were also maggots. I guess I could have driven off, but I wouldn't be able to make it very far, and then what? So instead I went looking for somewhere to refuel. I found it, I filled up (You're really supposed to pay but that was clearly the least of my issues), and then I saw someone going into an adjoining building. Under the circumstances, this could only mean one of three things:

• They were a creature of that obscure and rarefied species known as the Gas Station Clerk
• They were the murderer, or finally
• Some other possibility that I hadn't considered.

I bet on 3, and followed them inside.

🝤🝤🝤

It was 1. I didn't know what to say to them when I spotted them behind the counter. "How are you doing"? "Nice weather we've been having"? "Please stop monopolizing the interstate exits"? "By the way, everyone in your town has clearly been dead for so long that maggots are growing in their corpses"? So I went back, to the refrigerated section where they kept the drinks. It was still refrigerated; the electricity was still on. I took out a jug of orange juice, and carefully unscrewed the lid, 'accidentally' letting it spill on to the floor. It seemed fine. The snack food the station sold seemed fine too, but that wasn't really surprising even under the circumstances. I had brought a bag with me, in case I wanted to buy something and/or loot the store, so in went the empty jug of orange juice, a full jug of lemonade (It seemed trustworthy and after everything I thought I deserved it.), around twelve water bottles, some beef jerky (a lot, actually), other things. Then I took them up to the counter.

The clerk stared at me, and then his mouth didn't so much open as it distended. It was black with insects, and they began pouring out of every orifice.

This is when I decided to become an architect. I don't believe that Sardis is the city we had to create; it's the city we did. I think we can do better.
*You could only exit our main roads at specific, designated points. This will become important later
**Which it well could have.