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- Let me now describe for you a dream I dreamt one night, said the Student. I dreamed that I came to yet another city, one I had not been to before, a city with no name, or with many names, as many names as it has inhabitants, I cannot remember which. I descended into the city from the sky, or maybe the city was in the sky and I ascended to it from the waters below, its position seemed indistinct but all-encompassing. I arrived with a feeling of suspense-for the unknown, the unexplored. I began to wander through the empty streets and crowds, noting prominent buildings, streetlights, squares, and utility poles. There was some confusion as I made my way through the city, for, though certain I had not backtracked, I began to see some of the same places two and three times. Soon I recognized every palace, every church, every sidewalk, even individual paving stones as either the same ones I had seen before or their exact copies. And although I recognized them they seemed different: increasingly grotesque and inhuman. Greatly perplexed, I quickened my stride, first running, then floating, then flying. I was nightmarishly lost amid an endless blur of frighteningly bizarre yet familiar skyscrapers, highways, and overpasses, concrete, steel, and plastic. -The city in your dreams is indeed a real city, replied the Teacher, somewhat bemused. In fact it is every city, and indeed the only city, you have visited or will ever visit: enticingly new yet horrifyingly familiar.
shrouded
The city of Rupag is difficult to describe, perhaps more so after a visit there. For this city is surrounded perpetually by a great mist and lies just beyond what is familiar, barely out of reach, slightly beyond grasp. To be sure, one can travel to Rupag and explore its tangled streets, press through its crowded squares, and pause in its dark churches. I can describe in detail the delicate spires and bulbous onion-shaped domes which pierce the swirling mists arising from the river which divides the city. Or I can tell you of the infamous fortress palace that crowns a hill above the city, overflowing with gardens and dungeons and guards. Or describe the fantastic building at the foot of one of those bridges that, constructed of magical glass and steel, dances the evenings away to the delightful sound of forgotten waltzes. But to describe these things is to tell you next to nothing of the true Rupag, even less than nothing. Indeed the more I describe its physical aspects, the farther the true Rupag dissipates into shadowy and unknowable mists. For the essence of this city is not in its foreboding castle, bristling churches, many-arched bridges, or whimsical buildings. Rather these things are clues about, or emanations of, or cast-offs from, its true form . Perhaps a more accurate way to describe Rupag is to tell ofthe people who have written, ruled, preached, hidden, built, and died there. These philosophers, statesmen , reformers, prisoners, architects, and peasants are inseparable from their city and it is perhaps their lingering spirits, rising in the form of mists, which conceal the city from all but the most resolved of visitors. There is first the maiden princess, who prophesied the emergence of a great capitol from swampy riverside mists. Then there is the uneasy author whose stories of paranoia have both uncovered and provoked the fear at the heart of man. Or that great firebrand preacher whose words of truth spread like wildfire, quickening or hardening the hearts of all who heard them. One could spend a lifetime uncovering the truth about Rupag, only to discover that you remain merely on the threshold of a city that contains far more than was ever imagined.