The Great City contained many treasures: the last dream of the last sultan of the last great empire hastily written down on perfumed parchment on the morning before his beheading; a chest of perfectly spherical green glass globes that washed up on the western most shore, no more than one every 70 to 80 years, each globe stamped with a single word written in a different Asiatic language that signified the visual signs of entropy: decay, crumble, tear, crack, rot. One of the cities most prized treasures was a large ocean mammal who sat on a flat rock protruding from a deep pond and stared out so wisely and regally that any visitors could not help but feel as if it was they, and not the giant walrus, who were placed behind the glass wall.
These treasures and many more were given, either as gifts or in fair trade, over the years to the people of the Great City. The first and perhaps wisest inhabitants of this city, fearing that these rare gifts would be squandered or lost, devised a plan. The treasures were placed in specially made rooms with high marble walls. The rooms in turn, were placed in the city’s many parks. In the front wall of each room was set a plain gate with a circular brass lock with a round keyhole. The first engineers of the city created many circular keys that fit each different lock but designed them in such a way that a key could only be used once.
The keys were given out for doing a task or service for the city. In that manner, a resident or visitor could come to the city and spend an hour cleaning the golden autumn leaves from the wide streets and receive a key to open the gate to the room of the glass globes of ruin (of which it was said that when the last green orb washed up on the shore and was placed along side its brothers, the universe itself would come to an end). Or a visitor could come for a few seasons and teach the city’s children to speak a language that had not been spoken before in the Great City and receive a key in order to read the last dream of the sultan, or as some called it, the last dream of a dying empire and thus be able understand and accept their own death. Or a man might come to the city and spend a lifetime carrying on his back the rock from a granite quarry to the building site of a new temple, and gain a key that opened the gate of the grand hall of the walrus and thus be able to ask it his one question that the beast will answer most kindly and truthfully.
The men and women whose task it was to dispense the keys did so fairly. The key givers were chosen from among the people who sought to ask the walrus a question and the first inhabitants of the city had trained the beast to only answer questions from people who had worked at their task both honestly and thoroughly. In this manner the city grew and prospered. No other city’s building soared quite as high or contained citizens who were so knowledgeable about both the stars and the seas.
It wasn’t until many years after the great walrus announced that it was dying and was carried in a caravan consisting of thousands of the City’s citizens, to the sea where it was released as it had been asked, that one of the key givers, fearing the apocalypse was at hand, smashed the glass globes of ruin. That same year it was noticed the ink in which the last dream of the sultan was written had faded and it was decided that the parchment must be sealed in a dark chamber before the dream was completely lost. In this manner, the City’s treasures were stolen, ruined, or forgotten. The Great City still stands today but it is only one of many such cities, a confluence of roads and buildings, and its people find very little to treasure about it.
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Inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities
