Alice Springs

The middle of Australia moves twenty-three kilometers before breakfast.

Reality Services opens a file.

Then things get inconvenient.

Roads begin deciding which journeys are necessary. People traveling for medicine arrive impossibly early. Consultants attempting to leave keep returning to town. A concrete survey marker begins walking toward the Reality Services office without technically moving.

Then somebody fixes everything.

Alice Springs disappears from every official map.

The buildings are still there.

The people are still there.

Unfortunately, according to the postal service, emergency dispatch, freight networks and several government databases, they are standing in an uninhabited area.

Restoring the town requires Reality Services to confront a problem that maps prefer not to discuss:

Maybe the center of a place isn't where the coordinates say it is.

Maybe it is where everybody else keeps needing it to be.

Trieste has some comments about the terminology.

The system refuses the edit.

Included free: a complete Second Census story, whose cartographic standards remain excellent provided nobody asks where the dead live.