NYC Origin Story

November 2025

Where is my core? It diffused, long, long ago. There used to be a raised circular stone ring containing orange fire. The men would gather around it while the women hid indoors. The fire in the ring had been opened up by the dreams of the arrivers. It was plasma. Dense, life matter.

Some saw it and set about carrying light to new places. Some dipped their hands in it and walked away, leaving drops of plasma shaped by their idiosyncracies. A building. Energy. Light-speed transit. Some dipped buckets into it, releasing fumes. Some left, forever seeing the imprint of fire that they saw in their fellow congregants' eyes. Some gathered around fires, some put up lampposts, and then checked the eyes of whoever happened to be stopped by a lampost. When more people arrived, rush began. Streaming. Places to feel wind from where preserved, rocks were erected, light was projected. The molten ring became a small mound. If you sat on it and listened, you might hear the chuckles and snores of a city that long ago stopped having to take care of itself.

The clouds of industry in the air provided a surface for reflecting light. Of those who jumped into the molten core, their dreams flicked off as sparks into the night sky, only to be perhaps briefly seen as sparks in subsequent campfires, while the dreams of others that went spiralling up embedded in the industrial clouds.