034 - Trap Streets

Unnatural Phenomenon: Trap Streets

In order to protect themselves cartographers sometimes insert false features and easter eggs into the maps they create, letting them catch out people who steal their work. These idiosyncratic, purposeful errors exist in information sources people implicitly trust every day to tell them what shape the world holds. The aggregated weight of this blind certainty presses hard against the dirt and concrete confines of the genuine environment and sometimes, when nobody is paying attention, something slips.

Becoming thoroughly lost is a prerequisite to finding a trap street, but paradoxically so is knowing that the false street exists in a widely accepted source. You can only find one by accident while knowing that what everyone else trusts about it isn't true. You'll know when you do if you're paying attention, the lull in traffic and the sudden silence of the city are unmistakable indicators that you're in a very distinct place. Trap streets are like hidden pockets, not quite otherspaces, accessible only once whether intentionally or by mistake. Once vacated they snap off like gossamer threads of a cobweb brushed away by a careless hand. Those in the know keep careful track of their own location at all times for fear of accidentally depleting their repertoire. Trap streets make excellent hiding places, one-time dumping grounds or locations for acts you'd rather no one else know about.

The people that use them are a curious mix of social and anti-social, like a combination of murderous thieves and people who are really into trains, you can trade information you can't personally use to others (say, because you know a particular area too well to get lost) but too many people finding out would spoil the whole thing. Reputation is a big deal and if enough people found out about trap streets it might not even work anymore. It's impossible to police against someone throwing a tantrum and trying to wreck it for everyone but the brutal murder of Laughing Eddy, the last guy to publically try it, has kept that element out of the subculture. Likewise mutual mistrust keeps them from grouping together under a central authority.

There is no hard limit to how long you can stay in a trap street but the conventional wisdom is not to wear out your welcome. Do what you came to do and get out. There's rumours of people who were still inside when a street closed off. No one can provide evidence better than a "friend of this guy's cousin" story, but no one wants to be the first confirmed case either. Likewise the stories of inhuman residents who are violently resentful of "that element" entering their nice, quiet neighbourhoods are overblown bullshit meant to scare off the riff-raff. Probably.