[ WP ] Ten billion cities , spread through the stars , and yet this was the only one that felt any different from the rest .

The city's name was n't important. It's location meant nothing to man. But Grady knew that this one, this principle of a city, meant something. To him, the tiny houses, the far-off whispers of greater cities, the kids with dreams bigger than his own imagination. That was the thing that meant something. 
 
 Ten billion cities, spread through the stars, and yet this was the only one that felt any different from the rest. Grady had n't been to them all, but after the thousandth or so, they all blurred together. Great skyscrapers, fast cars that traveled overhead, the ever-looming sun that kept the planet's at perfect living conditions. Both for plants and for man. 
 
 Here though, that did n't exist. The planet that this city resided on did n't have an artificial sun built by man's desire for perfection. This city felt the effects of the natural weather system. It rained when it rained, man did not control it. It stormed when it stormed. It snowed when the planet turned just right in it's orbit for that to happen. And the city braced all of it. The tiny shacks. The great hall for town meetings. This city could bear the worst that nature had to offer. It did n't try to control. 
 
 It tried to live within nature itself. 
 
 Grady felt that was important. He felt that man's desire to control would lead to their downfall. Ten billion cities of control and yet, man could not control his own death. Man could not control life itself. No matter how much they tried, how hard they held on to their mortality. Man was fragile, man was weak. Man, at the end of the day, was scared. 
 
 He had thought that the was the nature of their existence. To be afraid. To be scared of the vastness of the universe and man's infantile hope of controlling it. Grady had thought that for so long as man lived, he would live in fear. 
 
 This city said the opposite. This city spoke truth in a galaxy where that was often blurred by man's desire. This city said, `` We are weak. But we can still live in his world. We can harmonize with nature itself.'' They did n't try to be better, they did n't try to assert themselves over the natural system. Instead, they lived with it. 
 
 Grady wished man could do that. He wished they could give up the desire for a utopia and realize that Utopia's do not exist. Actually, Grady realized as he stared at the river that flowed through the town unhindered. Utopia's do exist. On each planet, they *had* existed. Before man clutched it in their hands and said: `` We can make this better for *us*.'' Utopia, Grady saw, was the essence of nature itself. But man's desire, man's hope, man's *fear*, polluted that Utopia. They made it undesirable, they made it lumbering, they made it large and *controllable*. 
 
 Man tried to show they were n't afraid by turning their fear into a city. Large, lumbering, controllable. In truth, man's fear was the direct opposite of that. They were afraid of being small, of being nimble, of being uncontrollable. 
 
 In that city, on the edge of the galaxy, it all seemed so petty. And Grady wished that man, and their desire, could drown out in the river of stars. 
 
 Yet ten billion cities later; that desire was larger than the galaxy itself. 
 
 ___________ 
 
 */r/BlankPagesEmptyMugs for more! Thanks for the prompt Wyrm! *
