The Majestic City of Discord

[Roaring Biscuit!]

as a reply to Cain's suggestion of Deconstructing Discord, though it doesn't do it particularly well.  That's what I get for not planning and just hoping that a stream of consciousness style story will work out ok.  I'm basically happy with the ending, but everything else is a bit  

Anyways, enjoy, or at least try to.

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In the Beginning, the was Nothing Important in terms of Plot.
Then there was the City.  The mighty and majestic City of Discordia.
This is where our story begins, in an otherwise unremarkable alleyway, with a poor bastard suffering from amnesia:




I woke.  At least thats what I assume, because I have opened my eyes and my senses have started sensing again.  What
an odd thought to have, why didn't I just leave it at "I woke"?  Nevermind, its probably not important... Or maybe its
the most important thought I ever had.  Jesus.  Again.  If this keeps up this inner monologue is going to get
intensely irritating incredibly quickly.  Where the fuck am I?  See, no smart comment there, that was a perfectly
normal question and... oh for fucks sake...
Lets start again.  I am in an alleyway, I remember...  nothing.  Not my name, not my age, nothing about my past.  And
the walls are made of matchsticks.  Why the fuck are the walls made of matchsticks?  Who the fuck builds a fucking
house out of matchsticks?


A Mad Man.


Now seems like a fitting moment to point out that the City of Discordia is not constructed like a normal city.  It is
made from the momentary flights of fancy that consume its citizens.  They live in houses of their own design, whether
it be practical and safe or not.  In some districts practicality and safety have been abolished.
The streets are paved with patchwork quilts, and no-one has yet found any reason to invent shoes.  In fact, one might
consider the denizens of Discordia to be rather backwards in their ways, no shoes, limited froms of mechanised
transport and no devotion to scientific study, at least not in the way that the rest of the world considers scientific
study.


I stepped, cautiously out of the alleyway onto the street...  the rather soft and padded street.  Quilted.  Someone
had quilted the streets.  Fucking hell.  And street may have been a rather strong description, there seemed to be no
direction, just a myriad of people milling around in all directions.  A real myriad.  Not a single person looked even
remotely similar.  It was not how I remembered things.  Which should be obvious really as I remember nothing.  Except,
apparently how to walk, talk and narrate my actions in the form of an inner monologue...  Oh, used that joke already
did I?

Nevertheless in such a bizarre situation one must take action.  So, being in all actuality quite a lot less manly than
I would possibly like people to think...  I asked for directions.  Though I'm not quite sure where I'm going.

"Excuse me?", was my first question, to the slightly startled woman walking past me on the street.

"Do you know where I could find an umm...  Tourist Information.. thingy..?"

"Turn left at the end of the road, then first right after the Fnord sanctuary", she replied.

"Um.. thanks..."

What the Fuck is a Fnord Sanctuary.

I walked to the end of the road.  I turned left.  There was no left.  Fucking bitch had lied to me.  I looked at the
stone wall now ahead of me, there was a lonely piece of graffiti scrawled in the bottom left-hand corner.  I leaned in
closer.

"Think for Yourself, Schmuck!"

Very fucking funny.  It was at this moment I was just about ready to give up and start crying in my lonely frustration
at the side of the road, when I saw a bearded man in a long white robe, on a donkey, riding up the street.  I felt
some mystical stirring within me, like I was witnessing a historical religious event.  At this most perfect of moments
a pristine beam of sunlight illuminated my Bearded Saviour.  I knelt before him as he approached.  His modest steed
came to a stop in front of me and he dismounted, carrying with him a white megaphone.
He knelt down beside me and put the megaphone against my ear.

"ARISE!  FOR EVERYONE IS JESUS IN DISCORDIA!!!"

He left as the sound of his donkey, and the crowd around him was promptly replaced with the sound of several hundred
screaming children.  Not real screaming children mind, I just meant that my ears were ringing.
As instructed, I arose, then I walked, for a long time, in no particular direction, through a city whose foundations
were totally incomprehensible. I walked past mock temples carefully constructed from massive blocks of jelly, wombling
gently in the breeze while being eaten away by crowds of bare-footed citizens.  Don't these people have jobs?  Do they
just spend their every waking moment adding to the insanity?  Still I wandered on, watching dark clouds hide the sun
as I approached what I could only assume was a city centre of some kind.  Overhead was a huge billboard depicting a
fierce looking woman in sunglasses, under which was written, "I'm not really blind".

Then, as suddenly as any stationary object can appear when you are moving at a slow walking speed, appeared the Fnord
Sanctuary.  I hadn't even been looking in all honesty, but, assuming at least some of what that incredibly unhelpful
woman had told me was true, I might get some answers soon.
I looked up and down the street.  No right turn.  Well. Shit.

My body crumpled against the iron bars of the Fnord Sanctuary, it was impossible.  This whole place was impossible,
you can't build houses out of matchsticks, and a quilted pavement?  Clearly ridiculous.  What about a jelly temple?  
Who has time for this shit?  Head rolling against the bars of the Sanctuary, mind reeling at my current situation, I
balefully glared into the gloom behind the bars.  There were papers.  Hundreds of newspapers stacked up to the
ceiling, leaning menacingly out of the darkness within.  A light breeze brought the piles to life, edges whispering of
the untold horrors that sculpted far off lands.  I reached in and pulled out a stray leaflet.

TOURIST MAP OF DISCORDIA

Seriously?  I opened the leaflet.  It was quite clearly New York.  At the bottom some smart ass kid had scrawled:

THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY.

Fucking hilarious.

What other brilliant suprises would this god forsaken place spring on me?  I stared at the shambolic buildings that
stood awkwardly around, watching me with dark, sorrowful eyes.  Each one was different, there was no consistent style,
I saw their alienation from each other reflected in the cold glass windows, there was no unity in this place.

"Hey, are you OK?", queried a pleasant voice to my right.

"Well, no not really", there was little more I could say, "I'm a little lost actually..."

"Well, I'm not suprised, you're still wearing shoes!", came a spritely reply.  It was at this point I felt it would
only be polite to meet the gaze of the kindly soul befriending me.

She had no gaze.  It was the woman from the billboard, long brown hair dancing in the breeze, with an eternal smile
touched with a hint of lunacy, her light care-free step carrying her along, seemingly oblivious to any definite
destination.

"C'mon kid, lets get you some feet, and some food, maybe some beets..."

"Who are you?", I squeaked, I really was trying to hide how pathetically grateful I was, but I doubt it was
particularly convincing.

"I'm the king."

"But you're a woman."

"That's a little narrow-minded," was her sharp reply.

"Where are we going?"

"You ask a lot of questions don't you, that's good, you'll fit right in.  We're going to get you some food, have you
got money?", she asked, now in a sort of blissful sing-song voice.

"Yeh, I've got...", I pulled out my wallet, which she hastily confiscated.

"Umm... can I have that back?"

She looked at me, startled, then pulled out a lighter, and proceeded to burn all my money.

"So, who the fuck are you and why are you following me, fuckwit", she snarled, before turning full circle, and running
in the opposite direction.

I was alone again.  I reached into my coat pocket in search of spare change.  Pennies.  Lots of pennies.  Sixty-five
pennies.  I walked again, eventually reaching something that looked like it could, in theory, be a shop, which I
promptly entered.  It was a shop.  And there were sandwhiches, but nothing was priced.  I took one to the counter,
which was attended by an elderly looking man, wearing a life jacket...  just a life jacket.

"How much is this?", I asked, as politely as possible given the situation.

"Five." was his reply.

"Um... five what?"

"Fives."

"Twenty-five?"

"Fives."

"Umm... well.. I'm not sure I have twenty-five fives, but I've got this..", said I, placing my pennies on the table.

"Bye", said he.

Got a bit medieval there didn't it.  I've still no idea what he was on about, didn't stop me scurrying out of the shop
post-haste.  It began to rain as I stepped outside, I mean...  REALLY rain, the people on the streets scurried about,
some covering their heads, some frolicking in the steady downpour, some took no notice.  But not a single person had
an unbrella, that's what struck me as odd.  Did these people not have invention?  Now that i think about it, I hadn't
seen a single car, or any mass-produced machinery of any kind.  In fact, apart from the fact they had obviously
discovered gelatine and gunpowder, there was hardly any evidence of scientific progress at all.

This deserved enquiry, I approached one of the unaffected in the rain,

"Excuse me, why doesn't anyone have any umbrellas, why are there no cars, is there any scienctific discovery in this
land?"

"Why bother," replied the man, "we already know the answer is five."

Fives again, like its the fucking Law to answer peoples' questions with fives.  It should be mentioned at this point
that I was beginning to feel quite enraged by the attitudes of the people in this place.  Admittedly my experience was
limited, but so far I had met two people who were painfully and deliberately obtuse, one psycopath and a compulsive
liar.

So enraged in fact, that I decided to tell them about it.  So I found myself a soapbox, though in this case my
spoapbox was majestic looking golden apple, inscribed with "Kallisti", that stood proudly in the centre of the street.
I scrambled on top of it, in the most spectacularly clumsy manner I could manage, which garnered some inquisitive
looks from passersby.  Then I stood.  Then I spoke.

But the words weren't mine, they came from somewhere else, not that I could really hear them, it seemed as soon as
I...  The body I was in...  opened its mouth, nothing but silence came out, though I must be saying something, because
a crowd was forming, a crowd of individuals, admiring every silent word...  but in my head the silence was dying, it
was giving way to millions of voices, not their voices, but voices inside.  It was a cacophony of opinion, a tornado
of contradiction from a million different people, a million different ideas all chanelled through this head.  Above
them screamed one that pierced through the tangle of personas in my head, "THIS IS DISCORD!" it screamed over and over
again, and eventually, it was joined by another, powerful but warm voice that spoke, "THIS IS HARMONY.", and both were
true, it was all true, even the contradictions, ESPECIALLY the contradictions, and they were all false as well.
Thankfully when it seemed as though I would lose myself forever, an older gentleman stepped forward to break my anguished trance.

"Are you feeling OK, Your Highness"

The Many that was One that was at one time Me met his kindly gaze, and it felt him recoil slightly, as a thousand
other people stared back at him, through one focused window.

"Pardon?"

Your Highness... They must be taking the piss surely.  They must be deadly serious.

He smiled, he knew what we were thinking, in his wise old eyes, we could see he understood.

"In the land of the Individual, No One is King."

And that was that.

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Kopyleft i think...  please improve it...

x

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

May I suggest you remove the double spacing, but keep the paragraph breaks? I think that will make it more readable. It looks interesting.

[Roaring Biscuit!]

apparently if you copy straight from notepad to here you get double spacing for free, who knew.  Fix't for readability anyways

x

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

AWESOME I will finish reading it on my next break!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I liked it! quite a lot, actually.

[Roaring Biscuit!]

are you sure?  thats seems pretty unlikely to me...

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Hush, you!