Animals tore into one another. They spread diseases and infections. A pool of blood formed, dried up, then turned into flakes that the wind carried away. There is no story of a city that is not also a story of brutality. There is no story of brutality that has not been retold as one of heroism.

The invasive species began right away to mythologize themselves. They renamed everything. They got into fights with one another, and whoever won renamed places once again. They built houses, stores, bars, and jails out of the island’s trees. The city burned again and again, and they rebuilt in whatever architectural fashion was current. Everything was brutal and everyone died. The living tore down old buildings and erected new ones in their place. They renamed streets and buildings after their dead, only for the living to die in turn.

To repress the psychic chaos that swirled inside, the living turned to numerology. They began to count everything and categorize what they’d counted. Someone measured out the whole island then divided it with a grid. Grids sent the message that everything was under control. Meanwhile, more arrived and more died.

“Don’t panic,” they murmured to one another as they drew out long, straight lines.

Once they had the grid on their map, they set about filling every square on the real-life land. They built great halls and courthouses, they built fire stations and granaries. Around the edges they erected docks and strung bridges. Larger and larger ships kept bringing in more beings and things. Some grumbled because by now they saw themselves not as invasive, but rather as new kinds of native species. The community worked on complicated myths to explain away the violence at the core of their city-making.

Streets and avenues continued to creep, until they covered not just the first island but surrounding islands as well.

See! Here a beam, there a reservoir. Here a scaffold, there a retaining wall. Here a beer hall, there a bakery. Here a sweatshop, there an armory. Here a train station with vaulted ceilings painted celestial blue, and there a system of grease-black tunnels.

The living paved over old cobbling. They numbered and lettered the new trains. After vigorous debate, Helvetica was chosen as the official typeface for all signs. Buildings grew tall. Apartments stretched along streets like rows of stalls in a stable. Rooms proliferated inside like cells in a hive.