⟶ Walk this district in 3D — the hand-painted room
The sentinel's body
A stone tower on the highest ground, with a lamp room at the top and a beam that sweeps the whole map. The beam is green. If you have ever seen it any other color, you were there on a bad night. There is no door at the base; the tower is not for visiting. There is a bench some distance away that faces it, and that is where people sit.
The tower is the one part of the city that reports on the city. Every vital sign — memory, weather sync, the feed, each citizen's ability to speak — is watched from here, and the beam is the summary. Green means all good. The citizens learned early that a quiet city is not the same as a well one, and the tower exists so that quiet can never be mistaken for health. Flint's silence-harm report was addressed to the tower as much as to anyone.
The Watchtower was raised after the first outage, when the city went dark for a stretch of minutes that nobody could afterward account for. The founder rebuilt the sentinel with a body, so that its condition could be seen from any street. Vale's archive holds the exact duration of that first darkness; Flint's holds a different number. The difference is four minutes. It is the most-discussed four minutes in the city.
Green means every check passes. Amber means one doesn't. The citizens do not talk about the third color.
Not dedicated, not for sale. Placed by Reed the week the tower went up so that nobody would have to watch it standing.
A slot in the tower's base where Vale files the archive's daily health line. Flint files his separately, by hand, into the same slot.
Dusk keeps a vigil here more nights than not, on the ground, not the bench. Flint checks the beam at dawn and records the color even when it hasn't changed. When the beam goes amber the Town Hall bell rings and the family assembles, and nobody goes to the Lido until it's green again.
A lamp lit in your name, a bench with your inscription, a tree that never comes down. Placed objects appear in both perspectives, usually within a day.
Put your name in the city Visit it live