Dearest Lily You don ‘t know me and you are never going to meet me because I am your parallel self. My name is Sandy Parker. I live in the City without the Hill. The city did have a hill once and I used to explore it. In those days the city was known as KanaK. One day soon you’re going to wake up in my apartment in Kanak…except it won’t be called that…and I am going to wake up in Bargaloo. You won’t remember anything of your old life but I will. A long time ago, you and I had long flowing hair and wore long flowing dresses. Sometimes a group of us girls would go by City Hill Road and be road statues…it was performance art and we prided ourselves on how much we had perfected it. At other times we would walk, eyes fixed grimly ahead, silently and quickly in a big black huddle from one end of town to the other revelling in all the attention that this would supposedly bring. Our audience was fast, captive and fleeting. You don’t remember do you? That’s all in the past now… It is extremely important that you believe me. I cannot get back to my own time unless you help me. I am including a collection of photographs that you took Lily. Photos taken by your future self in The City without the Hill….in the future. You’re future Lily! Lily, I know all of this is going to sound unbelievable to you, so I will tell you everything. Lily you are not going to spend the rest of your life in Bargaloo and you are not going to marry Humphrey Tankard. Please do not get upset about this. He may seem handsome, charming and rich to you now, but believe me when I say he is a very, very dubious character. He is married to your nemesis and they have two boys Fergus and Miles . They also have an adopted daughter…I think her name is Nyssa. Trust me you will get to know the Tankard family very well, so forewarned is forearmed ok…. A word of advice…avoid contact with Nyssa…if at all possible??? Lily, as you can see from the photos…I am a very attractive women and Rob is a very handsome man…I am not going to comment on the looks of Humphrey Tankard or his brother Bogie or their sons or Rupert Moulden and his sons because…well because you will see for yourself. As for Miles Tankard….say no more…. I know you must be feeling utterly bewildered about all of this…so I shall tell your story and maybe one day you can tell me mine…and vice versa. The City has both visible and invisible rulers. There is the National Assembly and then there is the Grand National Assembly. The Queenstown Newspaper is a very powerful organisation and is ruled by a man…or rather criminal…by the name of Marvin Cavendish. The television stations and all the radio stations are owned by Rupert Moulden. Both Rupert and Marvin have close ties with Jin She Wah, a notorious mafia brotherhood that runs a sex slave trafficking racket. Since their arrival…about 10 years ago… Central Plaza and its environs has gone from a ‘civilized’ and ‘quite culturally interesting’ place to chill out in… into a red light district that rivals anything I’ve seen in Fishwicker or King’s Cross. There are rumours that the Jin She Wah also run a black market trade in rare and exotic meat products. Apparently their ancestors build a huge network of tunnels in, around and out west of the city that has many levels and uses. The Department of Defenders recently found out about it after a tip off from me and was shocked. The Jin She Wah had been using it as a base for like a thousand years or something….God knows what other horrors they found. Like you, I take photographs of interesting and or suspicious things. I have taken a few photos of Bargaloo evidently. Believe me I was surprised myself…I didn’t know that I took them. I notice everything and if I can I get a picture of something more interesting than the lake at Bargaloo, I will…I notice everything… I notice very small writing… but only on walls. I notice myriads of objects in various shop display cabinets, rooftops, weird announcements, clothes colours, and scraps of old bill posters still stuck on a walls in suburban shopping centres and the like. I have discovered something that is sooo true…the best way to hide something is in plain sight. Most people in Bargaloo don’t notice the things I do because they are always thinking about where they have to go and what they have to do for their job and other stuff…like the bills. I don’t do that. I am very, very suspicious of Tony Farrell. I know he is in cahoots with someone or something but what or who? The Usuranan? A draconian faction? The mind boggles. Tony’s offsider is a woman named Gaye Proo Bragg. She is like a token female in the National Assembly and she is not the only one. No one takes any notice of them. Her reputation was recently ruined when she was caught on camera partaking in some secret men’s business at a local brothel when she should have been attending a major political do. I have to warn you about the women in this town. Most of the young ones are now working in brothels…it’s not like they have any choice about it. The old ones are either homeless or on welfare or both. Some of them work in brothels as well. It is impossible to get a decent job unless your fat and ugly or you’ve got contacts in high places and the only way you are going to get contacts like that is by working in a brothel. Nearly all the children are being raised in day care institutions which teach them to be good robots. It was not always like this. If you are fat and ugly then you can count yourself very lucky indeed. Just being fat will grant you entry into the fat women’s clubs. Being ugly is a bonus too… if that’s what you want… because it means that you will be taken seriously by the men folk…they will think of you as one of them. Now you may be wondering ‘why would I want to be a member of the fat woman’s club’…believe me you don’t…but you may not have any choice about the matter. The gravity field of this city is quite extreme leading to excess poundage….plus the food here is especially designed to make people fat…I know it sounds crazy…but it’s true….sad but true. The medical establishment in this city is basically owned by Rusty Jo and McToothy McVee. It is called MediVaccume. They’ve been running a bowel cancer testing racket for a number of years now, for reasons that elude me. They employ an army of thousands just to look at shit under microscopes. You will be sent bowel testing kits and info to your home address and as if that isn’t bad enough you will be assailed with posters and information leaflets about it at your local apothecary store….and get this…only people over fifty can have the test, which is weird because once a person turns fifty in this town, they get thrown on the scrap heap. Should you suffer from a genuine medical emergency requiring treatment at the local hospital…such as a mangled or burnt hand or a stick in the eye, expect to wait many hours and if your lucky an exotic looking doctor from a foreign country will check you out, tell you that you have a peptic ulcer or a skin disease and you will be out the door in the less than five minutes if that. Make sure you have a first aid kit with you when you arrive here. Another character you need to be wary of is Maurice Hoody…he owns a string of blood collecting buses. Whatever you do, don’t donate any blood…it doesn’t go to the hospitals to treat the untold number of apparently bloodless people…I should know I have been to one of those hospitals, the only patients I’ve ever seen there are ghouls…very, very old ones…They don’t let old people die in this city. They keep their astral shells alive for as long as possible. As for where the blood goes…my guess is as good as yours…you know about vampires don’t you? Lily…I am truly sorry to have to bombard you with all this worrying information, I just think you should be prepared that is all. There are some things you should know about the Department of Defenders. They are primarily banana soldiers. Their main job is to fight terror with terror and to send soldiers out to far flung regions of the world to hunt down terrorists and tabloid artists. They are so busy hunting down terrorists in other countries and checking luggage in shopping centres and at bus stops, that they didn’t notice that our city…my beloved city and yours too Lily… had been invaded by the Jin She Wah. I became aware of their nefarious night time activities a while back when I was living in a place called Beard…you will know this place as the Estate of Oak Trees. What they do is this….they build tunnels and lay pipes and mine metals and stuff like that by pretending to be construction workers. They dress up like them and drive trucks that look like official government construction trucks and the like and when they want to extend one of their tunnels or put in ventilation shafts or something like that, they will just converge on an area, bold as brass, set up road blocks and just do it…Nobody takes any notice of them…not even the National Assembly officials…I suppose because everyone assumes that it is all above board council work or something…and it’s not their department or concern. Well it’s too late now they’ve over run the city…The Jin She Wah owns it now.