I saw a magician end the world once. That sounds like it’s going to be a weird story to tell, and it kind of is. I should clarify that when I say magician I mean someone who was capable of doing something which defies my knowledge of natural laws. According to him, it was science, but I couldn’t tell the difference. Now, when I say ‘end the world’, the question comes up, “How are you and I here then?” The answer to that is that I didn’t mean apocalyptic, I just meant such a significant change, that no one can say anything is the same. Like, imagine an ice age instead of a giant comet crashing into Earth. So that’s what happened, a scientist started an ice age, metaphorically of course.
It was about a month ago, and I was walking downtown to get some donuts. I was listening to my iPod in an effort to avoid all the havoc around me, the occasional ramblings of crazy people strewn in the air like so much confetti, the usual hum of a city’s commerce, plus all the visual flotsam of men and women in suits trying to get somewhere warm like mice in a flood. I heard a woman, whom I had dismissed as being schizophrenic or on some terrible drug, singing, “In the city is a great biggening beast, be afraid for when it wakes from sleep.” I heard this because my iPod had stopped playing for some reason. Amid all the havoc I looked down at my iPod and accidentally bumped smack into a guy.
I apologized profusely, though I could tell I had taken the worst of the hit, he had continued to look at the device he was looking at which I thought must be some new kind of phone. Ordinarily, I would not be prompted to ask questions, but something about the way he stood transfixed to that spot made me curious. It was in stark contrast with the bustling fluid animal of the downtown which surrounded him, and it seemed for a moment, as though he were a skyscraper and all else was a field of grass brushed by the wind. To be clear, it is not that he was an especially handsome man, or that he had any other grand physical characteristic, but that he was possessed of a unique amount of focus.
I asked him what he was doing, and he answered me thusly: “I am looking for the heart of the city; I believe I have found it”. Slightly perplexed, I told him that the exact middle of the city was somewhere in the city hall, having discovered this fact some years prior on a class trip. “Ah, I see where you are mistaken, you misunderstand me. You see, I am not looking for the center of the city, I was looking for its heart, and I have found it.” At this point, I was too intrigued not to follow up. “It is relatively simple,” he said, still not looking up, “Just as you and I have a muscle which pumps blood through our bodies and keeps us alive, so do cities.” Not willing to believe such a ridiculous statement, I posited a few reasons why he was wrong. “I don’t see why it is so difficult to believe, after all, Rio de Janeiro feels different from San Francisco, which feels different than London, et cetera.” I agreed. “Would it be a stretch then to believe that these are different beings?” I remembered a few things I had read, from Shakespeare to Neil Gaiman, realized that I might see something amazing, and pressed him for more information. “The answer to your earlier questions, and the reason I am here, is that the cities of the Earth have been asleep, this is why they do not respond to us in any way we would understand, though we have felt their nightmares and recorded the deaths of more than a few of them, Carthage, Pompeii, Hiroshima. I and the people I work with are trying to wake them from their sleep, and what better way than to- move to the left please- shock them in the heart?”
