Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. The lad you
Speaker 1: are here, let's get into it. Late afternoons in our
Speaker 1: neighborhood have always felt like the closing act of a
Speaker 1: well loved play. The light slants gold along the river,
Speaker 1: warming the age dock and stones, and the clatter from
Speaker 1: the bakery mixes with the shouts of children tumbling down
Speaker 1: als older than memory. I have lived in this part
Speaker 1: of Falconstat since I was twenty two, a patchwork of
Speaker 1: cobblestone lanes, terra cotta roofs, staircases that seem to dip
Speaker 1: and rise wherever the bedrock collets them are. Now decades
Speaker 1: later and newly retired, I take comfort in the feeling
Speaker 1: that time here is slow and circular. Sometimes, on certain afternoons,
Speaker 1: I like to remind myself has more pleasures rude us
Speaker 1: in place, So a fresh loaf wrapped in Chris brown
Speaker 1: paper from a Lyne's bakery, where the ovens go on
Speaker 1: before dawn. The route home, by rights should be a
Speaker 1: gentle curve along Linden Strasse and then uphill past three
Speaker 1: tiny squares five blocks in all, but there is a
Speaker 1: short could that most people of a look a stone staircase,
Speaker 1: newly hidden behind a bakery's rue garden gate. It drops
Speaker 1: quick as a waterfall or two hours, nearly vertical at first,
Speaker 1: then bends and disappears under the green shadow over ay tree,
Speaker 1: spitting you at not fifty paces from my own narrow
Speaker 1: front door. That short cut. For as long as I've
Speaker 1: known it has always seemed a minus. He cout, never busy,
Speaker 1: never exactly empty, as if content to stay half forgotten
Speaker 1: in the city's labyrinth. It's the sort of place you
Speaker 1: might discover or as short cut as a child, and then,
Speaker 1: if you're lucky, keep remembering to use long after you
Speaker 1: have a hundred other things on your mind. This Tuesday,
Speaker 1: the air was mild and full of fresh bread, and
Speaker 1: river marred, and I was humming Saint Lucia for no
Speaker 1: reason but cheerfulness. The low forsada under my arm. When
Speaker 1: I turned in through the little gate and found myself
Speaker 1: surrounded by the old cooling stones, the steps felt slightly
Speaker 1: damp through my shoes, chilly even in late spring. I
Speaker 1: ran my fingers along the mossy wall, floated brick dimpled
Speaker 1: with initials hundreds of years old, and counted my familiar
Speaker 1: paces relishing the moment when the alleyways gloom brightened back
Speaker 1: into the streets late sunlight. And then I was standing
Speaker 1: at my front steps, keys in hand, listening to a
Speaker 1: blackbird chitter in a plain tree near by. My breath
Speaker 1: was calm, my shoes hardly scuffed, and my head still
Speaker 1: full of that tune. Only when I fished the keys
Speaker 1: out of my pocket did I happened to glance at
Speaker 1: my watch. Two minutes past five. I've walked these streets
Speaker 1: more times than I could count, but I've always taken
Speaker 1: a quietly competitive pride and beating my own best time
Speaker 1: from bakery to home fourteen minutes if I go the
Speaker 1: usual way, just under twelve. If I move briskly with
Speaker 1: the short cut, it's generally nine or ten. Though I
Speaker 1: never rush to day it, if felt and my watch,
Speaker 1: a sturdy little thing for my teaching days, agreed like
Speaker 1: I had managed the whole trip in barely six. I frowned.
Speaker 1: Had I left the bakery later than I thought, forgotten
Speaker 1: a turn. I held my breath, rummaging mentally drew my route. No,
Speaker 1: I'd gone out the back gate down as mossy stairs,
Speaker 1: taken the right car splots and somehow arrived at my door,
Speaker 1: far far sooner than seemed possible. The bread was still
Speaker 1: hot when I set it down. After a moment's head scratching,
Speaker 1: I'll let the ardie go. I chalked it up as
Speaker 1: one of the small mysteries that settle on the corners
Speaker 1: of a day, quietly insolved but disturbing. Still, as a
Speaker 1: poor teatin watched the late light fade toward the river,
Speaker 1: my mine kept circling back. Had the short cut always
Speaker 1: felt quite so? Short? Mornings are for rich newspaper, mug
Speaker 1: of minty, checking on the three time pots at the
Speaker 1: back hand. Afternoons are for errands. My days fill easily
Speaker 1: to parcel or two from the old post office, a
Speaker 1: quick visit to the bookshop, where otto waves from behind
Speaker 1: impossible stacks, and my regular pilgrimage till Lends bakery for
Speaker 1: whatever brom bread, rolls and gossip might be available. The
Speaker 1: city wears its centuries coast to the surface. You can
Speaker 1: see it in the LOLd of the roofs. The sly
Speaker 1: away one house overlays the bones of older Once the
Speaker 1: casual way an ali decides it wants to go two
Speaker 1: places at once, ribbons of cobblestone split and merge into
Speaker 1: sections that once made sense to some long gun cartographer
Speaker 1: now wins and stutter out every city map. The river's
Speaker 1: large bends mean that what feels like due north kam
Speaker 1: in three twists perdu facing west again. The hills imposed,
Speaker 1: though will on the street grid and stacases pop up everywhere,
Speaker 1: some leading to homes, others just climbing into another maze
Speaker 1: of valleys. Those stairs behind the lens hooded by brick
Speaker 1: Kinneko are not the only secret route. Ask any local.
Speaker 1: This berfram who spent forty years as a postman here,
Speaker 1: who claims to note hidden arteries of this district better
Speaker 1: than he knows his own akes. He's a barrel shape
Speaker 1: man with a trim gray beard, always wheeling his bike
Speaker 1: up every ramp, who insists there's an alley off the
Speaker 1: main square that can deliver you a block or two north,
Speaker 1: but only if you don't try too hard to find it.
Speaker 1: He nods at everyone, introduces himself as if meeting you
Speaker 1: for the first time, then recounts a story you suspect
Speaker 1: he's told a thousand times before by the borough's seven
Speaker 1: post men. He's the only one who still walks the
Speaker 1: whole route for pleasure, cane tapping the stones. Lena, two
Speaker 1: doors down is newer by neighborhood standers, lived here eight years.
Speaker 1: Walks a terrier names Goorskau, with all the determination required
Speaker 1: in a dog owner whose companion wants to sniff every leaf.
Speaker 1: Lena dislikes the short cut. She's told me twice. It's
Speaker 1: always a bit cold, you know, even in July. There
Speaker 1: is a strange draft, she says, shivering. Ascorsky strains at
Speaker 1: his leash. Plus it's too easy to slide. I only
Speaker 1: take it when I absolutely have to. Then there is
Speaker 1: that crowd of teenagers, half a dozen at least, skateboards
Speaker 1: in hand or propped along the rails in front of
Speaker 1: All Blam's Corner Market. Their music drifts up and down
Speaker 1: the stone, a shifting playlist of trap beats, guitar and laughter,
Speaker 1: echoing against the walls. They are in the top landing
Speaker 1: of the short cut, most laid up ternoons, launching daring
Speaker 1: tricks from the first set of steps and ducking out
Speaker 1: of the way just fast enough for my liking. I
Speaker 1: mostly liked them to be truthful, watching their grace than
Speaker 1: noisy creativity. In such an old fashioned setting feels like
Speaker 1: a small, ongoing rebellion against the slow crawl of age
Speaker 1: and habit. Through all this is my own thread, the
Speaker 1: daily walk from hum to bakery in back. I treasure
Speaker 1: the reassurance I know the route, I know a coal meat,
Speaker 1: and I know how smell of bread and rain contain
Speaker 1: the whole city golden for a half hour. It has
Speaker 1: become a kind of performance, a choreography of steps, faces, exchanges.
Speaker 1: My days spool out nots in all brighter for their predictability.
Speaker 1: I have always liked being keen eyed. A lifetime of
Speaker 1: teaching history to distract a teenager's hons, your ability to
Speaker 1: notice what stands out, to cut all over the tiny
Speaker 1: variations their betray a change. So when the short cuts
Speaker 1: seems stranger, when the cold on the stairs feels sharper,
Speaker 1: or my walk swallows up more or less time than usual,
Speaker 1: I feel it, even if only in the edge of
Speaker 1: my mind. The stairs behind a bickery or older than
Speaker 1: anyone can quite say. Granite blocks worn almost concave with
Speaker 1: handrels set into the wall, knot by design but by
Speaker 1: continual use, wass pale, green and velvety claims the sides,
Speaker 1: and even clings to the mortar. You break through the
Speaker 1: shadowed steps into the light at the lower end, and
Speaker 1: every time the change feels abrupt, as if the cities
Speaker 1: out of skin had been peeled back for a second.
Speaker 1: The short cut always restores me. It gives an ordinary digest,
Speaker 1: the right measure of un familiarity, wrapped and comfort. Sometimes
Speaker 1: in my small garden, I find myself free playing the
Speaker 1: day's traverse, checking did I take the short cut? Was
Speaker 1: a tree blooming? Did the steps feel longer or shorter
Speaker 1: than last week? These questions before now never felt urgent.
Speaker 1: The neighborhood, for all its twists, has always obeyed a logic.
Speaker 1: I truss it utterly. Two days after the strange hurry home.
Speaker 1: I decide not to trust foggy memory. At the bakery,
Speaker 1: I buyed the same level in grins again. Frau Weber
Speaker 1: planning a feast, ad just hoisting it lagshly, dear, I REPLI,
Speaker 1: And as I leave, I tap the timer up on
Speaker 1: my phone. Before turning toward the short cut, I stroll,
Speaker 1: no rush, no dawdling. After down the stairs, a teenage
Speaker 1: girl leaps off the sixth step of skateboard clacking. I
Speaker 1: wave and she salutes with her headphones. I turn left
Speaker 1: at the first bend, past the peculiar little garden that
Speaker 1: always smells of mint, and emerge by the old water pump.
Speaker 1: I check the time, eight minutes door to door. I
Speaker 1: try to reconstruct the distance. Is it possible? I open
Speaker 1: my phone's map, trace my old regular route, and then
Speaker 1: the short cut. The short cut at best trims one
Speaker 1: hundred twenty meters. Can achiave off so much time? I
Speaker 1: don't think so. My pace feels exactly as usual. I'm
Speaker 1: not winded, hand stoudy, heart rate and flustered. Later that
Speaker 1: evening I retest my route. I take the long way,
Speaker 1: a long Linden Stress at a crispy measured pace fourteen
Speaker 1: and a half minutes as predicted, the short cut again
Speaker 1: just under six. I laugh genuinely, amuse now at my
Speaker 1: own stubbornness. My first instinct is that I must be
Speaker 1: making some simple mistake, a mistap, a generous estimate. But
Speaker 1: the numbers are consistent. They swing impossibly in the short
Speaker 1: cut favor, regardless of when I wok it. I mention
Speaker 1: a peculiarity to Lino. She grow rouse, Coskay out for
Speaker 1: his evening snifferten. You know, I say, I swear it
Speaker 1: used to take me ten minutes, but now it's more
Speaker 1: like five. Same route and sound right, does it? She
Speaker 1: smirks seecret passage then, or maybe you've been stealing my
Speaker 1: runnish shoes. I protest, wiggling a thoroughly dull pair of loavers.
Speaker 1: Scorsky predictably shows more interest in a pigeon than in
Speaker 1: neighborhood magic. Still, Leana's tone carries a familiar and a current.
Speaker 1: We live in an old muddle quarter. Little mysteries don't
Speaker 1: get solved so much as folded up and stored away
Speaker 1: with the city's general eccentricities. I smile, wave and step inside.
Speaker 1: But this time there is a kernel of curiosity I
Speaker 1: can't quite shake loose. How short I wonder can a
Speaker 1: shortca get and why should it be getting any shorter
Speaker 1: at all? I take de testing with a vigor that
Speaker 1: would have surprised my younger self. In my teaching years,
Speaker 1: students trooped. I turned every walk into a lesson in
Speaker 1: city planning. Now, with the freedom of retirement and a
Speaker 1: healthy stubborness, I decide to conduct my own experiments. One morning,
Speaker 1: I set out three different ruts from bakery to home. First,
Speaker 1: my default scenic deito along the river bank, passing the
Speaker 1: n nemural in the old boathousk phase sixty minutes, even
Speaker 1: with decent pace. Next, a carved diagonal line drew petronella lane,
Speaker 1: dodging a delivery van coming in at twelve. Finally, I
Speaker 1: faced the short cut, this time of my old pedometer,
Speaker 1: a paper notebook and duel timers, my phone and a
Speaker 1: clunky kitchen timer from a drawer. I stepped through the
Speaker 1: back gate with a deliberate step, careful not to quicken
Speaker 1: my pace. This shortcut yawns before me, cool as always,
Speaker 1: the stones lightly dappled with last night's rain. As I walk,
Speaker 1: my mind tracks each detail, the chip brick at the midpoint,
Speaker 1: the faint scuff marks from cowdlers skateboards. The twists would
Speaker 1: a stairs become a brick ramp for a few meters
Speaker 1: By the time I unlocked my door and set the
Speaker 1: bread on the kitchen table. Both times declared just over
Speaker 1: five minutes. Steps counted about two hundred and forty, a
Speaker 1: pausible number for the shortcut, but the old route would
Speaker 1: have added only another sixty steps. How can so little
Speaker 1: distance yield so much time? Determined to catch myself in error,
Speaker 1: I repeat the short cut later that day, This time
Speaker 1: after sunset. The sky is street crimson shadows bleeing off
Speaker 1: the stones. This short cut to night feels unchanged, just
Speaker 1: as shadowy, just as crisp. I walk slowly, so as
Speaker 1: not to bias the test result. Three minutes forty two seconds.
Speaker 1: Now I'm laughing out loud, quietly but genuinely, because this
Speaker 1: is no longer the disappointment of miss minutes or the
Speaker 1: trick of faulty batteries. Both timers agree. Next, I dig
Speaker 1: out my pedometer and compare the step count across routes.
Speaker 1: The short cut stays between two hundred and two fifty.
Speaker 1: The longer routs show a knee linear increase. Only with
Speaker 1: the short cut. Something odd happens. The steps remain proportionate
Speaker 1: to the route, but the time doesn't merely shrink. It
Speaker 1: seems to collapse, as if the stuns themselves cowl up
Speaker 1: beneath my feet. I recall the City History Club session
Speaker 1: years back, when an amateur map mac Claim Falconstart was
Speaker 1: built to confuse know quick a properties keeps you safe
Speaker 1: from invaders and from yourself, he'd argued, sipping his tiny coffee.
Speaker 1: It but sometimes it chaps its own. Do I now
Speaker 1: blame the city's layout? I hope not, but I'm starting
Speaker 1: to worry. My senses gun soft, curiosity sharpening. I decide
Speaker 1: to ask for outside perspective. The next day, I spot
Speaker 1: mister Botram wheeling his bike through the square, cap tilted
Speaker 1: over one eye. I flag him down, Bertram, fancy and experiment.
Speaker 1: He laughs, depends Does it involve pies or puzzle short cuts?
Speaker 1: I tell him, and he perks up. We walk the
Speaker 1: short cut together, each with a timer. He gives a
Speaker 1: running commentary on various delivery miss Apps points out a
Speaker 1: roof tile he claims to have fixed himself in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven, And when we arrive at my door after
Speaker 1: what feels like a perfect enormal stroll, he checks his
Speaker 1: watch nine and a half minutes, nearly as I'd expect.
Speaker 1: I glance at both my timers, barely over six. I
Speaker 1: look at him blank. He spots my confusion. Did you
Speaker 1: dash ahead then come back around? He teases no, But
Speaker 1: I say I just walked. He shrugs, pats his belly,
Speaker 1: and assures me. The stairs have always played tricks, particularly
Speaker 1: on those impatient to get home. Flustered but determined, I
Speaker 1: try a new tack. I check my exertion, measuring my
Speaker 1: pulse as soon as I arrive. Two more runs with
Speaker 1: the shortcut, one at noon, one in late dusk. Each
Speaker 1: time my heart breat is unchanged, and I am not
Speaker 1: remotely out of breath. Not the faintest tint I've hurried,
Speaker 1: despite the hours seemingly shaved from the walk. Each new
Speaker 1: day to point to timers, steps, devices, witnesses contradicts the last.
Speaker 1: If I use the shortcut alone, time condenses beyond all reason.
Speaker 1: If I bring company, their time stays normal, while mine
Speaker 1: continues to accelerate. My faith in maps, watches, and the
Speaker 1: very stones on the foot begins to wobble. I am
Speaker 1: not frightened, but fascinated, compelled toward answers in the way
Speaker 1: a dog worries at a loose red. My own neighborhood,
Speaker 1: the anchor of my days for decades, has sprouted a
Speaker 1: riddle that conventional sense simply cannot rain. In one evening,
Speaker 1: I stack the weak scribbles, sketches, and time logs on
Speaker 1: the kitchen table, which were in pots of tea. I
Speaker 1: transcribe my odd minutes and step counts, sketch the routs,
Speaker 1: and call a code the anomalies. If this were a
Speaker 1: logic puzzle, the solution would flicker into view. Instead what
Speaker 1: emerges as a pattern of contradiction. On Thursday, after reading
Speaker 1: an article about a new GPS fitness tracker, I resolved
Speaker 1: to use my phone's GPS mapping aptur in my walk home.
Speaker 1: I set up the tracker, mark my starting location at
Speaker 1: Lynd's back gate, and hit record. As I step onto
Speaker 1: the short cut, My route appears on phones map in
Speaker 1: real time, down the steps, past the skateboarders, right at
Speaker 1: the garden, on to calm light, and guests left again
Speaker 1: towards my stre I guide through the short cut, steady,
Speaker 1: watching a blinking blue dot advance as if narrating my movement.
Speaker 1: I reach my door at hit end route and the
Speaker 1: app displays a neat blue line, but something doesn't add up.
Speaker 1: The log registers me leaving the bakery. Then almost instantly,
Speaker 1: my dot jumps forward, skipping half the blocks, coming to
Speaker 1: rest at my own address. The section in between is
Speaker 1: missing no location data. The GPS simply shows two points
Speaker 1: start finish, fast forwarded through the city, as if reality
Speaker 1: has been cut and spliced. I test this twice more,
Speaker 1: easing different apps. The same digital silence occurs, no intermediate
Speaker 1: points recorded, as though part of the walt disappeared. This
Speaker 1: doesn't happen when I take longer routes. Only when I
Speaker 1: use the shortcut does the record vanish, leaving a strange
Speaker 1: foight in place of what should be the main event
Speaker 1: that evening. Sitting with a madrifying glass in my old
Speaker 1: city guideook, I compare every available map. The line of
Speaker 1: the shortcuit never burns, never changes. Yet my live experience
Speaker 1: tells another story, one where blocks can vanish, time can compress,
Speaker 1: and stone can lie. For the first time, I entertain
Speaker 1: real disbelief. Perhaps my certainty he has always been an illusion.
Speaker 1: Maybe the city itself is less stable than I'd ever imagined.
Speaker 1: I can no longer blame forget from this, or faulty batteries,
Speaker 1: or even the sentimental elasticity of memory. Something about the
Speaker 1: shortcut is not just tricking me, but subtly rearranging the
Speaker 1: order of experience. My skepticism begins to crumble, replaced with
Speaker 1: a keener edge of discovery. I decide I will observe
Speaker 1: collect an experiment until since emerges from nonsense. The short Cut,
Speaker 1: I am convinced, is not simply a cork of bad
Speaker 1: timing or fuzzy geography. I refuse to accept that somethings,
Speaker 1: some mundane something I know so intimately, could defy the
Speaker 1: logic have trusted all my life. With evidence mounting, I
Speaker 1: summon my courage and roup in others for a real experiment.
Speaker 1: On Saturday, I gather small team Alina with Gorsky, who
Speaker 1: looks unimpressed, mister Bertram game for anything if it means
Speaker 1: a stroll and a story, and two of the skateboarding
Speaker 1: teenagers from the Shortcut steps a La Manchayan, whose mother
Speaker 1: had once taught us school. I propose reach walk the
Speaker 1: Shortcut together, but make a note of our own time
Speaker 1: and pay attention to anything art. We agree on a
Speaker 1: protecoll We'll all start together, time ourselves, and afterward compare notes.
Speaker 1: I give Lena an extra kitchen timer, one mister Burscher
Speaker 1: on my phone, and Elam volunteers to fill our walk
Speaker 1: with a smartphone. Kaien, for his part in Sissy's already
Speaker 1: memorize every single crack in the short cut stone and
Speaker 1: bets me a soda. He'll beat everyone to the end.
Speaker 1: We set out in a jovial huddle, bantering as we go.
Speaker 1: The short flight of stairs gives way to the first
Speaker 1: curved alley. Lena points out the bloom on her favorite
Speaker 1: climbing rows kind Catt's escateboard under his arm, bragging about
Speaker 1: last week's trick. Whertra mumbles about a neighbor's garden. Elam
Speaker 1: checks her footage, turning the camera toward the walls, and
Speaker 1: I try to focus on my own sensations. As we
Speaker 1: approach the eutrene near the short cuts end, I feel
Speaker 1: a peculiar slippage my mind registers. The transition is seamless,
Speaker 1: barely an interval at all. In what feels like a blink,
Speaker 1: We're standing on my doorstep, the others still chatting about
Speaker 1: their favorite Ali We graffiti. We compare our timers. Everyone
Speaker 1: else recorded a passable eight or nine minutes, nothing out
Speaker 1: of the ordinary. Mine meanwhile, reads just under three. Elam's video,
Speaker 1: when we play it back, seems straightforward until she scrolls
Speaker 1: to a point that gives us pause. Graffiti we all
Speaker 1: remember from the upper alley now appears near the bottom.
Speaker 1: In the next scene, a lamp post whose distinct orange
Speaker 1: glow has always marked them in print, A suddenly position
Speaker 1: plainly visible beyond the shortcuts end. I withdraw my old
Speaker 1: sketch book, which dates back more than a decade. My drawings,
Speaker 1: the staircase, a leaning bench, the bakeries signboards showed these
Speaker 1: landmarks in their previous expected positions. When I compare them
Speaker 1: with the video and to day's observations them as match
Speaker 1: is clear places I have always expected to be up
Speaker 1: there or down here. I've migrated gently, but unmistakably. A
Speaker 1: nervous laugh bubbles among us. Leana shrugs. I must have
Speaker 1: stopped noticing a long time ago, she says, after a pause.
Speaker 1: But that's always how these steps have felt, hasn't it
Speaker 1: a bit's libbery, a bit odd? Maybe everything shifts more
Speaker 1: than we believe. We say our goodbyes. Later that week,
Speaker 1: walking the short cut by myself yet again, I notice
Speaker 1: a tiny shop tucked onto a street I could s
Speaker 1: where was once two blocks further east. The proprietor frown More,
Speaker 1: sweeps the doorstep and waves to me, just as she
Speaker 1: always does. You're early to day Evelyn, she calls, though
Speaker 1: my water says otherwise. I ask about the move, move,
Speaker 1: she frowns. We've always been here, She gestures to a
Speaker 1: frame black and white photograph above the counter. Sure enough,
Speaker 1: the address is the same, but the buildings beside it
Speaker 1: looking familiar. That's just how the streets always looked in spring,
Speaker 1: she assures me. These aloys play tricks when it's so
Speaker 1: much easier to go where you mean to them to
Speaker 1: remember where you went, Armed with observations, sketches, phone recordings,
Speaker 1: and accruing sense of humility, I reject any lingering suggestion
Speaker 1: that this is all memory is mischief. It's not just me.
Speaker 1: It's not just time or faulty electronics or rumor. The
Speaker 1: short cut, and perhaps the streets around it seemed to
Speaker 1: respond to silent ques of habit and intent. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: change is visible in a shifting landmark, sometimes in a
Speaker 1: stretch of steps that seem to double back, sometimes only
Speaker 1: in the numbers, neatly taking away on my time. As
Speaker 1: at first I thought I'd miscanted or blind age for
Speaker 1: the gaps in my memory, But the city has begone gently,
Speaker 1: almost indulgently, to reveal itself, not as a fixed geography,
Speaker 1: but as something quietly fluid. The shortcut's length, it's contra
Speaker 1: Even the position of a lamp post now seemed capable
Speaker 1: of flexing, almost as if the neighborhood bends to guide
Speaker 1: me home. I find that realization exhilarating, a strange, benevolent magic,
Speaker 1: hiding not in shadows or superstition, but in plain liver roudine.
Speaker 1: Whatever the explanation, it is, the neighborhood itself flood is
Speaker 1: changing underneath musteps, or perhaps shifting to accommodate my intention,
Speaker 1: as if these stones remember me and seek to make
Speaker 1: the path easier for those who belong. Evelyn didn't sleep
Speaker 1: much that Saturday night. Instead, while the city muted itself
Speaker 1: to hush, she lay listening to distant river bells and
Speaker 1: the far rumble of skateboards over stone, her mind stitching
Speaker 1: together the pieces of what she seen, not just time
Speaker 1: for short now, but features of the city itself. A
Speaker 1: lamp post, a signboard shuttled about without warning, as if
Speaker 1: responding to her footsteps were practiced intentions. The familiar short
Speaker 1: cut was not a trick of the senses, nor could
Speaker 1: it be shrinked Off's neighborhood eccentricity. Some deeper pattern was emerging,
Speaker 1: one which resisted explanation for now, but drew her curiosity,
Speaker 1: like a bright thread through fabric, grown transparent in places
Speaker 1: impossible in others. By first light, she had resolved to
Speaker 1: make a careful record of the chain. Jane, just no
Speaker 1: trust in memory, no half a call details. She would become,
Speaker 1: she told herself with a smile, her own best cartographer.
Speaker 1: The next afternoon she set out with stiffer resolve in
Speaker 1: her satchel, a fresh sketch book, her phone, a kitchen timer,
Speaker 1: and several colored pens. Each time she left the bakery,
Speaker 1: she made a quick thumb mail sketch of the shortcuts, entrance,
Speaker 1: placement of the broken brick, the climbing vine marking the
Speaker 1: low section of wall, the particular shadow of the yew
Speaker 1: tree cast over the steps at that hour. She then
Speaker 1: set her timer, took the short cut with her usual
Speaker 1: steady pace, and when she emerged onto a street, she
Speaker 1: repeated the process, one sketch for the exit, one photo
Speaker 1: timestamp for each end. She repeated this exercise for six days,
Speaker 1: running often at the same hour, sometimes just after dawn,
Speaker 1: sometimes with the city dipped in lavender dusk. Every walk
Speaker 1: was methodical sketches before and after observations of the route,
Speaker 1: careful notes of any odd sensations or shifts. She even
Speaker 1: timed herself taking the short cut in reverse, walking from
Speaker 1: her door up to the bakery, to test whether the
Speaker 1: oddities worked both ways, which she found made a neat
Speaker 1: puzzle all the more in steady then her time stamp sketch,
Speaker 1: she could trace the tiniest shifts from day to day.
Speaker 1: The railings angle by the sixth step scene to tighten
Speaker 1: toward the bend. A weedy cherry tree that leaned just
Speaker 1: beyond the short cuts and arrived one morning at roots
Speaker 1: distinctly closer to her threshold. Once, as she drew the
Speaker 1: view from her front step, she realized the bakery's signboard
Speaker 1: was actually visible from her own street for the first time,
Speaker 1: a clear line of sight that by long standing habit
Speaker 1: and sprouting trees had never existed before. The changes were
Speaker 1: never grandios. They didn't advertise themselves, but viewed together day
Speaker 1: by day, they built up a geography that rotated gently
Speaker 1: round her or repeated passage streets too, seemed to tuck
Speaker 1: themselves nearer or further. A side street that once feared
Speaker 1: toward the river scene curve more acutely, leading the shortcut
Speaker 1: to terminate a few dolls closer to home. Uncertain afternoons impossible.
Speaker 1: She trusted decades of experience, yet her records allowed no
Speaker 1: other interpretation unless she dismissed her senses entirely. Even photographs
Speaker 1: held side by side seemed subtly altered, never in the foreground,
Speaker 1: always around the edges, as if the city were being
Speaker 1: quietly re edited for her benefit. She decided it was
Speaker 1: time to include others, but not simply a subjet of amusement.
Speaker 1: The evidence needed to be noticed, if not shared, to
Speaker 1: deepen her understanding. On her sixth day of tests, she
Speaker 1: approached Lena, who was out with Skawskay on his circuit
Speaker 1: a sniffling rope. Lina, would you mind a strange question?
Speaker 1: Lena grinned, those are the only kind I expect from you,
Speaker 1: even in the last week or two. Have you noticed
Speaker 1: anything unusual about the streets near the bakery that short cut,
Speaker 1: specially Lina's browfurrode? Not really, It's always felt odd. Sometimes
Speaker 1: when I pass those little allys, I get the strongest
Speaker 1: sense of Dejeuville, like I've just seen the same househol
Speaker 1: lamp a moment before. But then this city's a tangle,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Dejauvvus even asked, surprised. Yes, like I'm out
Speaker 1: of step for just a breath, but I always dismiss it.
Speaker 1: Why even hesitated, then told her about the photographs, the
Speaker 1: Tinne Trials, the subtle but undeniable changes in both rout
Speaker 1: and surrounding streets. Lina listened with raised by brows, a
Speaker 1: grin flickering. That's odd, all right, But you know I
Speaker 1: always thought if you lived here long enough, you'd start
Speaker 1: seeing things, so those don't. Maybe the streets remember, you'll
Speaker 1: play tricks until you're part of their games, she shivered.
Speaker 1: Or maybe I'm just easily suggestible. Are you sure this
Speaker 1: isn't a grand, practical joke, He even assured her it
Speaker 1: was not. Lena shrugged, her gaze, sliding down the length
Speaker 1: of the alley as of challenging it to reveal its secrets. Later,
Speaker 1: Evelin approached Bertram, found him outside the post office, thumbing
Speaker 1: through his battered rot nobook and nodding genially to a
Speaker 1: cluster of cyclists. Bertam, she began, you've walked these streets
Speaker 1: longer than any one ever feel like this shift under
Speaker 1: your feet, he shrugged, unconcerned. That's old streets for you,
Speaker 1: never quite where you left them. I've sworn half a
Speaker 1: dozen times a year that a certain he ran straight,
Speaker 1: only to find it's got a new elbow in it.
Speaker 1: If you ask the other postmen, they'd insist there's a
Speaker 1: stickcas now where a wall ought to be. I say
Speaker 1: the stones have their moods, he winked, But never this precisely,
Speaker 1: Evelyn Press, showing him her sketches. Bertram examined them. Lips pursed.
Speaker 1: He've good eyes and a good memory, Evelyn, he said,
Speaker 1: at handing them back. But maybe what you're seeing is
Speaker 1: how the city welcomes its own, he tapped his cane.
Speaker 1: Or maybe it's always been like this, and we only
Speaker 1: pay attention when something's she tried to teenagees next, finding
Speaker 1: Kayan and Elam attempting any trick on the shortcut rail,
Speaker 1: Hayne declared, crinning at Falkenstadt streets never sat still for
Speaker 1: any one, and Elam recalled over hearing alder kids talk
Speaker 1: about the walker's wait, a short cut that only worked
Speaker 1: if you want thinking about it, or if you wor
Speaker 1: to like you'd always belong on impulse Ellem fetched her
Speaker 1: grandmother's folk tales notebook, battered and full of local nonsense.
Speaker 1: Sure enough, there were snippets about finding yourself on the
Speaker 1: wrong street, or about short cuts that come and go
Speaker 1: with the day. Even listen closely testing their accounts, she
Speaker 1: tried walking the short cut backward from her home to
Speaker 1: the bakery arm of Timer's phone, and all the oddity vanished.
Speaker 1: Her time and rod stretched as normal, the shortcut no
Speaker 1: shorter nor more convenient in the standard road. Only when
Speaker 1: she walked toward home at her habitshal hour from bakery
Speaker 1: to door did the city yield its strange accommodation. At
Speaker 1: this point she called in a professional. The city's little
Speaker 1: museum kept a narchivers to Frauzella, who'd given chose on
Speaker 1: and off since before even taught her first class. Slim
Speaker 1: tar tunned eyes, bright, under cropped, dying gray hair, frausel
Speaker 1: I had seen every theory about the old city come
Speaker 1: and go. Evelyn requested half an hour and a cup
Speaker 1: of cannimal tea. They settled into a back table at
Speaker 1: the museum, Portly black cat winding itself around the legs
Speaker 1: of their chairs. I'm not asking for proof, Evelan began,
Speaker 1: just context. Have you ever come across stories of this
Speaker 1: neighborhoods geography being well changeable? Fraus elagrined, You know I
Speaker 1: love a puzzle. Let me show you something. She rooted
Speaker 1: around in a filing cabinet. Unreturned with a photocopy of
Speaker 1: an eighteen twelve city defense proposal. The pland depicted precisely
Speaker 1: Even's neighborhood. Block of houses rayed around a twist of
Speaker 1: the river, but the streets were arranged in a much tighter,
Speaker 1: more confusing pattern than modern layouts. Here, said Zella, this
Speaker 1: is from the time after the River Buan collapse. Falkenstat
Speaker 1: city planners were deeply suspicious of fixed lates. The idea
Speaker 1: was that if he built the streets as a maze,
Speaker 1: then in the event of foreign troops or floods, you
Speaker 1: could swiftly close off passages and create new ones. Walls
Speaker 1: that were portable, small courtyards designed to be joined or
Speaker 1: divided at well. They called some of them puzzle walls.
Speaker 1: Eveland frowned, But surely there's just defensive design and all
Speaker 1: that's gone now. The city is mostly, Zello said, but
Speaker 1: the notes from that period are full of remarks about
Speaker 1: forded paths. One engineer wrote that he preferred to trust
Speaker 1: the steps, so for the surveyor's line, the live shortcut
Speaker 1: always trumps some maps intent. Later, when surveyors mapped the neighborhood,
Speaker 1: they kept finding that what had been closed off only
Speaker 1: months before was somehow open again, and vice versa of
Speaker 1: off in not even matching their open plans from the
Speaker 1: previous year. Did it last, even, asked leaning forward, Zella
Speaker 1: shrug hard to say. The city's fabricus stable now, of course,
Speaker 1: But our wreckers from the late nineteenth century still tell
Speaker 1: of folks finding a previously unknown alley or a short
Speaker 1: cut that vanished after a week. It's always dismissed as error,
Speaker 1: a pride in local lore. But I'll say this here
Speaker 1: in the records. The city's memory isn't justin stone, it's
Speaker 1: in the walk you find old notes. Don't trust the map,
Speaker 1: followed the postman, follow the baker. That's the real grid,
Speaker 1: not with some paper. As she walked home, even found
Speaker 1: herself floating in both delight and squire. History had left
Speaker 1: a residue here, not just the legacy of maps, but
Speaker 1: a live memory that, it seemed, could quietly bend reality
Speaker 1: for those whose stepped intrusted patterns, She decided to test
Speaker 1: a new hypothesis. Perhaps the cities twisting, shifting short of
Speaker 1: rich streets were fundamentally unstable but yielded to a kind
Speaker 1: of train expectation. Maybe, she mused, those who settled into routine,
Speaker 1: who truly belonged three years of walking participating, remembering unlocked
Speaker 1: remnants of the old defense of logic, echoes of kinder
Speaker 1: mazes and folded stones. Could her experience be not that
Speaker 1: of a city changing arbitrarily, but a neighborhood molded by
Speaker 1: a long dialogue between intention and place. To test this
Speaker 1: evil and outlined possible lines of inquiry and has sketched
Speaker 1: for Consett about mapping her short ats, a top historic
Speaker 1: city plans and experiment that occupied several afternoons. She began
Speaker 1: by overlaying her recent walking notes on a digitized copy
Speaker 1: of the eighteen twelve plans Allah had shown her for
Speaker 1: each day her shortcut Pierre to shift even highlighted the
Speaker 1: new route and then traced it against the old past
Speaker 1: drawn two centuries before. To her growing fascination. Most of
Speaker 1: the shortcuts she'd experience matched up precisely with routes labeled
Speaker 1: in those ancient planters closed in winter, a temporary through route,
Speaker 1: preforded path open only in festival season, and the like.
Speaker 1: Her ard compressed walks documented by modern timers, censers, and
Speaker 1: step count as well tracing lines of passage laid down
Speaker 1: by countless feet generations before, lines which no longer corresponded
Speaker 1: to the Matt's city, but somehow persisted beneath the surface,
Speaker 1: accessible in certain moods, servant hours, or perhaps only to
Speaker 1: those conditions by routine. She recalled the teenager's walker's way,
Speaker 1: Bertram's stones with moods, and Lena's dejevous. The short cut
Speaker 1: she nowfowt wasn't a corridor of physical stone, but a
Speaker 1: crease in the city's collective memory, ere remembered inter existent,
Speaker 1: a favor granted to the properly initiated by the accumulated
Speaker 1: expectation of thousands. Eveling's walks began to take on a
Speaker 1: new flavor. Each time she set out for the bakery.
Speaker 1: She felt as if she were dredging up a channel
Speaker 1: in the river of the past. The shot cut. Some
Speaker 1: possibility was not a foe or a trick, but a
Speaker 1: kind of invitation and inheritance from those who walked and
Speaker 1: worked until the city in some way been to honor
Speaker 1: their knowledge. But she still had questions, chiefly, was she
Speaker 1: alone in this or was there a silent brotherhood of
Speaker 1: pathfinders quietly operating in the city's maze. One afternoon, peering
Speaker 1: through the glass of the old bookshop where Otto was
Speaker 1: unpacking a shipment of novels, should brooch the subject. Otto
Speaker 1: humor me, Have you ever found the city short to
Speaker 1: acting well, unusually short? Otto stowed, man straightened from his boxes.
Speaker 1: Here were, after all rumors? I see, Yes, I've had
Speaker 1: the occasional odd walk where I think I've skipped a
Speaker 1: dozen houses. Chalk it up to absent mindedness, you say,
Speaker 1: But once or twice it's as if the street lean
Speaker 1: forward to meet me half way, he winked. But don't
Speaker 1: tell any one, or they'll expect me to handle liver
Speaker 1: books across five blocks. He paused, then added, My grandmother
Speaker 1: kept her saying, if you know the stones by name,
Speaker 1: they'll take pity and ledy through silly perhaps, but I
Speaker 1: like to think it meant the city was kinder to
Speaker 1: the stubborn encourage. Eveland visited the local museum on Open
Speaker 1: Doors Day, a festival of living history, families, trailing children
Speaker 1: dressed to skild apprentices, elderly women swaping tails about lost
Speaker 1: fountains and vanished court yards. While munching a honeyed almond biscuit,
Speaker 1: she found herself in conversation with Hannelore, a part time guide.
Speaker 1: I was born free houses above the short cut, Hannelore said, smiling.
Speaker 1: My mother swore her aunt new way to cross the
Speaker 1: whole neighborhood in half the time, but only if she
Speaker 1: recited the names of each alley as she passed. I
Speaker 1: tried it myself, but nothing ever happened until the year
Speaker 1: I had my first child. Then it's for a month
Speaker 1: I could skip whole turns, the baby and I would
Speaker 1: arrive home before I had time to worry. She shrugged.
Speaker 1: It faded, but for a while the city was on
Speaker 1: my side. Even gathered such stories a chorus of gentle claims,
Speaker 1: always accompanied by denials, laughter, the insistence that it was
Speaker 1: sentimental nonsense. Yet paddon emerged those who repeated a wrap
Speaker 1: through significant seasons, or who undertook daily needed walks, or
Speaker 1: who belonged to the neighborhood by long habit, sometimes found
Speaker 1: the city growing oddly compliant, never threatening, and always quiet,
Speaker 1: always denied by daylight, logic, remarked on only in passing,
Speaker 1: and never admitted twice by the same person. The final experiment,
Speaker 1: Evelyn devised to gull her nerve and every ants of
Speaker 1: her curiosity. She would walk the short cut with no
Speaker 1: intention but her own, leaving at the same hour carrying
Speaker 1: the same shopping basket, just as always, But this time
Speaker 1: she would walk at thinking of the stories she learned,
Speaker 1: the footsteps of postmen, bakers, mothers, old and new neighbors.
Speaker 1: She would try to act not as an observer, but
Speaker 1: as one thread in the city's larger weave. The day
Speaker 1: was bright, streets humming with a whir of distant bicycle bells.
Speaker 1: At the bakery, limb was sighed poppy seed rolls, even
Speaker 1: bought her usual loaf, exchanged the daily could about shortcut,
Speaker 1: speeded with the lin and stepped through the rear gate
Speaker 1: into the cool, mossy hush of the old staircase. She paused,
Speaker 1: briefly tracing the carved initials, and let her memory drift,
Speaker 1: recall in not just this year's route, but decades worth,
Speaker 1: the short cut as it was when the bench was
Speaker 1: hull when the climbing rose first budded, when Bertram would
Speaker 1: whistle his rounds as she walked. She did something that
Speaker 1: felt almost foolish. She recited softly the names of the
Speaker 1: street she would pass, the neighbors whose routines had formed
Speaker 1: her own. She felt no hiss. Indeed, if anything, a
Speaker 1: great sweeping stillness enveloped her, as if for a moment
Speaker 1: she was walking as every resident before her had walked,
Speaker 1: the stones warming to her, passing the short cut curving
Speaker 1: ahead to welcome her home. When she emerged at her door,
Speaker 1: Eveland was not surprised to see her time of registering
Speaker 1: less than two minutes, nor to note that the alley
Speaker 1: behind her looked subtly different, no longer the precise shortcut
Speaker 1: of last week, but with a new inflection, slightly different pitch,
Speaker 1: as if it had been unfolded from a different set
Speaker 1: of memories, still familiar, but slightly recast. Most striking was that,
Speaker 1: for the first time, she felt no urge to solve
Speaker 1: or expose the trick. The Ozol's mechanism seemed less important
Speaker 1: than its meaning. Hers was a neighborhood that kept its
Speaker 1: shape not with stone, but with intent and return, the
Speaker 1: quiet accumulation of footsteps, habits, and names whispered or unsaid.
Speaker 1: The shortcut was not an oddity. It was a gesture
Speaker 1: extended from the city to those who gave themselves to
Speaker 1: its rhythms, and all promised that what was made and
Speaker 1: warm by routine could, in the end take place itself.
Speaker 1: That evening, settling by her window with a mug of mintee,
Speaker 1: even watched the evening crowd filter along the shifting alleys.
Speaker 1: She reflected not only on the mechanics, the timings, the
Speaker 1: shifting stones, the measurable jumps, but on the human side,
Speaker 1: all those who had warred before laying these shortcuts as
Speaker 1: surely as bricks, the generosity of a city that bent
Speaker 1: quietly to acknowledge its own. She did not think the
Speaker 1: shortcut would ever become so unpredictable as to frighten her,
Speaker 1: nor that it would open itself to everyone or other.
Speaker 1: She imagined the pass waiting for those who knew enough
Speaker 1: to move without horry, with enough familiarity to trust even
Speaker 1: what slept the bounds of logic. She continued her ritual.
Speaker 1: Not every day now was stop watch in hand, but
Speaker 1: with the deeper sense of wonder. The shotcut sometimes stretched,
Speaker 1: sometimes shrank, as if the stones mark her presence with
Speaker 1: a slow a one nath. The pattern she saw was
Speaker 1: not just a gift from the city, but a reflection
Speaker 1: of years of careful attention, affection, rooting, a form of
Speaker 1: belonging so thorough that reality itself just slightly it might
Speaker 1: yield to it. One evening, returning home along a slightly
Speaker 1: different but unmistakable shortcut, she paused half way down the stairs.
Speaker 1: The lamp light pulled golden on the moss, just as
Speaker 1: it always had, even found herself smiling as she heard
Speaker 1: a child somewhere up the hill reciting the names of
Speaker 1: streets out loud, just for the fun of it. Each
Speaker 1: day she knew the short cut would be there, sometimes longer,
Speaker 1: sometimes shorter, the route never quite the same, as if
Speaker 1: the city remembered her steps. She found herself lingering on
Speaker 1: a final question, not threatening, but quietly entrancing his geography
Speaker 1: a fixed thing, or do our routines worse? Secret paths
Speaker 1: that Evenstone cannot entirely forget? And that is the end.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening and I will see you in
Speaker 1: the next one.