What if Metropolis - Travelogue Rewrite

This is a rewrite of my travelogue for my city.

When you first see Musia on the horizon it can seem baffling to the eye. What you see many would describe as just an infant child’s drawing just as they start to understand the basic concepts of lines and shapes, but to the well-trained eye it is a city that is always thinking and moving with its people.

The residents of the city are just as happy to see a face they recognise as well as a new one, and if you are one of these new faces they will gladly show you around and tell you the tricks that you will need to know so that you can enjoy Musia to its fullest. These tricks mostly explain what you will expect to see if you go to a certain part of the city and what is the best way to get there so that you don’t become lost and overwhelmed by being in an unfamiliar world.

I do have a word of caution to all new travellers planning to visit: do not be put off by the resident’s sudden eagerness to talk to you about how you see the city and what are your thoughts behind it as they only want to grow their understanding of how the outside world sees them, but with some residents there is a hit of worry as if they’re scared their home is laughed at and mocked. They are just a philosophical group of people that don’t just like to be given an answer and be done with it, they want to follow your trail of thought as you follow them through Musia. Even asking them questions about something you will leave you thinking “What did they mean by that?” with the response they give you.

It is no surprise as to why you may be asked this as Musia’s buildings are notably made up of curves, circles, squares and triangles that have dark grey pipes that link them all together making no two buildings look the same. It almost seems impossible to work out what each building to for and if you were to ask someone they would look at you puzzled and ask in return “Can’t you hear what it is for?” before pointing out a noise, that you previously thought was just in your head as a type of background noise, that seems to be coming for nowhere else but the building you were asking about. The reason for it being impossible to tell the buildings apart is because each of them are covered in bright warm colours that have glowing windows of every shape scatter among them and not a single sign insight. Although if you where to look past the bright lights you would see that the buildings colours have become wither in many places, showing the dark grey material underneath because of the sandy terrain it is located in.

One part of the Musia that is impossible to miss is the large stone monolith that towers over everything for miles around. This large rectangular stone stands at the edge of the city and slowly slops up on its self, on the side that faces the city a strange cross like craving can be seen leaning to right. This strange landmark is called by two different names depending on who you ask; to an outsider it is known as Musia Rock but to those in the city it goes by the name Metrolith. When you ask the residents why their city was built at the base they will tell you the story of how their ancestors had been wandering the desert for years until one morning the Metrolith had appeared in front of them, after this they choose not to move on believing that it was a sign for the gods that this was to be their new home. They might also tell you that no windy nights you can hear the stone singing as the gales blows past.

If you do choose to visit the city, then I recommend that you stay from more than just one day as this will give you an opportunity to see Musia by night and I can ensure you that you will see a site unlike any other that you have seen before in any city that you have visited. For when the sun goes down and the city is covered in darkness do the citizens send up into the night sky strange hot air balloons that vary in size from one another. Attached to each of these balloons is a shape that echoes those used in the city’s buildings. Many people from outside the city believe that this is how Musia was designed and built, the inhabitants would send up the balloons with the shapes and let them drift freely around the skyline until the morning sun, to which they would bring them down again in the place they had drifted to and this would determine where a new building would be placed and what would be the first shapes used as its base. There is still the opportunity of seeing one or two of the balloons during the day but is only at night that you can see the true scale of the spectacle.

All in all, Musia can be said to be a place of interpretation, mystery and confusion. Many who have visited here do not say they have discovered Musia but instead have discovered the way in which their own mind works and that is has changed their way of seeing the world. There is also a theory, although I believe it to be more of a fact, that even though you can leave the city it never truly leaves you as if you were to stop for a few moments, take some timeout from your busy life and close your eyes you would see the Metrolith standing before you with the rhythm of the city playing in the background. The faint sound of music twinkling in the air.