I’m often asked (not really, but let’s pretend), “Doesn’t it rain in Heliopoli? What’s with all the sun stuff?”

Of course it rains in Heliopoli. Buckets of the stuff. Loads of it. Sheets, even.

OK, so you haven’t been there, but look. You can imagine you’re standing in the Central Plaza, which is as flat as can be and goes almost to the horizon. The Sun Disk Monolith looms over your shoulder.  Let’s say it’s late afternoon, but it feels like early evening, the sky is so dark — dark from all the big thunderer clouds, clouds like kettle bottoms, clouds like fists. It rains. And the rain is drenching … and loud. It’s all you can hear. It’s hammering the plaza. You see the ground dancing from it. The air turns cold, and so do you. You’re in the middle of it, you crazy! And the rain smells like metal, like iron. And thunder sweeps across the sky making the city seem bigger than it is – emptier, lonelier.

The rain doesn’t stop suddenly. It goes away gradually. It just showers, eventually, like it didn’t mean to be so harsh before. It eases away. The plaza shines gray and a tiny bit green.

OK, so it’s a little different in Heliopoli, because if it’s raining in the afternoon — well, it stops just before sundown, always. Now, did you expect anything different? You can imagine the colors of the plaza then. And the feeling that you get when you see it – do I have to say more? You’ve seen the sun come out after a torrential rain.

Yeah, it’s like that there. You betcha.

It has caused a great deal of consternation among the excavators, even outright arguments. It has been called out of character and inconsistent. It doesn’t fit, they say. It can’t be true, they say. But the evidence is in, and the chief archivist is secretly pleased.

For its embrace of the embrace, called abrazo; for being called, according to Wikipedia, “a living act in the moment as it happens”; for its acceptance of improvisation; for having steps with names such as Media Luna, Volcada, Parada, Gancho, and Sandwich; for its show form having the name “Fantasia”; for its unadulterated passion; and, above all, for its unparalleled encapsulation of the quality of yearning –

For all these things:

The official dance of Heliopoli is the Argentine tango.

1. “Saturday in the Park” — Chicago
2. “Questions 67 and 68″ — Chicago
3. “Beginnings” — Chicago
4. “Popcorn” — Hot Butter
5. “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” — Elton John
6. “Here Comes the Sun” — The Beatles
7. “Memories of Green” — Vangelis
8. “Warszawa” — David Bowie
9. “Baba O’Riley” — The Who
10. “Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In” — The Fifth Dimension

One can experience more than one sunrise in Heliopoli on any given day.

The first sunrise comes from the east, over the horizon. Ideally, one stands in the Central Plaza and watches the surface at one’s feet go from blue to brilliant and sees the very brightest yellow strike the Sun Disk monolith to chime the dawning of a day.

Other sunrises can be experienced in the city, because of the great height of some of its buildings. One can stand in the shadow of a structure, even after the sun has risen over the horizon, and wait for the sun to peek over the top of the building to splash light around where one is standing.

This can be done several times in a day. One can walk from building to building, or retreat to the shadow of the same building, and experience once again the appearance of the sun. This is called “surfing the sunrise.”

A sunrise over the edge of a skyscraper, rather than the horizon, is a skyrise.

future: the time that is to come, days, months or years ahead.

futurity: the quality or state of being in or of the future.

pedway: a moving sidewalk, or “slidewalk,” commonly a long, wide strip of rubber moving along a series of rollers and motorized, used as a form of public transportation.

uniped: a mode of transportation comprised of a single wheel with footrests to either side, retractable by a single arm into a backpack-like apparatus, based on a design by Syd Mead.

optimism: the tendency to take the most hopeful or cheerful view of matters or to expect the best outcome.

architectonic: having structure or design of a kind thought of as architectural.

futoria: (conflation of historia [Latin, history] and future) a future history; an aesthetic or series of designs to depict the future, created at various times in the past; any of a series of past visions of the future (see Museum of Futoria).

dream: a sequence of sensations, images, thoughts, etc., passing through a sleeping person’s mind; a fanciful vision of the conscious mind.