Since I was a child, they’ve told me the city’s edges don’t exist. Keep on walking, they said, you will never find the end. The city is endlessly building itself, expanding into the darkest corner of whatever there is to find outside of Sundew.

I get out at subway station #394, which is lined with specialized test shops (MRI, CT, CAT scan, X-ray, ICP, a whole job offers one of these tests for 15$, or 10%, if you ask nicely) set up like those psychotic health resorts of the 90’s. To get to the station’s exit, you have to pass by all of of ‘m, and then there is a labyrinth of exits. Exits, exits, exits… That’s what it’s like being in this world, isn’t it? So many exits you’re completely paralysed with fear to take any at all. I walk up the stairs, which are littered with magnets, maps, little bracelets and empty noodle boxes. I reach the street. The sun over Sundew is looking beautiful today. Then there’s enormous seven-storey stretchy clouds covering the city, in purple, orange, and pink. An awful smell of hot sulphur in the air. A dead rat hanging from one of the lampposts. This is exactly how I had imagined the area around subway station #394. I know this whole city by heart, although I haven’t even seen about 1% of it.

I was born in it, and, because there is no other city that exists, I have never been outside of it, although I am grateful for the liberties we have, and the civil rights, and all the companies that serve us, and that we’re able to serve. There are so many ways for people to attain happiness, or at least general comfort, such as filing into an inflatable cocoon under city bus windows, or playing chess on the roof of St. Bartholomew's Basilica, or taking a private drug dream ride over the roofs of the Antibiotici Per Eccellenza resorts & hotels. 

I take a turn, toward l’Avenue d’Europe, one of the main streets in the city, which is lined with graceful palm trees and living statues of the goddess of electricity, Penumbra, with shiny hand-carved rubies in her hands, paid for by generous state subsidies. The side streets of this glorious promenade are filled with the stench of stale grill-burnt meat and cardboard in the summer heat, old, rusting exercise machines and the steady nudging of ancient, wobbling feet. Keep on walking, they said, you will never find the end. But there has to be a way to slip between the cracks, a way to get past all the cicadas calling for help, and get past the nightmare of the sun that is the night. We’ve all heard stories of the outposts. City walls that are festooned with wooden representations of anthropomorphic martyrs, including a lion and a mongoose, standing on a tall pile of flesh, bellowing and clawing at each other until the iron plate around their necks rips. And the city gates, which have allegedly never actually opened, studded with portraits of the forebears of the city's founding families, and inscribed with iconic, long-destroyed Californian landmarks such as Richard Nixon’s birth-house, Walt Disney’s statue at Disneyland and The Pony Express Terminal in Sacramento. But after all, those are just myths. Stories one cannot be sure of. It did take us hundreds of years to become the way we are; from tiny dispersed conglomerations of fifty family companies, to large corporate conglomerations that sometimes just have one or two personalities. 

I’m afraid of getting a sunburn, so I decide to get an iced coffee. I look for a Dunkin’ Donuts, but can only find a Starbucks. As I enter, I find a crying woman next to the front door with her elderly mother at her side. I feel my heart sink when I notice the American name carved on her forehead, 'Caroline Mahony’. I go to the worker girl and get a soy milk cloud macchiato with a berry hibiscus cold brew and a banana. “OK.” The worker girl says after I’ve already tapped my credit card onto the little screen. By the barista-counter sits the famous Italian podcaster and professor at Creative Souls University, “Anna Schiavone”, trying to have a worthwhile conversation with the Starbucks staff. “Do you know,” she says, “there are an increasing number of students who have been coming to therapy because of their malaise in believing they need to change their violent, abusive behaviour.” The barista is too busy to notice her talking. He keeps calling out customer’s name after name after name. “Pietro! Marchand! Baron! Dasguetta! Steindorf! Murcielago! Kathy!” That’s enough. I leave. 

Back outside, just looking at a neon sign reading “Everybody Celebrates Life Everyday”, my brain morphs into that wretched carpet of trillions of prancing, shimmering stars. I can’t help but get butterflies in my stomach. I am happy to be alive, happy to be part of this city, happy to celebrate life everyday. This is extraordinary. I am part of an extraordinary era. So much is changing. People are beginning to see the fucked up stuff in our socio-economic system, and they’re demanding change. And the government of Sundew is adapting to that. They’re changing, as well. The public has been forcing them to, surely, after hundreds of violent protests. Racist cops are being sent to jail, large corporations are demanding equality for all human beings, the media is reporting on these issues 100% honestly and transparently. Sundew is stronger than ever. I reach a crossroads. To my left, there is Il Quartiere Del DNA, the genetic engineering quarter, where the graduates from Amestris University live- and work. To my right, there is Il Quartiere Finanziario, the financial quarter, where the graduates from mostly Liberty Access University and Eastern Humanities College live- and work. I decide to turn right, just because I really want to see Il Quartiere Finanziario’s 18th century late baroque townhouses, which have strangely sculpted teeth in their facades and artificial bull horns worked into their brick tiles. The financial quarter is also where you can find El Banco del Vacío Destrozado, the largest bank of Sundew, with 619 billion euros in annual revenue and over one trillion in total assets. BVD (its abbreviation) is only 3 years old, but already a huge success considering its commitment to stimulating the national economy and financing small businesses with small interest-rate loans. It really is the city’s de-facto central bank. I walk by its corporate headquarters and touch the concrete ground. It feels more fertile here than anywhere else. The energy in this concrete is the energy of financial success. I am so grateful to live in a city where this energy is within reach, where I can walk to the BVD and witness it, feel it, absorb it. Suddenly, I’m approached by a police man, who is wearing a $1 million artificial model of a tongue (it's a thing; one military guy has a tongue that will eat you alive like the Xenomorph in Alien.) ‘Can I help you, young lady?’ He asks. I shake my head. ‘I just thought I was allowed to be here.’ I answer. ‘At this hour? So late in the afternoon? The annual mosquito swarm will be coming out soon, and it’s common knowledge that the Financial Quarter is always hit the hardest.’ He says. ‘I know. I’ll get outta here. Sorry, officer.’ I apologise. He gives me a friendly nod, and then gets on his way. It’s true that I used to hate cops (I’ve even called them pigs before), but since the racist ones were sent to jail, I’m obsessed with them. I obey his command and head towards subway station #376, trying to get home before the annual mosquito swarm begins. As I begin to descend the stairway into the tunnels, I notice a homeless boy, about 17 years old, with pink hair and sloppy, black clothes. He’s holding a sign saying “LET ME FUCKING STARVE, I ONLY WANT $ FOR OPIATES”. I’m thoroughly disturbed. 

‘Why would you wanna starve? Nobody’s going to give you money like that.’ I tell him. 

‘I don’t want money. I want to die. And I need opiates to make it painless.’ He says. 

‘Is that so? I’m sorry to say, but this city has enough opportunities for you to make something of yourself.’

‘I hate Sundew. I hate this city.’ He puffs. 

‘Oh? If you don’t like it, nothing’s stopping you from going somewhere else.’ I tell the boy. 

‘There is nowhere else. The only reality is Sundew. Since I was a child, they’ve told me the city’s edges don’t exist. Keep on walking, they said, you will never find the end. The only end is death.’ He says. I shake my head in vain. I’m afraid to look him in the eyes and see the hopelessness he’s going through, so I just toss him a spare coin and keep on walking. I’m happy to get home, and spend the annual mosquito swarm indoors with my husband. We just bought a new holographic TV, so that will be awesome.