Specula

The traveler who reaches Specula finds a city built according to a single law: there are no dwellings, only theaters. Seven hundred structures of raw lumber and stretched canvas stand at any given time; each has but one entrance, one exit, and a single copper lamp that burns for the duration of a performance. From the alleys, one can smell the hot, metallic dust that rises from their projection mechanisms.

The citizens of Specula do not speak of their own pasts. They move in silence from one theater to the next, finding a seat on a wooden bench, and fixing their gaze upon the flickering images of lives that are not theirs. When the story on the screen concludes, the audience departs, and a crew of carpenters immediately arrives to dismantle the building, leaving only a rectangle of bare earth.

You may think the people of Specula are the world's most devoted archivists of narrative. But they keep no records and build no monuments. Their city exists not to remember the stories it consumes, but to ensure that once a story is over, it can never be told again.