Listing to Port

To celebrate international Milton Keynes day, here are some things you didn’t know about everyone’s favourite British planned city!
1. Milton Keynes was named after the small village of Middleton or Milton Keynes, close to the centre of the planned city. However, this was not the original origin of the name, which actually comes from the future. In the year 2172, a small cabal of purple economagicians gathered in the English Midlands to attempt to retrospectively right some of the wrongs of the late 21st century. They felt that a new and uniting voice in economics had been absent in this period. As a stop-gap measure, they spliced together genetic material extant from John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman, creating a small child intended to grow into a kind of economic messiah. On his fifth birthday, he ceremonially took on the name ‘Milton Keynes’ and was sent backwards through time. Unfortunately one of the economagicians involved made a factor of 10 error whilst coding the spell, sending him back 1000 instead of 100 years. Young Milton clearly accomplished something, as the village ended up named after him. Modern-day historians are unsure quite what, however. There remains a rumour that he is in fact not dead but sleeping in a cave beneath the city’s central shopping centre, where he was discovered during initial building work and quietly sealed back up again after a call to the treasury. If so, the date when he will rise once more to unite the disparate schools of economics remains as yet unknown.
2. The city’s famous concrete cows are not made of concrete at all, but are actually constructed from a form of toffee so hard it is inedible.
3. The grid system of Milton Keynes’ roads is so confusing for native Britons that over three hundred people have become permanently lost on its rigidly rectangular ways. City authorities maintain small depots of food, clothing and fuel for the confused in the centres of major roundabouts, which can usually be accessed by levering up a small hatch marked 'OPEN IF LOST’.
4. Although Milton Keynes’ bicycle and pedestrian paths are known today for their red tarmac, they did not start off this way. Initially, an exciting shade of puce was envisaged. This so enraged the planners who were inspecting the final tests of the surfacing system that they engaged in a furious knife fight with the puce advocates, ineradicably staining the whole batch of surfacing material with blood. Since that time, the paths have remained red as a mark of respect to those who were wounded.
5. Milton Keynes is perhaps the only city which was designed with a hinge, in case anyone might need to open it. Quite what they might find if they did is open to question. Other unusual design elements which were eradicated at the final planning stage include mechanical legs, a self-reciprocating monorail, and the ability to sink the roundabouts into the ground in case of disaster.

5505 Cities
 -5505.1 Those that never sleep
    –5505.11 Those cities that never sleep because they have far too much exciting stuff to do
       —5505.111 Cities that are like small dogs, bursting with disorganized excitement, full of twitchy crowds standing round waiting for awesome things to happen
       —5505.112 Cities that will dance in a frenzy of joy until long after the other cities are all laid down
       —5505.113 Cities that are building something in there, though no-one is sure quite what
    –5505.12 Those cities that never sleep because they have awful, intractable insomnia
       —5505.121 Cities that are additionally grumpy, weepy and forgetful
 -5505.2 Those that sleep entirely normally thank you
    –5505.21 Those cities which would in any case rather not discuss their sleep with you, and if you could refrain from prying about other things and just let them be that would be great
    –5505.22 Those that cannot be having with the antics of those other cities and would just rather the trains ran on time
       —5505.222 Those that cannot really be having with anything
    –5505.23 Those whose statistical yearbooks record the exact optimal level of sleep and maximal citizen happiness
    –5505.24 Those who need sleep to grow, who are constantly waking with new limbs and appendages
 -5505.3 Cities that sleep amazingly, expansively, that sleep for years
    –5505.31 Those that cradle their inhabitants in the precise mathematics of perfect days
    –5505.32 Those that radiate false calm, and whose anger is locked away
       —5505.221 Cities that have terrible dreams and that wake up with a dew of night-sweat running down their tallest towers
    –5505.33 Those that are cursed to sleep but always on the verge of waking
    –5505.34 Those that sleep like dormice, cute and curled up between the mountains and the sea
 -5505.4 Cities built on mystery and lies
    –5505.41 Those having as their foundation a large and unpleasant secret, and the corners of the secret are occasionally dug up and tugged upon and then hastily put back, and for the few days following nobody makes eye contact
    –5505.42 Those cities that have not looked in the mirror for some time
       —5505.421 Those that know they are great and old and grand and powerful, so long as they remain unexamined
       —5505.422 Those cities that know they are too nice to be angry
    –5505.42 Those that are built on absurdity and would fall apart if their problems were to be fixed
 -5505.5 Cities that are dead
    –5505.51 Those whose ghosts seethe gently at the modern age from under trees
    –5505.52 Cities caught mid-death like flies in amber, and buried
    –5505.53 Cities that are dead but still walking
 -5505.6 Improper cities
    –5505.61 Those cities having no proper location, that might more properly be called cuckoos, settling down in the nests of other cities to make neighbourhoods oddly familiar from other cities in other places
    –5505.62 Cities of plaster, paste and clockwork, convincing only to a distant eye
       —5505.621 Those that consist only of a dog chasing a bus, endlessly, looped onto a webcam, empty of humanity

1. In Ompal Pomabley, there is not a building - not a hall, an outhouse, a single shed - that is not on wheels. Some say that the city’s founders came fleeing from a great disaster, having nothing but the shirts on their backs, and vowed that they would never again have to leave all that they owned behind them. Whatever the reason, the naked city is nothing but a crossing framework of roads and parking places. On it, like sleepy behemoths, the vehicles of the city stand parked. And from time to time, the great engines of the city come out, and this house or this other one trundles down the wide ways of the city to some other spot. Those than need work are towed to the builders’ yard, where they queue outside in a rambling, decrepit street that changes each day. Those whose inhabitants have committed a crime are locked shut and towed to the prison quarter. Those in receipt of good fortune may tow their houses up to the glossy suburbs on Pombaley Hill, perhaps freshening up with a stop in the Street of Painters beforehand. Indeed, Ompal Pombaley’s three great hills are famed for many miles around. From their summits, one may see approaching disasters from a great distance. From their summits, one is also generally safe from Ompal Pombaley’s own prevailing danger: faulty brakes. In retrospect, it may have been unwise to found the city in the foothills. Barely a day goes by when some poor soul is not crushed to death by the runaway Court of Justice, or at the least chased down the Ompal Way by an out-of-control shed. The inhabitants greet this all with a shrug. These are normal, everyday risks and quite unlike the exotic dangers that they fled from.

2. Life in London No Not That London No Not That One Either is a sedate and placid affair; one may sit and watch the red sunsets from its high plazas, and admire the distant views of Olympus Mons from its many air cafes. In Spring, the cherry trees blossom under the dome just as they do on Earth, and the blossoms form great clumps in the red dirt and have to be swept away before they clog the city’s narrow drains. It is not a city prone to violent displays of affection or affectation, to carnivals, to flashmobs or to sudden effusions of the naked. Indeed, the main defining feature of its inhabitants of London No Not That London No Not That One Either is the hoops they are prepared to jump through, when travelling in the wider Solar System, to defend their city against the other, more famous Londons. There is not an inhabitant of London No Not That London No Not That London Either who has not railed at the suggestion that they might have a River Thames, or some kind of replica Tower Bridge, or even a gambling arena like New London on Titan. They regard their little, quiet city as far superior to its messy forbears; and that opinion is the defining sentiment of the city, without which it would return to the red dust.

3. I cannot say much about the people of Eekeek, because the only people who live there are fugitives. Exactly who or what else lives there it is difficult to say, because the old records are riddled with translation errors. Some say it is a city of the mice, and famous around the world as the model for many cradle tales. Other translations of the same text have it as a city of curiously small humans. Yet others say it is merely a city of the timid. In any case, we know that the inhabitants once welcomed all comers; that they danced for the provincial officials and wrote letters in brown ink, now long-lost; that they were objects of curiousity for science but never properly studied due to some problem, never fully stated; and that visitors to the city were advised to bring their own food. The reasons for the shuttering of Eekeek are similarly surrounded in mystery. Some make reference to a diplomatic incident, others to a disaster, while others state that the city itself never existed in the first place. In any case, few have heard of the city since. What, then, are we to make of the recent reports of a traveller to the far South? They, too, are riddled with conflicting details. Some say she penetrated the city disguised as a five-decker bus; others that she merely took a number five bus, on which her presence was unremarkable. In any case, she claimed that humans were living there; and that they had fled the justice of the outside world; that they were quite happy in their lives in that peculiar city; and they would prefer no more visitors, please.

1. Do not stray from the path.
2. When you stray from the path, know that you can never quite go back to the same one. But there is always still be a way out.
3. There will be side streets down which you may see a lone bagpiper, or the embassy of a nation you have never heard of, or an ancient wooden door that stands a crack open, or a shop that sells sweets from the exact other side of the world.
4. There will come a time when it rains, and you will be near those buildings. Those buildings with their great metal-and-stone lobbies and their glass and their plants in pots and lifts and escalators in perpetual silent motion behind the security gates. Know that there are beings within who will chip out your soul from your body’s stone slab, and worse: they will teach you that this is what everyone does. Know too that sheltering from the rain is a thing that is protected, for a short while.
5. Those beings have loves and lives and difficulties of their own, too. You may find yourself at dinner with them. Or you may see them at dinner through the plate glass of the night city. Sometimes they have secrets like splinters of diamond wedged into their busy hearts. If you can pull these splinters loose, you may be allowed beyond the silent security gates.
6. Do not do this. Never do this. If you look up as the moon rises and find yourself on the wet streets with a handful of diamond splinters, drop them in a drain. You will be a long way from the path, but there is still time.
7. In any case, if you find yourself at dinner, do try the duck.
8. There will be a river to cross, but you may do so by any of a hundred bridges. Do not fret: this choice is not important.
9. There will be a door in a wall. There will be a forest, but it will have people instead of trees, and the wolves will be beautiful. There will be a castle, and you can enter it with coins. There will be a cottage by the water where an old lady will sell you tea. You will know all these things when you see them.
10. If you stray until nightfall, the forest will be lit with neon and rippling with music. It will be wine and sweat and breath and skin. It may not be resistable. And you may find yourself in a cold morning, overgrown with all the forest’s ivy, as if a hundred years have passed. Know then that you are not rooted in place. You are a long way from the path, but there is still time.
11. The other side lies over the mountains. They say that in the mountains there are beings who must be paid in blood. Ignore this message. When you come to have tea with them, remember that they have lives and loves and difficulties of their own. If you can pay them in stories, they will give you safe passage up the concrete stairs.
12. Out past the concrete stairs, the city ends.
13. Know that there are many ways to be unscathed, and not all desirable; and many ways to leave, and not all desirable. Know that you have loves and a life and difficulties of your own, too. Know that there is no shame in staying. This is how we came to the city for the first time, too.

1. On the occasion of the vaporization of Glasgow by the Titanian New Urumqi Front in 3560, following a 24-hour warning: wet stone, ozone, whisky, bins and burning peat.

2. On the slow mummification of the last inhabitant of Rome on the sunlit and cypress-covered ruins of the Palatine Hill in 10251, and the crumbling of her ancient library into warm dust: sun-warmed tree resins, old books, wild thyme and wolf shit.

3. On the unexpected reclaimation of Lagos by the sea in 2520, following a meteor strike aimed so precisely at the intersection of the prime meridian and the equator that for many years it was taken as evidence that humanity was living in a buggy simulation: Petrol, sweat, mud and the overwhelming sea.

4. On the final desertion of Isfahan in 6640 at the start of autumn, in response to the fourth wave of the Maltese Plague: over-ripe pomegranates, black pepper, and the lurking hint of something dead.

5. On the death of the last human in Hyderabad in 55801, and the sealing of the city into a tomb by the Followers before their great journey: A thousand marigolds blooming in the dust, ewers of clear water, and something like metal and pears.

6. On the destruction of Nova Cuzco by the eruption of Maat Mons in Venusian year 20881: burning wood, tomato vines, green mango, butter and sulphur.

7. On the occasion of the last unlocking of London’s new gates, some time after the arrival of the ice, but before the long dark: grease, ambergris, leather and sharp cold air with the promise of snow.

8. On the last stand at Archangelsk, 19555: Seaweed, dirt, sewage, king crabs, vodka and fear.

9. On the night that the remaining survivors realised that there was no longer any way out of Los Angeles, 3994: fine wine, cherry syrup, spilt blood, weed, tar and gunpowder.

1. There was a time that all the bats of the world and all the owls of the world gathered together, somewhere near Marrakesh. They brought with them a great host of white moths, who covered the trees like snowfall until the moon came up, at which point they all whirled into the sky. I am not entirely sure what the bats and owls intended to do together, but in the event they spent the night eating moths and singing mournful songs part-way out of human hearing.

2. As every time traveller knows, there is an awesome party in the late Cretaceous. Nobody is invited to this one; you have to gatecrash or not go at all. Nobody is entirely sure how it started.

3. There was a night when all the people were asleep, even those who were supposed to be working, though they had particularly vivid dreams. That night, London and New York and Tokyo lifted up their built-up skirts and crawled on hundreds of legs to central Siberia, trailing their metro systems behind them. They drank snowmelt water and whispered some of the secrets of great cities between themselves, before trying each other’s landmarks on. Later, Lhasa and Luanda crashed the party and led the cities in a game or two of ‘I have never’. Two of the cities kissed, but I am not telling you which. Many of you did go to this one, of course. You were just asleep. By morning they were back in place, although they left some curious marks across Greenland if you know where to look.

4. Once all the letters had a party and when they woke up they were totally in your favourite book. Except they were in the wrong places; in places where letters aren’t supposed to be. So they waited until the hour before dawn and then ran off across the floor, and they didn’t stop running until they reached a pile of pizza delivery leaflets, where they were able to assume a disguise as typos.

5. There was that party at Anxiety’s place. You know Anxiety? Great guy, hangs around with Insecurity a lot. Anyway, all your friends were invited! But not you. Don’t worry, nobody noticed at all. Until later on in the evening when your name came up and everyone laughed at your badly-hidden flaws.