Roadtown
The strange line connecting San Francisco to New York City
In the middle of the United States, there exists a building almost 2,600 miles long. There are no divides; it is a single, continuous hallway made of concrete, glass, pipes, and wires. Home, factory, and farm, all for a few dollars as rent. Roadtown, a new way of living for the working class.
Beneath the busy cement hallway, two subterranean monorails glide from California to New York at 90 miles an hour. As night falls, they shift from trafficking passengers to freight. Curios shifting from coast to coast.
A collection of notes concerning a peculiar lineage, hidden among worthless brass and tinsel, arrives in the city where people pass faded notes bearing the likeness of a man who proclaimed himself emperor, to the other, where a man pedals the philosophy of the voice in the corner of his room.
A letter, inquiring on the continued failure of sieges in Paris and the existence of spies in the capital city of Tours, leaves the town where bombs and guns tried to halt the reveal of a mayor’s corruption to be shipped overseas from where a city planner will find a way to give himself all the power needed to shape the country.
A small revolver, missing from its display case, arrives where an exhibition built a palace on the waterfront to celebrate the connection of the seas, sent from the city where an exhibition built a temple where the nation’s leader laid covered in his own blood.
A message, furiously accusing the recipients of knowing some secret to the event nearly two decades ago, leaves the city where an old reporter reflects on a colleague who left for Mexico and never returned, to be delivered where a circle of authors take names created by a missing man and attach them to a cosmology of nightmares.
A strange device, comprised of coils and made to replace rays with particles, arrives where a strange silver moon shines above the world's longest bridge, sent from where fire engulfed the work of a veteran of the Currents Wars.
A threat, telling its recipient they know the truth of events two decades ago, leaves from the city where a millionaire employed reporters, one of whom is now missing, to the other, where the same millionaire manufactured support for the war by fabricating attacks.
A book, banned in all of France but it’s former capital, arrives where a society of artists and patrons gather in the forest, ready to perform a play despite a missing member, sent from where a forbidden script is about to be read, a figure cloaked in yellow awaiting an audience.
A professor’s account, detailing strange things that watch from beyond the stars, leaves the city where a man imprisoned on an island slowly wastes away with a smile on his face, to then arrive in the city where years before he had ordered the murder of seven rivals.
A man, whispering in a tongue known to none on this Earth, arrives in the city of the phoenix, newly risen from the ashes, leaving the city now signaling the end of a golden era.
The monorail departs for New York, where a death will not happen. The designer of the Roadtown will not be found dead by his own hands. His impossible building will be accepted by the World’s Fair Corporation. 30 years after the fair that ended in the assassination of the president for the good of the working class they will hold the fair that begins with the unveiling of a new way of life for the working class.
The monorail departs for California, carrying with it a waxen mask and robe. The song is the same: Black stars dot the night sky, and blood will pour on the flowers below. Then the first shell will fall.
It’s dawn in Roadtown.
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