Gary, Indiana is a steel city on Lake Michigan, built from scratch by the US Steel Corporation; in 1987 it is a postindustrial war zone over ancient lines of power, and the matrix setting of its world.
| Type | Place (city) |
| Spanish entry | Gary, Indiana |
Description
Gary lies in northern Indiana, 40 km east of Chicago; the road to Chicago passes through it. By 1987 its steelworks are off and it is “a kind of Detroit”, the most dangerous city in the country; in the 1950s it was “the promise of the United States”.
The city is T-shaped: the top arm faces the lake, the body runs south toward Maryville (or Merrillville), where whites moved when the factories closed and black mayors began to be elected. That wealthy “Truman Show” zone with its sunset strip is “well defended” by the Russian faction, while Gary is a war zone. The dunes and caverns are four hours away.
The waterfront has corroded metal structures, docks where ore “no longer arrives regularly”, oxidized tracks and piers for factory ships, but also beaches, dunes, pine woods, willows, a forest reserve and Dunes Park, on whose sands the city is built. Springs are cold with dawn mist; summers very humid; nights mild. It always smells of garbage somewhere.
The city has desolate neighborhoods, abandoned factories, old malls “full of plants” and a new one near the Genesis Foundation, which “was not built for no reason”; a concrete Gothic church in one of the most dangerous areas; a bank with safe-deposit boxes; and a café used as a Monday meeting point. Immigration is among the highest in the country: strong black neighborhoods, many Mexicans, some Native Americans; the land was formerly indigenous.
Society
Gary existed to “extract the blood, the iron from the ground, the hidden riches”. Seventy percent of industry closed in the 1970s, for good; 70% of the steelworks are closed, with strikes. Unemployment, the highest murder rate and gangs follow. The gangs outrank the police, but cases, information and missing persons pass through the police. A strong guard of unknown allegiance, only sometimes human, also operates.
Cults sacrifice people and ritually remove the heart. Jean-Baptiste was expelled from the police for investigating them.
Under Gary
The city “is riddled with holes”: tunnels, mines, strange passages, an old city, and abandoned factories with sub-basements and ore depots. Gary was conceived as a magical city from the start, on ancient lines known to the natives, a crossing of energies where reality is thin, “very Stonehenge-style”. For that, and for being abandoned to gangs and “the cadence of capitalism”, it was chosen as the main site for portals and Soviet bases.
History
Founded at the start of the century, Gary hosted several of the world’s largest steel companies and peaked in the mid-1950s as one of the country’s fastest-growing cities. Michael Jackson was born here; Mayor Barnes “is historic”. Two forces dispute “the soul of Gary”; if it is defeated, the city falls “into the claws of postindustrial depression”. When Gary changes, the world changes.
Conflicting accounts
- Founded in 1903, or “1900”.
- “North, on Lake Michigan”, or “south of Lake Michigan, near Chicago”; one record names Lake Ontario.
- The black population “does not reach fifty percent”, or is the highest percentage in the Midwest.
Open questions
- Who the two forces and the cults are; the total population.
- Whether Under Gary, the caverns and the old city are one system, and where their entrances are.
- The course of the ancient lines.
- Where a described wooden gabled house stands.
- Who the man of Gary missing his left ear is.