Location
- luge S4 W7
Contents
New Town
The New Town Center is based around the one brick-paved road running southwest to northeast, which parts in the middle into a circle, curbed just around the end of Beck Road. Several cuts in the dirt suggest future directions of other streets. Carson Road, running northeast, is beginning to take shape and to gain its own paving. The traffic circle is an annulus of red bricks, octagon and square tiles, not quite twenty feet across to the inner circle, where spray paint-green grass seed starts to hold together the rises and falls of the dirt.
Sidewalks wander aimlessly through the circle's interior, and converge in a series of intersections near a duck pond and a sheltered pavilion with googie-style clamshell coverhang.
Several Aarnio globe chair-type seats, freely rotatable, are alongside the sidewalks, serving as the not quite adequate number of park benches.
Inventory
The New Town Project Museum
The New Town Project Museum is set up in a portable style trailer about fifteen feet wide and somewhat longer. A wooden ramp leads (into) to it and is matched by the ramp leading out the other side.
Commands
New Town Center Pavilion
The pavilion's center is a softly concave series of concentric brick rings, suggesting without demanding the existence of a stage in the center, and lacking any of the fixed seats or benches or other impositions on who may sit where, or how large they may be.
The overhanging shelter is of a white, concrete saucer slightly off horizontal. The lowest edge of the saucer melts into a wall, itself concave, and with edges curved inwards, so its shape melts into the ground as well. The saucer's zenith is pinched upward, to flow into a stem which arches up and back over the saucer and back to the ground again.
When the ambient city light coming in through over 300 degrees of unobstructed openings is not enough, coiled neon rings in the saucer's underside flick on and cast their strange glow on those gathered.
Commands
New Town Project Museum Indoors
The main museum is a squat room, about fourteen by fourteen feet, ten tall, with mustard-yellow walls and a diffuse pale blue ceiling. In the center sits a projected model of New Town on a table two foot square and adjustable in height.
To the rear is a tiny (th)eater, and the way (out), through the gift shop.
Inventory
Artist's Model
The Artist's Model shows in fine balsa wood carving an impression of the New Town as it may be someday built- a circle posed between the blue-painted structures of City Hall south, Balloon Field east, and Dragon Range west; and a quartet of white roads leading diagonally to the SpinDizzy News southwest, and Eternal Elite Utopia northeast.
Dotted along the four roads are buildings, painted a less bright white. They suggest smaller offices northwest, with larger buildings straining to be tiny skyscrapers to the north east. To the southwest are several blocks of residences, tiny cookie-cutter things- already bypassed by the actual New Town with small shops and row houses taking that place- and to the southeast a pair of gently sloped towers flanks several green fields and reflecting pools.
The height of the model can be (fit) to the looker.
Commands
New Town Project Theater
The Project Theater is a slightly dimmer room than the others, with a scattering of chairs for bipeds from six inches to eight feet tall. At the narrow end of the room is a large screen ready to play a (mo)vie. The exit sign points to the door (out) through the gift shop.
Commands
New Town Project Gift Shop
The Gift Shop contains a clean, transparent shelf, with an index card upon which is written '(to)uch for gift'. The door (out) leads to the ramp outside the building.
Inventory
Treat bowl
The bowl is an oblong half-dome with the image of the cherry tomato-size treat suspended in the middle as in the mirror illusion.
Commands
Carson Road South
This block of Carson Road is a two-lane street paved in red bricks of octagons and squares. The curbs are squat grey stones with a light, whitish mortar the same color as the diagonal strips of cement which serve as sidewalks.
The sidewalks are about half as wide as the whole street, interrupted by circles of mud with new-planted trees, and the curb cuts which allow access to the new constructions.
The skyline is dominated by the construction of the WSDN studio and tower.
Commands
30 Carson Road
Standing proudly and commanding attention from everywhere on the block are Carson Studios and the WSDN tower. The studio building is five stories high, square but with rounded corners, decorated with glass bricks and rainbow tiles in a band near the roof. It has a clean, modern appearance, not overly ornate but beautiful in its elegance. Starting at each corner of the building, like the roots of a minimalist tree, four raised structures taper upward diagonally toward the center of the roof. Where they meet, they form the trunk of the WSDN tower.
The tower is smooth, polished metal, cylindrical but narrowing as it climbs upward. Down the side, the letters 'W S D N' are backlit with a bright white light, and near the base is a lighted representation of the iconic NBC peacock. The tower rises up 250 feet above the roof, and is crowned with a slowly-revolving glassed-in observation deck. The antenna above it stands another 100 feet high, ending with a flashing red aircraft warning light.
The site still seems to be heavily under construction, with what may become a visitors' center of some kind fenced off. A path has been cleared to the front door to allow passage into the studio wing of the building.
Commands
Carson Studios Lobby
The lobby is spacious and well-lit, with wooden benches to sit on near the edges of the room, and matching wood trim at the floor and ceiling. Portraits of famous personalities from NBC shows past and present are hung on the walls. The wing holding the visitors' center is still blocked off and sounds of construction can be heard; both banks of elevators, to the tower and to the upper offices, also have signs indicating that they are not yet open to the public.
Commands
Studio Wing
This is a long, sterile, quiet corridor with several pairs of heavy doors leading off it accompanied by lighted signs warning whether a current studio is in use.
Commands
WSDN News Studio
This is the studio floor where all of the WSDN News broadcasts are conducted. The anchors sit at a curved desk, facing several cameras with the NBC logo proudly, if unnecessarily, painted on their sides. Behind the desk are a variety of monitors that, when not used for some other purpose, show a flashy CGI-rendered SpinDizzy flying through space. A smaller table for conversations with guests and other such purposes is off to the right, normally off camera when not in use. To the left is a secondary staging area, used for the weather report, sports, and other sidelines.
Behind the cameras, a glass window separates visitors and the production staff from the action, keeping the studio free of unwanted noise. The door to the corridor is at the back of the production room, and a smaller door, kept carefully closed, goes from the production room to the main floor.
Carson Road North
This block of Carson Road is a two-lane street paved in red bricks of octagons and squares. The curbs are squat grey stones with a light, whitish mortar the same color as the diagonal strips of cement which serve as sidewalks.
The sidewalks are about half as wide as the whole street, interrupted by circles of mud with new-planted trees, and the curb cuts which allow access to the new constructions.
Commands
Beck Road North
This block of Beck Road is a narrow street paved in red bricks of octagons and squares. The curbs are squat grey stones with a light, whitish mortar the same color as the diagonal strips of cement which serve as sidewalks.
Brick-lined driveways- some with simple staggered rectangular bricks, some with diamonds, one even terrazzo, none obviously imitating the others- lead from the street to the properties. Between adjacent property drives are rectangles of bare dirt, painted green with young, dyed seed not quite up to holding the soil together.
In octagons of flower-blanketed dirt cut from the sidewalks grow modest trees, guarded by wrought-iron fences. The tree sizes grow to the southwest as the street gives way to row houses.
Commands
- 101 — Dingo's Club
- 102 — Shapeshifters Club
- 104 — Halloween Shop
- 105 — Lunastar Juice Bar
- 107 — Allegheny's Bistro
- 108 — Off-Brand Candy Shop
- 109 — The Stravulem
Beck Road South
This block of Beck Road is a narrow, paved street, flanked on both sides by tall, brick row houses. Although most are roughly the same width and height, their appearances have all been personalized with different color highlights, different architectural flourishes to the facade, different little stone creatures crowning the windows or tucked between bricks. Some are squared on top, some peaked, some rounded. The overall impression is of a pleasantly diverse, yet ultimately harmonious, set of dwellings.
Each house has a tiny front patio, enough room for a few chairs or decorations. Some residents have made lovely use of this limited space, artfully arranging potted plants into a sort of garden; others proudly display artworks. In front of the houses, abutting the street, is a small strip containing flowers and tall, mature trees protected (or perhaps just decorated) by short, black, iron fences. The trees make the street pleasantly shady, dappling the sunlight that falls on the houses and street.
To the northeast, Beck Road continues into the heart of New Town, as evidenced by the persistent glow of lights that can be seen at night. To the southwest, the row houses continue into the distance, but eventually end, giving way to the detached housing and small businesses that make up the outskirts of town.
Commands
201 — Beltrami's house
- 202 — Columbo's House
- 203 — Tryptophan's Den
- 204 — Korey's home
- 207 — Andreivich Residence
- 210 — The Rock Dove Guest House
212 — Dawnwing's Residence
- 214 — Izcera's Lair
- 215 — Derecho's Domicile