Nonsense

Nonsense is a city of ticking clocks, but no two clocks tell the same time. One measures the time until the next rainstorm; another counts the number of cats that have walked past since dawn. The citizens wear watches that display random numbers, and they are never late, because they are never going anywhere specific.

The architecture is a playground. The doors are shaped like monsters, requiring a riddle to be solved before they open. The street signs point to "Somewhere Else" or "Not Here." The inhabitants are designers of the useless and the beautiful. They build machines that do nothing but cast interesting shadows, and write books that have no words, only colorful shapes.

It is a city that refuses to be efficient. "Efficiency," they say, "is the death of joy." So they take the long way home, walking in spirals, stopping to admire a particularly nice shade of blue on a beetle's wing. In Nonsense, the only wasted time is time spent being serious.