MK Myth

Smith Phil

Description

the world's first walkable novel - set in Milton Keynes

Sujets

• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• Walking
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Triarchy Press
• Date de parution: 07 septembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781911193500
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Published by:
Triarchy Press
Axminster, England
[e-mail]
www.triarchypress.net
Copyright © Phil Smith, 2018
The right of Phil Smith and K to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including photocopying, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the publisher’s prior written permission.
All rights reserved
A catalogue record is available from the British Library.
Printed in the UK by TJ International Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall
Print ISBN: 978-1-911193-49-4
ePub ISBN: 978-1-911193-50-0
Tracing the Pathway and Phil Smith would like to record their thanks to all those who tested parts of The MK Myth route and shared their reflections: Andy Stansfield, Annabelle Shelton, Beatrice Jarvis, Bob Jarvis, Francesca Skelton, Hillie Edwards, Jane Stansfield, Jo Trotter, John Skelton, Kevin McConway, Lallie Davis, Mari Sved, Priya Chohan, Roisin Callaghan, Thomas Cuthbertson, Thomas Eke, Aaron James.
This work has been commissioned by Tracing the Pathway as part of their project Groundwork, a cross-arts platform and research project for and about Milton Keynes. The MK Myth also forms part of Pedalling Culture, a Cultural Destinations Fund programme funded by Arts Council England.
Contents
Introductory Note of Advice
The MK Myth
Walk 1
Walk 2
Walk 3
Walk 4
Walk 5
Walk 6
Walk 7
Afterwards
About the Author
About the Publisher
Introductory Note of Advice
We hope you enjoy reading and using this book. It is one of a number of manifestations since 2015 of Tracing the Pathway’s Groundwork project in Milton Keynes. The idea of a ‘novel for the city’ arose after many days of walking in Milton Keynes and it reflects those origins.
The MK Myth can be read as a novel, walked or cycled as a route, read as you walk, read before walking, or read after walking. As a route, you can walk it or cycle it in stages and there are suggested starts and stops signalled in the text. These are only suggestions. If you are cycling, be prepared to carry or lift your bike, or leave it locked briefly, to access parts of the walk. If you are a very fit long-distance walker, you might just about walk the route all in one go, but it would be - literally - a marathon, and you would probably miss many of the things that slower, shorter walks will reveal.
The directions in the book are intended to be sufficient to get you around the route, but take an A-Z map with you if you feel happier that way, or use a GPS facility on your phone.
Some parts of the route go through very quiet, un-public places, and – although the likelihood of a threatening situation is very, very remote – not everyone feels confident in these spaces, so you might want to consider the option of walking with a companion or in a group.
Much of the route of The MK Myth is on accessible pavements and Redways, but not all of it. Short sections of the route are steep and uneven and there are some steps. At different times of year some of the ground will be wet and may be slippery. Take care, and if you are concerned about an incline or slipperiness, there are often alternatives that will keep you on the flat and allow you to pick up the route again a little further on. Remember that Milton Keynes is changing all the time; be alive to the possibility that some of the details of the directions might become out of date (a sign taken down or replaced, a gap mended) by new developments and you may need to keep your wits about you.
Wrap up warm or put on sun block as appropriate, and carry waterproofs if the weather forecast suggests you should. The route passes the occasional café, but you may want to take water and something to eat. Comfortable walking boots are recommended.
The MK Myth
The Sun rose in the east. The light ran along the lines of the traffic system and collected in hundreds of movies of the sky on the glass panes in Station Square. Fusing for a moment in the air above the Square a pulse of energy raced above the central boulevard. At that exact moment, by an uncanny synchronicity of security guards and management, early morning shop workers and market stall owners, the doors in Centre:MK were opened in a sequence that allowed a blast of wind, driven by the solar concentration, to rattle the tubular parts of the Circle of Light hung above the Midsummer Arcade. The bright dangle of cylinders shook slightly and each began to turn around its own axis creating a shimmering dragon of coppery light.
A group of early morning workers was gathering outside the Midsummer Place entrance to INTU, annoyed and confused. The large orange disk of concrete, on which they usually perched each morning for a final cigarette before the working day began, had been buried under a flowerbed contained within a grey wooden fence. One of the smokers, leaning over to toss her extinguished butt into the gap between the giant planter and the grey fence, caught a glimpse of orange just as the energy sweeping up the boulevard caught them all unawares. Those cigarettes still lit flared in showers of sparks like unhinged Catherine Wheels.
Confused by the absence of the Midsummer Oaks and the abjection of the magic structure of The Point, the energy burst from INTU, dodged the first buses, raced under Marlborough Gate, over Marlborough Street, down the ‘leisure path’ – ignoring ornamental fripperies – and burst along the ridge until, hitting the Light Pyramid in a white hot flash, it shot back into the sky. Other than a handful of rattled smokers, MK’s alchemical moment had been missed by everyone else for another day. With one other exception...
For a single photon had detached itself at Station Square, deflected as it caught the cornea of the eye of a rat dodging between the shrubs below Elder Gate. In a flash – passing at a speed slightly less than c – it had reached the suburbs, bounced around Cranbourne Avenue as if it were in the Large Hadron Collider and flew off, dizzily losing all sense of direction, before penetrating a small gap between a pair of retro red and blue print Zephyr curtains in a large flat in one of the more fashionable of the city’s developments and flashed through the pupil exposed by the flickering eyelid of a young female executive, K.
Her light sleep disturbed, K opened her eyes and groaned. She had beaten the alarm again. There was some satisfaction in the groan.
Throwing back the drapes, the bedroom filled with light, each particle of which was a lost opportunity. K stretched; she felt the balances of stiffness and looseness in her muscles.
K could never be quite sure about meaning. If she knew where it came from, and occasionally she did, she never knew where it went. The significance of the day was still up for grabs. That morning, when she woke, she was already alone. She straightened the bed clothes, threw a wine bottle into the waste bin and cleared away the dinner party things in her kitchen, sweeping crumbs from the work surface, and filled the coffee maker. She smiled to herself; a smile for no one else, about no one else.
She lit the flame, then turned it low.
Exciting times, she told herself. Today she would be pitching a detailed psychographic strategy to a number of potential clients around the city, a means to crafting clusters of preferences as a guide for campaigns of every kind; and something more.
K laughed.
Possibly at the realisation that she had no idea what most of these companies produced; probably nothing at all. There was always some theatre involved; all that recruitment, e-commerce videos, retail strategising, fencing and security, surveillance and data processing depended on everyone believing that everyone else was making something. Trust. She had a face that people trusted. A famous movie mogul once famously said that you could have everything if you could fake sincerity... in K’s case that was unnecessary. She was the Joan of Arc of her pitch.
K laughed again.
Possibly at whether she had really said “let’s get drunk and you can tell me your secrets”.
She caught the coffee just as it threatened to spit all over the cooker.
As she frothed the milk, she checked the diary on her phone. Five meetings. She transferred the data to a satnav app and the meetings came up as the five points of a wonky star pinned to the city; industrial estates and offices in and around the centre. Minutes were ticking away, but she always made time for the first coffee.
Her first sip was for temperature. Perfect, like the rest of her life. Like everything she controlled. Since she had stopped making excuses for young white men the territory under her control had increased considerably. She had begun to enjoy the company of those who behaved as though her presence was a privilege not a recreation. She had begun to scare her bosses – in a good way – and they seemed to regard that as a transferable value.
The second sip – more of a gulp really – was all about the caffeine rush, the drive and thrust through the veins. The taste turning on the afterburners. The low flame had allowed the coffee grains to deeply infuse the water and now their psychoactive chemicals pervaded her central nervous system. She soaked in the feeling; holding her breath. The momentary oxygen deprivation, the sudden accumulation of carbon dioxide triggered extra pleasure centres, charging beta-endorphins around her brain.
Before the third sip she knew something was, not quite wrong, but altered.
In a mild panic, she began to routinise. She checked her things; then checked them again. She tried to remember the five meeting places and their order. She could not. They were in her phone; the machines would get her there, her five-pointed star was bright. As she dressed in the Paul Smith rip-off she had found online, she rehearsed h