Creatures obsessed over the unwritten laws of class, order, family, genus, and species. Mayors and councilmembers chattered among themselves, and with bankers. It had to do with ideology. It had to do with money.

The island, which was by now a city absolute, was full. One could get whatever one wanted, but walking around the block cost more than whatever you had in your pocket. A very few had way too much, some had enough, and many had nothing. Many moved away because they were tired, but plenty stayed because they didn’t have enough to leave. Things got violent once again.

Though each age seemed as if it would go on indefinitely, the wheel of fortune turned. Outside wanted in afresh. Up wanted down. Those who’d fled to live in smaller herds drifted back to join the urban masses.

The bubble shifted and shimmered.

The city was a mystical chimera that spoke in the voices of multiple animals. It was a teacher, and its core lesson was that all must find peace with their own restless suffering. It also taught restlessness. The city didn’t care who was jubilant and who was suicidal. It witnessed without comment. As a great teacher, the city had its true devotees, and they would twist themselves into knots to make sense of their master’s riddles. They turned the incomprehensible into a logo, a slogan, a beast, a balloon in the parade. Pressure from within countered that from without in exquisite tension.

The city was an impossibility. An impossible yet existing place. It was a real piece of work. Animals from everywhere loved its whole routine. They adored the city enough to wear its name silk-screened on T-shirts. These shirts hailed others with a greeting that doubled as warning.

WELCOME TO NEW YORK, it read. NOW DUCK, MOTHERFUCKER.

UTOPIA OF RULES

2.

It was the start of some August Friday. The green-copper, brown-gold island gleamed. The park exhaled a cool sigh held from the night before.

Alfonzo Velloso Faca—student of urban behavior, public servant, and brown, fluffy, big-eyed alpaca—emerged from the subway. He trotted along with the great flock of animals coming to Manhattan to make their dough. The crowd was large yet hushed. Everyone felt good because it wasn’t humid for a change.

When the traffic lulled, Alfonzo dashed across Broadway and entered his favorite coffee shop, The Early Cenozoic. He hummed a few versions of a joke, and when it was his turn with the lemur barista he tried one out. She’d been working there since late spring but he had yet to establish a rapport.

“Did you hear the news?” he asked. “Some sea animals escaped from the aquarium.”