A City of Sad Stories
Think Tank #104
I live in a city.
An anonymous place. No one knows each other; it’s rare to see the same face twice.
A strange thing about living in such a place is that the people around you don’t really seem real.
I explored this concept in a short story, which you can read here:
Anyway, the idea that us ‘real people’ are the minority in a world littered with NPCs1 is a thought that I’ve toyed with endlessly.
For example, the neighborhood where I work is in the very early stages of gentrification, and I often remark that I feel like the newcomers just spawn in the neighborhood’s one hipster coffee shop. I never see them walking down the street, I’ve never been nearly run over by one of their bikes. Yet for some reason, this coffee shop is full of them. How do they get there?