Mouse-perspective; touristy
neck cranked to measure
immensity before me.
So I went higher, to cloudy hills
and gaudy views, where I knew
a great border Above.
Between the clouds I beheld
the enormity of structure, staring
into my eyes? An iris!
Tapestries. Shadow and relief
realized in stone. Baffled
before the incontrovertible
evidence of a benevolent
face? Rushing terrain brings
nostrils, now lips.
Orbiting in the stillness,
stories laid bare as skin
lesions glow.
The cost of working gears
displaces and appears red
as recent scars
where now sprawling sameness
mask the bruises, smooth
as plastic.
My city a single dot
for hands of a blind God
to glide over.
I was looking at the Twisted City promo video that Unreal Engine came out with which presented a big city twisting its entire self around, similar to the effects within the movie Inception.
I thought the slow-reveal of finding out the city you've lived in your entire life (a big one like New York City or Tokyo) is but a single eyeball in a giant tapestry was an interesting idea. I figured using vertical height to handle shadows and relief to add "detail" to the landscape-painting might work in a pure storytelling scenario.
Revolutions and crime from different eras would leaving lasting marks on the land, and I imagine some form of authoritarian government would be necessary to bring such an ambitious project to completion, considering the massive amount of displacement that would occur.
I suppose the imperfections in the grand image brought about by societal instability and humanity just being humanity is representative in such an image. The ideal is massive, but too perfect. A person has scars and imperfections that tell a story.
Having that as a sci-fi reveal in a dystopian (or, perhaps, in a Star Trek-like advanced civilization where the technological ability to easily terraform and create massive cities and infracture at will is available.
Or, we could just do the magic / dream thing, I guess.
