More Urbanomancy

[Timothy Toner]

-----Original Message-----
From: James Palmer <jrp36 at hermes.cam.ac.uk>
To: UA at purpletape.cs.uchicago.edu <UA at purpletape.cs.uchicago.edu>
Date: Tuesday, February 02, 1999 11:10 AM
Subject: More Urbanomancy


>[BTW, if anybody can tell me the Gk for city, I'd be very happy]


Polis (as in metropolis, Indianapolis, necropolis) or delphi (Philadelphia)

>Urbanomancy Major Effects
>
>Cause somebody to become mayor of a city, start riots in several cities
>across the world, lower the crime rate across America, form a new building
>in the middle of a city which nobody notices wasn't there before ...


Heh.  This puts me in mind of an idea I've been working on for a while.  Put
simply, real estate is in a constant state of flux, because reality really
doesn't WANT to be codified and maginalized into "streets" and "blocks."
Occasionally, it pops out in a grand fashion, as when a river, carefully
diverted through billion dollar levees, suddenly jumps its banks and does
whatever it damn well pleases.  But that's child's play, easy to ascribe to
natural forces.  Sometimes whole streets rebel, fading out of existence.
And since they have to go somewhere, sometimes a street will pop right into
existence where no one would suspect it.  Just as it slid smoothly into the
reality overnight, it also slids into the subconscious of the world,
rewriting maps and history to explian its perpetual existence.  More often
than not, however, the street won't conform to the surrounding locale -- a
weird name, a break in the regular grid of streets.  Water boils at 180
degrees Farenheit, and none of the kids can remember the I before E rule.
The tension created by its presence in our reality makes it a magnet of
sorts for all kinds of weirdness, and many relocate onto the street, just to
get first dibs when titans clash in the corner Kinko's.  Of course, there's
always the risk that the stress will prove too great, and the street will
pop back wherever it came from.

So a major Spell could be "summon street" or "dismiss street."