The city is redundant: it repeats itself so that something will stick in the mind. [...] Memory is redundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist.
Note
Travellers return from Zirma with distinct memories: a blind man shouting in the crowd, a lunatic teetering on a skyscraper’s cornice, a girl walking a puma on a leash. In fact there are many blind men, a lunatic peers from every skyscraper, and there is no puma some girl has not raised as a whim. And airships fly in all directions just above the windows.
The scene is a thicket of skyscrapers, and every figure appears in it many times: lunatics on the cornices, girls with pumas, blind men with canes, the signs of the tattoo parlours. The airships drift slowly between the slabs.
Touch a figure: all its copies answer at once, and one more appears somewhere. The more a thing repeats, the more it sticks; the rest fades.
Quotations are brief excerpts for the purpose of commentary. The full text is available in published editions. The Cities of Ottavia, Valdrada & the soundtrack are inspired by "Monument Valley" from ustwo games.