Moises Maloney of the NZPD stood looking at a small brick building in the burrough of Quaints. Ever since the incident with the fishmongers, he’d been relegated to petty shit like this.

By-law enforcement.

It was a nice day, he supposed, and he wasn’t doing anything particularly unpleasant, and by the gods are there plenty of unpleasantnesses in New Zork City, but sigh.

By-law 86732, i.e. the one about angles:

“No building [legalese] shall be constructed in a way [legalese] as to be comprised of; or, by optical or other means of illusion, resemble being comprised of, right angles.”

It was the by-law that gave NZC its peculiar look. Expressionist, misinclined, sharp, jagged even, some would say. It made the streets seem like they were waiting to masticate you. On humid days, they almost dripped saliva.

Why it was that way few people understood. It had something to do with corruption and unions and the fact that, way back when, maybe in the 70s, someone who knew someone who worked in city hall, maybe the mayor, had fucked up and come into possession of a bunch of tools, or maybe it was building materials, that were defective, crooked. (Here one can say that the metaphor, while unintended, is appropriate.) Thus city hall duly passed a by-law that any new buildings had to be crooked themselves, and that any old building that wasn’t crooked had to come into compliance with crookedness within a year.

The by-law stuck.

And NZC looks like it looks, the way it’s always looked as far as Moises Maloney’s concerned, because he’s always had a healthy suspicion of the existence of the past.

In truth, (and isn't that what we are always in pursuit of?) [Editor’s note: No!] it does have its benefits, e.g. rainwater doesn’t collect anywhere and instead flows nicely down into the streets, (which causes flooding, but that’s its own issue with its own history and regulations,) and nowhere else looks quite like NZC, although most of the city’s residents haven’t been anywhere else, Moises Maloney included, so perhaps that’s mostly a benefit-in-waiting. Tourists who come to NZC often get headaches and if you’re prone to migraines and from anywhere else, your doctor will probably advise against a visit to the city.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Anyway, today Moises Maloney was looking at this small building, built neatly of right angles, and wondering who’d have complained about it, but then he saw the loitering neighbourhoodlums and understood by their punk faces they were vengeful little fucks, so having solved the mystery he knocked on the front door.

An old man answered.

“Yes?”

Moises Maloney identified himself. “Are you the owner of this building?”

“Yes, sir,” said the old man.

“You are in violation of by-law 86732.”

“I can do what by law now?” the old man asked. He was evidently hard of hearing.

“You are in violation of a by-law,” said Moises Maloney. “Your building does not comply with the rules.”

“What rules?”

“By-law 86732,” said Moises Maloney and quoted the law at the old man, who nodded.

The old man thought awhile. “Too many right angles, you say?”

“Yes.”

“And to conform, I would need to convert my right angles to wrong ones?”

“I believe the process is called acutization,” said Moises Maloney.

“You know,” said the old man, smiling, “I’ve been around so long I still remember the days when—”

His head exploded.

Moises Maloney wiped his face, got out his electronic notepad (“e-notee-pad”) and checked off the Resolved box on his By-law Enforcement Order. He sent it in to HQ, then filled out a Death Event form, noting the date, the time and the cause of death as “head eruption caused by nostalgia.”

The powers-that-be in New Zork City may have been serious about their building by-laws, but it was the city itself that took reminiscing about better times deadly seriously. Took it personally. From when, no one was quite sure, as trying to remember the day when the first head exploded was perilously close to remembering the day before the day when the first head exploded, and that former day it was all-too-easy to remember as a better time.

(That this seemingly urban prohibition by a city in some sense sentient, and obviously prickly, doesn't apply to your narrator is a stroke of your good fortune. Otherwise, you'd have no one to tell you tales of NZC!)

As he traveled home on the subway that night, Moises Maloney flirted with a woman named Thelma Baker. Flirted so effectively (or perhaps they were both so desperately lonely) that he ended up in her apartment undressed and with the lights off, but while they were kissing she suddenly asked what it was that she had in her mouth, and Moises Maloney realized he probably hadn't washed properly, so when he told her that it was likely a piece of an old man's head, it soured the mood and the night went nowhere.