Ghost Town
Matthew Ryan Fischer
Is a smart city smart if no one lives there? Was it a liminal
space, or just an abandoned dream? Supposedly China built their own version of
Paris and left it empty. An exercise in arrogance and futility or perhaps a testament
to lost causes and hubris. Imagine the street races people could have. Or the
action films that could be shot. As long as China was willing to let people go
and see it. Strange that it would remain locked away. As if it wasn’t really
there. Or the rumor was a better story than the actual site.
They moved Junction. That was what they said anyway. Who were
they? And why did they do it? People from a long time ago apparently. People with
the power to move whole towns. When the gold rush ended, the town died. Why someone
would save the buildings, was unclear. But given enough money and enough effort,
massive wastes of time are totally possible.
The buildings were arranged back in proper order, placed in the
same pattern, at the same distance apart as before. After Junction was re-centered, a few small offshoots were allowed to grow.
Jesse thought that perhaps there was a ley line but no recognized
phenomena could be tracked back to Junction. If there were earth energies
converging there, they didn’t make much of a mark. But perhaps the founders
knew something more. Perhaps they were following the ebb and flow of something much
greater, something no one else had come to track yet.
For earthquake country, it was rather calm. For cracked desert,
there were a fair number of underground basins. For a town of no industry and
no means, the residents there somehow made a living and kept things from
falling apart.
Jesse didn’t have the answers to any of that either. He had a
dream though. A dream of machines and gears and a temple full of symbols he
didn’t understand. In the dream there was a ritual and the ground opened up and
he fell. And when he landed, he was in a town called Junction. A town he had
never heard of until the dream told him it was there. So Jesse traveled west
until he could find the real thing.
He found no temple, no ceremony waiting, as he feared he might. It
was just a small town with a handful of people who stared at strangers when
they crossed the bridge into town. He was the outsider. He was the stranger. But
to him, they all felt strange and odd and different.
The town had sent him a message, it called out to him, but he didn’t
know why. Jesse needed to sleep. He needed to talk to his dream, find out what
he had missed and what he needed to learn. The dreams had told him to come, but
they had given no answers.
As Jesse stood there, he watched a symbol carve itself out of
thin air, and leave and branding mark on the street in front of him. It was one
of the symbols from his dream. Someone was trying to talk to him. But how? He
was wide awake. Wasn’t he?
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