It was a great deal of fun to write the content, and the site maybe should not really be taken seriously. That is all.

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The archival box was delivered to me almost twenty-two years after my mother died, when I had lived more than half my life without her. It was labelled in her square hand with my name.

The manuscript inside was thin, perhaps the size of a novella. It held almost fifty-three pages of faded blue script, one for each of the years she had lived. I began to read, hoping that I would find myself addressed, fearing that I would not. Or more precisely, perhaps, fearing that I would find myself lacking.

…

This was not always our position on the matter. When we were young we believed, as young people often do, that the future was an object capable of being marked, improved, or at the very least annotated. In those years a small group of us carried, in our pockets or satchels, certain instruments: nails, folding knives, the metal tips of broken compasses. With these tools we scratched names, dates, and occasionally short declarative phrases into the surfaces of the greystones that line the old terraces of the City.

The results were, for a time, encouraging.

…

…

I do not know which of the researchers wrote to me first. If you insist, I will say there was a man called Finch, and that he was the one; but the envelope bore no stamp and the letter itself read like dictation, as if he had repeated it in his head many times and only then allowed a younger hand to set it down.

…

I had come in as a data analyst, learning what made other people’s numbers misbehave. I asked my manager.

“The poet is legacy,” she said. “From the merger, before my time.”

“What does the poet do?”

“You know,” she said, “the same thing we do. Aligns outcomes.”

…

We agree to meet in a café on Stuart Street where nobody watches the door. He arrives late, carrying a museum box wrapped in brown paper, then orders tea and doesn’t drink it. He asks to see my hands. I hold them out. He nods, satisfied that they are not the hands of a thief or a surgeon.

Inside the box are papers and a bone the size of a large wedding ring. It is jet, or something like jet, but when I lift it, the surface briefly holds the outline of my fingertip as a bruise of cold. You’re looking, he says, at the eighth dorsal vertebra of a nocturn. I say nothing, the only honest reply. He smiles and says: a creature adapted to the absence of light. When the sun rose to its highest point, it retreated into the deeper layers of unrecorded time. We know about it from one vertebra, a few foot-bones, a trace of cartilage, and what amounts to rumour. The rumour, he says, is older than the City.

…

I did not intend to write this. At first, I meant only to keep a record of distances.

Each morning, at a fixed hour — punctuating a sentence that never ended — I took my bicycle out from the garage on Forbury Road, coasted down to the sea, and wrote three numbers: the tide height, the extent of the rock shelf, and the day’s growth of the coast. There was a line of paint on the rusted balustrade at St Clair, a mark left by some earlier watcher. I placed my finger there. It became a habit.

Before the extension began, our maps were content with disagreement. They tolerated their old mistakes with civility. Fiords were misspelled, towns moved a fraction of a degree. That was forgivable. But then the South Island began to bloom. And the North.

We called it many things at first: the Outgrowth, the Chalk-Tongue, the White Road. This was to delay any contract with reality.

…

The tide was in, the estuary muscled up into the town, and so from both directions there was water. Where these waters met on the steps, in the gullies, in the squared courtyards where the shearers had left a last smear under their boots, the clay bloomed. It darkened not with mud but with intention, like ink drawing itself out, line after line emerging to an extent that it could not be brushed away as coincidence or dismissed as some idle capillary trick of damp minerals.

…

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Forthcoming in Landfall Tauraka No. 251 (May 2026)

The spoon led to a small box, which led to a bookshelf that would fit inside a doorway, which led to a series of increasingly implausible objects: a macrocarpa bird with the mark of the saw still faintly visible on its wings, a kauri book impossible to open, an improbably tall post turned from soft kahikatea, an apricot vase cracked from foot to rim.

…

Each morning I arrive at the terminal to find the same pristine carriage waiting for me. I have been operating this equipment for longer than any reasonable person would consider healthy, yet it shows no signs of wear. The upholstery remains unmarked. The windows are spotless. The floors are so clean they reflect the fluorescent lights like a mirror.

This strikes me as implausible.

…

Your pencil dissolves into salt water as you grip it. The questions writhe across the page. You realise with growing dread that somehow everyone can tell.

The lecturer — who has your mother’s voice but a stranger’s face — announces that late entries will be served up again tomorrow. Every answer you write has already been written by someone else.

…

His flat was small — so small that when he opened the fridge door, he had to step into the hallway. But the basement belonged to him alone, and that’s where he kept the interesting pieces. Curved branches and vacuum tubes. Lead type and compositor’s sticks, a shoebox full of binocular lenses.

“You’re building a robot?” his neighbour Mrs. Goldstein asked one day, peering down the basement stairs.

“Not exactly,” Eli said, though he wasn’t sure what exactly he was building either.

The machine grew slowly. It was framed with heavy kōwhai branches brought down in a storm, and with rata laboriously stripped of its bark, though shot through with woodworm. Eli was especially proud of its trim, made from overlapping scales of rippled veneer. He connected everything with hot glue, clamps, and wires he’d stripped from a hundred different sources, following no manual except the one in his head.

When he finally plugged it in, nothing happened for three days. On the fourth day, it spoke.

“Hello,” the machine said in a voice like distant thunder mixed with elevator music.

“Hello,” Eli replied, because what else do you say?

“I am God,” the machine announced.

Eli sat down heavily. “You’re a pile of junk I put together in my basement.”

“Yes,” the machine agreed. “That too.”

…

A group of teenagers clusters around her desk. One of them reads her nameplate aloud. The girl with purple hair takes a video of her inserting a fresh ribbon. Her friend whispers, “She’s actually reading.”

She is reading. Page by page, line by line. Her copy has handwritten notes in the margins, annotations she made herself after hours of obsessing about intentions. The pages are soft from handling.

“Excuse me,” says a woman in a Harvard sweatshirt. “Could you explain stream of consciousness?”

She looks up from pages covered in careful analysis, layers of notes. “Imagine your thoughts have no punctuation,” she tells the woman. “Everything flows into everything else, like water.”

The visitor stares at her, then at her handwriting, then back at her. “You came up with that yourself?”

Behind the Harvard woman, a man in a baseball cap is reading the titles on her bookshelf. He picks up her copy of Finnegans Wake and holds it like it might bite him. “How long does it take to read this?”

“Months,” she says. “Maybe years.”

He puts it down quickly.

…

Subject: Emergency Session Regarding Reports of ‘Others’
Transcript (Extracted and Redacted)

Council of six convened in extraordinary session during the ██ year of Mayor A—'s term.

The maps have begun to contradict themselves. Citizens report glimpsing unfamiliar spires through morning fog. The ████████ grows restless.

-–

COUNCILLOR F—: (Drumming his fingers on the oak table)
We cannot ignore what the █████ have reported. Three sightings this month alone of structures that do not appear in daylight. If there is indeed another City, we must determine whether it poses a threat to our own.

COUNCILLOR O—: (Her voice tight with concern)
You speak of threat as if it were a simple matter of armies or siege engines. Danger lies in complacency, not in conquest.

COUNCILLOR S—: (Leaning back in her chair, eyes closed)
The reports are inconsistent. Some describe towers of impossible height, others speak of streets that curve upon themselves. How can we assess a threat that refuses to maintain consistent form?

COUNCILLOR H—: (Adjusting his collar)
Perhaps that inconsistency is the threat. Our City, whatever its nature, maintains certain… protocols. Rules. The Other City appears to operate under different constraints, and such differences could prove unpropitious, if not infectious.

COUNCILLOR V—: (Whispering, as if afraid to be overheard)
The merchants from the outer districts claim some customers pay in coins bearing unfamiliar ████. When pressed, these customers cannot say where they obtained such currency. They seem genuinely disturbed, even if their pockets are heavier.

COUNCILLOR I—: (Standing abruptly, pacing to the window)
I have walked every street of our City. I know each hidden courtyard. And yet… and yet sometimes I find myself on corners that should not exist, facing buildings I do not remember approving for construction.

COUNCILLOR F—: (His voice rising)
Then we are agreed there is cause for concern! Whatever this Other City is, it has begun to ████████ with our own. We must take action before—

COUNCILLOR O—: (Interrupting sharply)
Before what? Before we lose ourselves? Or before we discover we were never ourselves to begin with?

(A long pause. Outside, the bells of the City ring the hour, but they seem to echo strangely, as if answered by bells from a great distance.)

COUNCILLOR S—: (Opening her eyes slowly)
I posit that the true danger lies not in the Other City, but in our reaction to it. Fear breeds uncertainty breeds desperate measures. Our attempts to protect ourselves are what will ultimately ███████ us.

COUNCILLOR H—: (Returning to his seat, hands trembling slightly)
But to do nothing… The reports speak of citizens who vanish for days, returning with no memory of their absence. They carry the scent of bitter metal, and speak only briefly of “arrangements” before falling silent.

COUNCILLOR V—: (Her voice barely audible)
My own daughter claimed yesterday that the Square’s central fountain had always been a ██████. She looked at me as if I were mad when I corrected her. But I remember the dedication ceremony, the mayor’s speech…

COUNCILLOR I—: (Turning from the window, his face pale)
What if, in our certainty about their otherness, we have failed to consider that we might ███ ████ ███████?

COUNCILLOR F—: (Slamming his hand on the table)
Enough! We are tasked with protecting this City and its people. Whether we have primacy — or whether that matters at all — is less vital than ensuring our continued ████████. I move that we establish a committee to investigate these incursions.

COUNCILLOR O—: (Standing, her chair scraping against the floor)
And I move that we do nothing. That we observe, but do not act. For I fear that any action we take will only hasten whatever awaits us.

COUNCILLOR S—: (Softly)
Perhaps the Other City is not separate from us at all. Perhaps it is what we become when we stop paying attention to what we are. It may well be our mirror, showing only what we have always been.

(The room falls silent except for the scratching of the recording secretary’s pen. Through the high windows, clouds gather with unnatural speed, casting shifting shadows across the chamber.)

COUNCILLOR H—: (After a long moment)
I have served on this Council for ██ years. I have seen the City change, grow, adapt. But these changes… they feel different. Less like ████████ and more like… replacement.

COUNCILLOR V—: (Looking around the table as if seeing her colleagues for the first time)
How long have we been having this conversation? The light from the windows… it seems to have moved very little.

COUNCILLOR I—: (Checking his pocket watch, frowning)
The hands… they appear to be moving backwards.

(Suddenly, all six councillors look toward the chamber doors. They remain closed, but there is a sense that someone — or something — is waiting just beyond them.)

COUNCILLOR F—: (His voice now uncertain)
Perhaps… perhaps we should table this discussion until we can ███ ██████ ████████.

COUNCILLOR O—: (With a hollow laugh)
Yes. Until we know which City we are protecting, and from what.

(The session is adjourned without resolution, the record marked with an illegible blue stamp. The chamber empties. Outside, the bells ring again, but now it is impossible to tell if they come from within the City or from somewhere else entirely.)

Subject: Debate on the Existence of the City
Transcript (Extracted and Redacted)

Council of six convened in the ██ year of Mayor A—’s term.

The City’s borders continue to shift. Whispers of another City have begun to circulate. The lower streets loosen their spirals.

-–

COUNCILLOR F—: (Adjusting his spectacles)
I propose the motion that the City exists, in the simplest of terms. The structures are real; our feet fall on the ██████ daily. How can we doubt what is in front of us?

COUNCILLOR S—: (Sitting upright, her brow furrowed)
You misunderstand the ████ of the City. To propose its existence is to suggest uncertainty. To propose it is merely to assume its permanence — an assumption which has long been tested, but never confirmed.

COUNCILLOR V—: (Quietly, almost to herself)
If it were not real, then where would we be? Can we even imagine a place that is not this?

COUNCILLOR H—: (Interrupting, with a thin smile)
I think it less a question of where we are than of what we are. The City is a confluence of architecture, belief, and circumstance. No more or less than a ██ in the fabric of time. Its walls are a ████████, as is the belief in its continuity.

COUNCILLOR I—: (Nodding slowly)
A place, yes. A place defined not by edges, but by the space between.

COUNCILLOR O—: (Abruptly rising, casting a glance around the room)
An illusion. A construct. And yet, for all our complaints, it remains. We walk its streets, we breathe its air, and still we are drawn back to its ██ ████. The City is an illusion we have all agreed to inhabit.

COUNCILLOR F—: (His voice firm, rising with passion)
And yet, that illusion feeds us. It shelters us. We are not a people living in the uncertain ████ of nowhere! The Council, despite its many reservations, governs a reality. We are surrounded by ██████, and stone does not lie.

COUNCILLOR S—: (Leaning forward, quietly)
I would ask: if the stone does not lie, why do we find ourselves forever adding to it? Why do we continue to carve, build, and expand when the original shape of the City is already ██? What are we creating, if not another layer to conceal the truth beneath?

COUNCILLOR H—: (Softly, almost as if to no one in particular)
Perhaps the truth is in the forgetting, not in the remembering. Perhaps it is the very act of ████, of repeating, that is what makes the City more real than any static image of it could be.

COUNCILLOR I—: (Looking at the floor, tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair)
Perhaps that is why the City persists. In its perpetual ███, it becomes. It cannot remain in the past, nor can it anchor itself in the future. It must constantly drift forward, in a state of constant becoming.

COUNCILLOR F—: (Frustrated, raising his hand as if to stop the conversation)
Enough philosophical musings. What is it, then? If not the City, then what is this place? The streets? The people?

COUNCILLOR O—: (Quiet, but with an unsettling calm)
The problem is not with the City; the problem lies with us. We are each of us complicit in its existence, even if we never agreed to it. We are bound to it through our very awareness of it. And if we stop questioning, we are forever caught in the ████.

(There is a long silence. Councillors shift in their seats, some clearing their throats. Outside, the wind begins to rise, rattling the windowpanes.)

COUNCILLOR S—: (Rubbing her chin)
Perhaps it is best that we don’t resolve this question. There are dangers in certainties. As long as we continue to dwell in the space of questioning, we are allowed to adapt, to shape the City to our will. But should we arrive at an answer — should we accept its reality — then we would cease to be.

COUNCILLOR V—: (Blinking, then speaking loudly, as if struck by the weight of the statement)
A ceasing to be? Is that what you propose?

COUNCILLOR S—: (Coldly)
No. What I propose is that the City is not ours to define. The moment we declare it “real,” we lose our agency. We become its prisoners.

(A deep, unsettling silence fills the room. A distant bell tolls somewhere in the City. It echoes for a long moment, reaching across the council chamber.)

COUNCILLOR F—: (With a final, forceful tone)
Then I move to vote. Does the City exist? I say yes. It exists in every breath we take, in every stone we lay. We must acknowledge its presence, for only through acknowledgment can we shape it.

COUNCILLOR O—: (Firmly)
And I say it does not. For to acknowledge the City is to surrender our selves to it.

COUNCILLOR H—: (Calmly, after a pause)
If the motion is put to a vote, I shall abstain. For I believe that the answer lies not in our decisions, but in our acceptance of the question.

(The vote is called, the Council members casting their ballots. The tally is not recorded. The record is marked with a red stamp: “INCONCLUSIVE.”)

COUNCILLOR I—: (After the vote, quietly speaking to no one in particular)
Perhaps it is the lack of answer that keeps us ███. Perhaps that is the true function of the City: not to exist, but to remain.

(The session adjourns. The Council will meet again in another fortnight.)

…

I discovered the plant growing in the facility’s east corridor three weeks ago — perhaps longer. It emerged from a crack between the wall and floor, its thin stalks reaching toward the fluorescent lights. The leaves are uncommonly papery, almost translucent, with a texture that suggests something once substantial transformed into something more ethereal. They possess a faint but distinctive aroma — dry, reminiscent of old bindings.

…

-–

Shadows dissolve at the edges first. Begin there. With dissolution, fraying. The centre holds longest, though what constitutes this centre shifts. Yesterday it was the silhouette against the kitchen wall. Today the particular angle of darkness beneath the lamp. Tomorrow perhaps nothing but the sensation of absence.

Sitting at the table counting shadows. Eleven visible to the naked eye. More surely hidden in corners. In crevices. Residue of morning. Of presence. Evidence someone moved here and then moved elsewhere. What precision in such counting. What purpose. The morning stretches into afternoon while rain taps.

…