4-9: A FINALE OF A COURSE ON THE CITY UNENDING WHICH HAS BEEN PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO WILL SOMEDAY COME OF AGE IN AN ATTEMPT TO PREPARE THEM FOR THEIR JOURNEY WEST WITH A FOCUS AND FINAL LOOK AT INDIVIDUALS THAT A PILGRIM HAS THE POTENTIAL TO MEET

In which our first Guide returns for the final lecture on The City Unending and to discuss a famous vigilante, a famous mail carrier, a forgotten house, and more before saying his final goodbyes while you wait to come of age and experience the journey through The City Unending yourself.

This episode was written by Monte D. Monteleagre (@mdmonteleagre) and performed by Joseph Sanford IV (@j4xiv).

The City Unending is a collabrative project lead by Monte D. Monteleagre and produced by Wolf Mountain Workshop (@wolfmountainworkshop). 

Now, finally, Go West, Pilgrim.

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Transcript

Before The City Unending, there are the suburbs. We do not know much about the suburbs because Pilgrims, even those exceptional ones who are called back East, rarely speak of them. Of the few who speak of the suburbs, most just mention their existence in passing.

Those who are more willing to share talk about rows and rows of identical houses, all the same but from the color of the front door, all seemingly empty aside from a curtain closing in the corner of your eye, but even that might be an illusion. And that the roads are bad, not as bad as The City itself, but still bad.

The more talkative ones, after being pressed by us as we are the curious sort, open up and share that, one day while wandering towards the tall buildings, they looked up and realized they were all alone, their fellow Pilgrims separated from them in the twisting roads and picket fences. “It never happens all at once,” they say, “but you never see it coming. Like a memory fading away.”

The very few Pilgrims who travelled West alone and were called back East are exceptions among exceptions, and the handful that have returned to us in our history have no memories of the suburbs at all, just the gleaming metal archway and the busy city air.

An interlude.

Blanket Man is the premier vigilante of The City Unending, where such masked figures run rampant seasonally. He operates outside of the jurisdiction of the districts and boroughs, and is one of the few that operates outside of the season for vigilantes, despite the efforts of the relevant authorities and those that dare act as his rogues gallery.

Reportedly, Blanket Man is 60 years old, bald at the crown with a poof of silver curly hair right above his brow and long curls wrapped from ear to ear around the back of his head. He wears, and this is in quotes, “cool sunglasses,” and a, “cowboy style bandana,” over his face. Other than that, it’s mostly off-the-rack business attire, formal-but-bland ties, and, of course, the king sized blanket tied around his shoulders.

Blanket Man is known to help out wherever he can outside of business hours, but mostly focuses on, and this is also in quotes, “sleep crimes,” which he is adamant exist.

In an interview he gave almost an entire decade ago, and that was already several decades into his career, he defined sleep criminals to the late night talk show host thusly, quote, “Sleep criminals are those that break sleep laws,” end quote. When the late night host asked what the sleep laws were and where people could find them, Blanket Man said, “Isn’t it passed your bedtime?” And then shot his grappling hook through the window and swung towards a well known banking firm with several buildings across the Borough Financial.

Blanket Man never went on that show again, and if you mention that late night host to any of the citizens of The City Unending, they’ll shake there heads and say, “It’s a shame about all that stuff he did and said. He was a really talented comedian.”

Journalists and other curious parties have tried to question Blanket Man more about Sleep Laws, but at best they get the response, “I- okay I’m running late for work but here’s the basics: look it up, bucko,” followed by the sounds of grappling hook imbedding itself into a nearby skyscraper and an old man yelling in excitement.

Today, sleep criminals quiver in their shoes, boots, socks, and slippers whenever they hear the sounds of a high-pressure CO2 powered grappling hook gun go off anywhere near them, which happens often enough in the vigilante season that by the off-season, Blanket Man is ready to strike again.

An interlude.

When you send a letter in The City Unending, you will first have to put it into a box. There are boxes for this on nearly every corner of every block in The City Unending and finding one will be no trouble to you. They can look a thousand different ways, painted a thousand different colors by the people that use them, often covered in thick layers of stickers and marker and spray paint and chalk, with the names of the people that use the boxes craved once and then carved again into layers of the neighborhood’s history. On top of the box, there will be a little slit to put your letters into.

Then, later, when it is finally time for your letter to be sent, MAXIMUM THRUST THE LETTER THRUSTER will come to delivery your letter.

MAXIMUM THRUST, whose name is spelled in all capital letters, keep inconsistent hours as they are famous and popular and that means they have to be naked at parties most weeknights, but trust in the mail system that once MAXIMUM THRUST gats their strong, strong hands onto your letter, it will be delivery shortly to its final destination.

First, THE LETTER THRUSTER will come to the box and greet it with a big kiss, and then they will pick the box up off the ground, turn it upside down, and shake it until all of the letters fall out of the little slit in the top.

If your worried that anyone would be able to do this and steal your letter, there is no need to fret. Each letter box weighs 2000 pounds to prevent most people, including you, from ever attempting this. MAXIMUM THRUST can lift and shake a 2000 pound box dozens of times a day with ease because they are special.

Then, when MAXIMUM THRUST puts the letter box back in its place, they will begin to sort through the letters. They will look at the name and the district and if they feel like it they’ll check the borough too, and when they are ready, they will  yell the name on the front of the envelope as loud as they possibly can, and then they will throw the letter as hard as they possibly can in the general direction of the district on the envelope, and then they will hope as hard as they possibly can that you heard them yelling. Eventually, when they letter reaches the recipient, it is best that they were paying attention because if you are unprepared to receive a letter it will likely hit you in the back of the head and knock you to the ground.

Because of this system, it is common curtesy to hand delivery any letters that ended up stuck half way through brick walls or embedded into the cracked concrete back to the nearest letter box. MAXIMUM THRUST THE LETTER THRUSTER will not remember the letter so they will not be offended or embarrassed that it didn’t get to the right person. They will just try again. A recent study shows that 96% of letters sent in The City Unending eventually reach the right destination, with the record for a delivery being negative four seconds, arriving well before MAXIMUM got their hands on it, and the slowest letter every received took 148 years, but was a birthday card that arrived on the recipients birthday that year so it was all okay.

An interlude.

Everybody, please forgive me, we are stretching today. I’ve been thinking about it and, even though nobody said they wanted to, I want to and it is my lesson, so stay seated if you wish but I will be stretching and I hope that you join me. We’ll start with your head, turn it all the way to the left, now hold it there. Now all the way to the right. Hold it there. Look up at the sky, now down at the floor.  Stick your hands out in front of you. Rotate your wrists. Now give yourself a big hug. And now we’re going to try to touch your toes. It’s okay if you can’t, we’re just going to try. Oh I wish we started doing this in one of the earlier lessons so we could do more than just that, but better late than never. You can keep stretching, if you’d like, while we continue.

An interlude.

An Empty House waits for a new resident in the Borough Forgotten. The other buildings in the borough have all fallen into disrepair, once bright paint peeling into overgrown yards and cracks of empty driveways bleeding into empty roads. Garage doors are alternatively rusted open and rusted shut and every third roof is caved in, shingles resting in half-rotted couches.

All of this is to say that The Little Brick House on the Corner with No Fence Around Its Backyard likes its odds. When someone finally moves back into the neighborhood, they will see that The House doesn’t have a garage to rust open or shut, just an awning over a gravel driveway, and that The House’s bricks were never painted, so the paint can’t chip away, and that the roof is doing just fine despite everything, so there’s no need to worry about that.

The other houses have broken windows and gaping doors. The Brick House’s windows are distinctly not broken, even if The Little House has to admit that they are a little drafty, and then a lot drafty in the winter time but that shouldn’t be a deal breaker for anyone, should it? Not if they want to live in the neighborhood. The other houses would be a lot more drafty with all their broken windows and caved in roofs.

And The Little Brick House on the Corner doesn’t like the looks of a gaping front door staring into all that black emptiness. That’s scary. And more importantly, it’s not inviting, so The Little House keeps the door closed, but unlocked, and unlocked is good because unlocked means that someone, perhaps even someone looking for a house, perhaps even someone looking for a home, if The Little Brick House is lucky, would try the unlocked door knob and think, “Oh, it’s unlocked, and therefore I am welcome here.” If The House is lucky, of course.

The Corner House remembers vaguely a time before the Borough was Forgotten. Well, more than vaguely really but The Brick House likes to think the memories are vague so that they hurt less, but even then The Little House remember a time when a little family lived here until one day, all of the sudden, they didn’t any more.

The Little Corner House remembers a morning during the school year where the Mom and the Kid were eating waffles and syrup and making sure the homework was in the backpack and the Dad was in the bedroom looking out the window and then Dad ran out of the bedroom and into the kitchen where the Mom and the Kid were and said, “Oh, oh no, oh no we have to go. We have to go right now. Don’t worry about the backpack, honey, pick him up and run, run, don’t wait for me I’m right behind you we have to run we have to go now don’t worry about the backpack we have to run now, please, please, please...” and then The Little Brick House on the Corner with No Fence Around Its Backyard remembers that this is supposed to be a vague memory and it lets the rest fade away.

“Do the other houses remember?” The Little House wonders. But The Little House on the Corner doesn’t know. The other houses in The Borough Forgotten don’t talk much.

An interlude.

Before I let you go and wait to Come of Age, however long that takes for you, let me implore you one more time: if you are every called back East by The Rising Sun, seek us out. Tell us your stories of The City Unending and of your Pilgrimage. All of us will Come of Age eventually, even those of us that have been waiting for a long time, and we will want to be ready, even if nobody is every really ready when they are called.

And when you find us, we will listen to your stories of an impossible to cross city, and how you proved it so wrong that it would rather hide from you than face you again on your way back to us. We want to hear you. And we want to share your journey with whoever we can get to listen.

But before you will ever return to us, you will reach the end of The City Unending. It is an unassuming thing. A simple stone arch, just a little taller than whoever is looking at it, and it is the western most structure in the whole of The City Unending. There are no suburbs on this side of The City, and there are no more cities or towns or settlements between you and the Horizon. If The City at your back couldn’t stop you, there is nothing in the whole universe that will, so why would it try?

The City side of the stone arch is carved with a hundred thousand names and, if you take your time to look closely, and you should take your time to look closely, you will find the ones you know. They have stood there before you, and they have been West, and they are waiting for you now at the Horizon, and you will carve your name with the knife in your bag that you brought just for this, and you will walk under the stone arch at the edge of The City Unending and you will think of ducking but you will not. You will hold your head high as so many have done before you and you will face west and you, Pilgrim, you will do as you were called to do and you will chase the Setting Sun.

Now go West, Pilgrim.

END