OurProudAndAngryDust

   Sometimes I imagine them. Imagine what they are doing right now. Chasing each other through the winding streets, the twisting lanes that change as soon as you walk past them. They are running, laughing, never growing old. There is no time there.

  Sometimes there are traces. Fragments of a life consumed by the City. I still have their pictures in my breast pocket, close to my heart. And I've found others. A boy in Washington who was sent to his room by his parents and never came out. An group of illegal immigrants, lured by the promise of America, packed into the cramped cargo hold of a boat, all of them suddenly vanishing.

  I can see it now. They are sleepless, whispering to each other, wondering about when they will arrive, when they see a Door. A Door to the ultimate freedom, the endless labyrinth of the City.

TheGardenOfStatues

  A few years ago, I met a man who claimed to have seen through one of the Doors to within the City. He said he saw a beautiful garden filled with tall statues reaching to the heavens. He said that he believed these statues were of the builders of the City.

  When I asked if he had seen these statues' faces, he grew quiet, then said, "They had no faces. Their faces had been carved off, leaving only jagged forms." I said that perhaps these statues were not of the builders, but rather of those who tried to claim the City for themselves and that the statues were reminders to any who wished to do as they did.

  I later learned that this man was a consummate liar.

ANetworkOfLinesThatIntersect

  It's time to talk about networks.

  The Doors form a network. You can walk through one Door and emerge out of another. How do I know this?

  I am driving through the rain when I see it. There's a metal staircase beside a building that leads to a door...and another Door. I remember the markings. I can see it, practically taste the other side. I hurriedly park the car, slam the door shut, not even bothering to lock it, and rush up their steps. I take the door handle, fervently wishing that it won't be locked, and am surprised and relieved when it isn't.

  I turn the handle and walk through. On the other end is a sandy beach, the night sky overhead. The Door shuts behind me before I can stop it.

  It's three hours before I find out that I'm on the Ivory Coast.

WhereWouldYouGo?

                                           Where would you go? Where would you go within its empty streets, its silent alleyways, its quiet corridors, where would you walk, your footsteps echoing where there were no footsteps before you? Answer these before you walk through the door. There is no map to the City, the City of Emptiness, the City Without Shadows, the Constantly Shifting City, where the buildings are never in the same place twice.

      You think you know what it is. You've seen the SuddenlY Appearing Door. The Door has always been there The Doors only Appear when you are not looking. There are several types of Doors:

             1. Doors to the City
             2. Doors to Someplace else
             3. Doors to Sometime else
             4. Doors to the Outside

      All Doors are dangerous. When a Door reveals itself Appears, all Shadows move away from it.

TheCity

It was golden and splendid,
  That City of light;
A vision suspended
  In deeps of the night;
A region of wonder and glory, whose temples were marble and white.

I remember the season
  It dawn'd on my gaze;
The mad time of unreason,
  The brain-numbing days
When Winter, white-sheeted and ghastly, stalks onward to torture and craze.

More lovely than Zion
  It shone in the sky
When the beams of Orion
  Beclouded my eye,
Bringing sleep that was filled with dim mem'ries of moments obscure and gone by.

Its mansions were stately,
  With carvings made fair,
Each rising sedately
  On terraces rare,
And the gardens were fragrant and bright with strange miracles blossoming there.

The avenues lur'd me
  With vistas sublime;
Tall arches assur'd me
  That once on a time
I had wander'd in rapture beneath them, and bask'd in the Halcyon clime.

On the plazas were standing
  A sculptur'd array;
Long bearded, commanding,
  rave men in their day--
But one stood dismantled and broken, its bearded face battered away.

In that city effulgent
  No mortal I saw,
But my fancy, indulgent
  To memory's law,
Linger'd long on the forms in the plazas, and eyed their stone features with awe.

I fann'd the faint ember
  That glow'd in my mind,
And strove to remember
  The aeons behind;
To rove thro' infinity freely, and visit the past unconfin'd.

Then the horrible warning
  Upon my soul sped
Like the ominous morning
  That rises in red,
And in panic I flew from the knowledge of terrors forgotten and dead.

WeFoundItTogether

We found it together. Me, Carrie, and our son John. John was the one who opened it and rushed forward into the City, delighted at such wonders. Carrie followed him, if only to make sure he was safe.

And the Door shut softly behind them.

I had not entered. I had stood there, in a state of shock. Frozen solid in my belief that what was before me was not real. Reality, as I was quick to learn, was malleable.

When I tried opening the Door again, there was nothing behind it. Let me rephrase that: there was Nothing behind it. Black and vast, Nothingness stretched out from the Doorway to infinity.

I shut it quickly and closed my eyes. When I opened them, the Door was no longer there.

AStudyInEmptiness

   I am the Empty Ekistician.

   I am the man searching for Doorways. Searching for the City. Searching for a place without Shadows.

   There are records of it (most are false). There are people who have claimed to have seen it (most are liars). There are those obsessed with it (most are like me) and those who wish to exploit it (most are never going to find it).

  I've found a total of six Doors. Only the first one has led to the City.