Ground Rules

Do not be coaxed into a plot too soon.
There is a danger in a plot.
Nor should you be coaxed into character.
Once you create a character they require a lot of attention.
Right now there is enough.
There is the narrator.
There is the reader.
Both surreal to the other.
Both important in this dance.
So when I tell you the story that I'm going to unfold just keep in mind
None of it's real at all.
Think how a narrator never experienced anything.
Think how a reader experiences something all their own.
Together we will look for the first time at this particular set of circumstances.
They may or may not lead to a story.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Setting: New York, 9999CE

As you can see there are no characters around whatsoever. There are many different animals, those that walk on four legs, insects, birds, but no people. The remains of great monuments and feats of construction have given way to the earth's apparent immortality and thick vegetation has taken hold of the concrete. The whole sprawling metropolis of the east coast is a playground for the descendants of elk, and foxes, and osprey.

Our species can never have really hoped to accomplish anything truly monumental (in a world as precious and balanced as ours what monument could represent insignificant little us?). Then look at the stars, their infinite complexity to the power of possibility. How can anything on its own , even the earth, ever be given a special place?

When I speak of time (especially since we're taking a tour of 9999CE) I must think of it in terms of the earth, and space, and the mystery. It's all a matter of time, and, more specifically, the scope of time.

We've also got to think of location. I visited here on a holiday I took back in 9999BCE and I've got to say that it looked pretty similar. I just guess it's lucky that I visited both in warm patches, because if you've got a cold spell going on it's best to just get right back in the phone booth. Once when I visited Okinawa, or should I say where Okinawa was to one day be, it was so frigging cold that the words froze in mid sentence right there on the page.

Again though, New York is much the same as my pre-history visit, but with a few differences. Look to the east there and you can see some odd shaped hills that resemble a game of Tetris gone terribly wrong. If we got down closer you'd see the ocean surging through the farthest archways of what was the greatest city when the crest of man's wave broke and washed back out to sea.