Dreams of Paqueake Intercity
I had a fascinating dream immediately before waking up, of Graham and Kathleen and Alex from LRR doing a "flashback episode" about how they all met. It looked unconvincing, since, compared to those days, Kathleen is much smaller now while Graham is bigger and Alex is much bigger, and moreover they were all wearing giant, ridiculous masks because of the pandemic, so it was a super-unconvincing flashback, but what stuck in my mind is that they apparently met in a really scenic town in the hills called "Paqueake [sp?] Intercity." As I woke up I was simultaneously still dreaming but also trying to commit the information to memory because it was really cool, and I was trying to also recall whether Paqueake Intercity is real. At one point the boundary between worlds was so thin that I just had to open my mouth and say "Am I awake right now?" I was, but the physical words (which I really did speak out loud here in real life) severed the connection and restored the proper boundary. It still took me a minute or two though, plus getting out of bed, to affirm that Paqueake Intercity is not a real place.
Before showering I decided this would be good Galaxy Federal fodder, and I pondered what kind of singular physical location it could be that might be called an "intercity." That's usually an adjective, or a noun referring to a transportation connection. There are no cities named "Intercity." What would that even mean? So I wrote this glossary entry:
Intercity (T)
A suburban development that functions as a satellite of an urban center inasmuch as it lacks its own natural, complete base of industry and necessary urban services infrastructure and has more workforce members than workforce roles, but which (unlike a true suburb) looks and feels like a self-contained large town or small city inasmuch as it is geographically distinct from the urban center and contains a reasonably full base of daily-life retail and hospitality services for the public along with public-facing core services such as education, healthcare, and first response; a “bedroom community.”
Intercities often occur in space-limited areas, such as hills, valleys, canyons, and areas with water on at least two sides, within one or two hundred miles of their urban center, and are frequently valued for their seclusive peacefulness and pleasantness, with this routinely being the reason the intercity was established in the first place. Sometimes intercities exist as satellites to more than one urban center, naturally accumulating somewhere in between two or even three different centers.
Compare “intercity” with the less common, pseudo-urban “factorage” (a satellite development where people work but don't live, usually due to hazards or nuisances) and “special [area]” (the services equivalent of a factorage, which includes large theme parks and administrative zones), and the much larger “”
So basically what I game up with was the High Desert where I grew up, the tri-cities area being a bedroom community to Los Angeles in those days, with a little Bellingham thrown in for good measure (closer to the very picturesque Canadian intercity I saw in my dream) as an "accumulation" between Seattle and Vancouver, and constrained by geography.
You could probably argue that the definition I came up with doesn't really suit the "inter" prefix, and I wouldn't shoot you down, but I do think the wiggle room is there. I'd also be prepared to entertain other prefixes, such as "trans," but that's not what was in my dream, now is it? There's a certain way we do things here in the Empire...
I also, in the course of writing the glossary entry, came up with the wonderful term factorage as a pure bonus! While intended for Galaxy Federal, I could see that term making it into The Curious Tale as well, since "factor" is a fruitful root there.
I didn't find a fully satisfying spelling for "Paqueake" (PAA-K!-week) and wrote down several possibilities:
Paqueake Intercity
Pacqueake Intercity
Paqueaque Intercity
Paquieque Intercity
Pacquike Intercity
Paiqueake Intercity
This was after deciding that it was "PAA-K!-week" and not "PAA-K!-reek." In my dream, I'm not quite sure what the actual pronunciation was. I like either Paqueake or Pacqueake the most.
Before showering I decided this would be good Galaxy Federal fodder, and I pondered what kind of singular physical location it could be that might be called an "intercity." That's usually an adjective, or a noun referring to a transportation connection. There are no cities named "Intercity." What would that even mean? So I wrote this glossary entry:
Intercity (T)
A suburban development that functions as a satellite of an urban center inasmuch as it lacks its own natural, complete base of industry and necessary urban services infrastructure and has more workforce members than workforce roles, but which (unlike a true suburb) looks and feels like a self-contained large town or small city inasmuch as it is geographically distinct from the urban center and contains a reasonably full base of daily-life retail and hospitality services for the public along with public-facing core services such as education, healthcare, and first response; a “bedroom community.”
Intercities often occur in space-limited areas, such as hills, valleys, canyons, and areas with water on at least two sides, within one or two hundred miles of their urban center, and are frequently valued for their seclusive peacefulness and pleasantness, with this routinely being the reason the intercity was established in the first place. Sometimes intercities exist as satellites to more than one urban center, naturally accumulating somewhere in between two or even three different centers.
Compare “intercity” with the less common, pseudo-urban “factorage” (a satellite development where people work but don't live, usually due to hazards or nuisances) and “special [area]” (the services equivalent of a factorage, which includes large theme parks and administrative zones), and the much larger “”
So basically what I game up with was the High Desert where I grew up, the tri-cities area being a bedroom community to Los Angeles in those days, with a little Bellingham thrown in for good measure (closer to the very picturesque Canadian intercity I saw in my dream) as an "accumulation" between Seattle and Vancouver, and constrained by geography.
You could probably argue that the definition I came up with doesn't really suit the "inter" prefix, and I wouldn't shoot you down, but I do think the wiggle room is there. I'd also be prepared to entertain other prefixes, such as "trans," but that's not what was in my dream, now is it? There's a certain way we do things here in the Empire...
I also, in the course of writing the glossary entry, came up with the wonderful term factorage as a pure bonus! While intended for Galaxy Federal, I could see that term making it into The Curious Tale as well, since "factor" is a fruitful root there.
I didn't find a fully satisfying spelling for "Paqueake" (PAA-K!-week) and wrote down several possibilities:
Paqueake Intercity
Pacqueake Intercity
Paqueaque Intercity
Paquieque Intercity
Pacquike Intercity
Paiqueake Intercity
This was after deciding that it was "PAA-K!-week" and not "PAA-K!-reek." In my dream, I'm not quite sure what the actual pronunciation was. I like either Paqueake or Pacqueake the most.