The Swamp Owns My Soul

Posted by Ace on September 14th, 2010 filed in Tales of the Interregnum

“…I took my old way home one Friday evening to explore what kind of options it gave me: walked to the Grey Street station, took the Wayfare over to Hubtown and then got on the same train that taken far enough would’ve dropped me in Ivory Grove.  Thus under the spreading vault of a clear night sky did I at last set foot on the platform of the Sealand Exchange Station, and from what little I saw of it, I can say that it is an odd place, one that doesn’t seem any better integrated into the environs of Sealand than I am.  It had a quality at once both hallucinatory and desolate, like an amusement park just before opening, or a mall at midnight:  grand gleaming corridors and smooth escalators, unhampered by people, clean glass doors, silent red LED displays ticking off mute welcomes, and low tables full of schedules and pamphlets, all arranged in neat piles, without any takers to set them in disarray.  The few employees I saw at their posts regarded me strangely, as if they were surprised to see me.  And perhaps they were; full service stops by all the train lines the Exchange connects won’t be running until the end of the year…”

-The Book of the King, “Sealand (part 3)”, October 17th, 2003

If you want to travel from Shadetree to the southern end of the City of Mists, you can take the State Transit train down to Hubtown, and then ride the Wayfare from Hubtown into the City proper.  But if you want to go from Shadetree to the middle of the City of Mists, as I normally do, every day, you have to change from one State Transit train to another.  And guess where you do that?

Uh huh.


2 Responses to “The Swamp Owns My Soul”

  1. Neuro Says:

    Do you have a look-up table for all the alternate names for people and places? Or is it all just in your memory?

    I just realized those are cattails. Neat.

  2. Ace Says:

    What alternate names? ;)

    It’s all my memory. And if I forget, I have the entire archive of the journal to look at to remind me.