There are nine layers of Troy and they all ended badly: broke-burnt walls, shattered pots, porridge going cold on breakfast tables, whole families gunned down in their driveways. In Troy, one unhappy generation slumps atop another nine times over.

Troy tells its sister-cities, you don’t really want to be Troy. But talk to Cairo, Moscow, Washington, Kigali—who doesn’t want that highbrow glory? Let’s face it: there’s not much to say for smaller places, along the Dardanelles or otherwise, what with pigs rooting into garbage cans, no doctor for miles, that county road Walmart sucking life from Main Street. What human settlement desires such humiliation?

Nine-storied Troy is busy in the August tourist season. All the metros pay a visit. Delhi and D.C. do a walk-through on the 4th. Jakarta, New York, and Istanbul are due on the 10th, Brasilia on the 18th. The wreckage impresses every one of them. I’ll be just like you, they tell Troy’s ruins. But I’ll do it right: control shipping at the chokepoint, manufacture t-shirts and consumer tech, bust the unions. I’ve read your book. Brilliant work, just brilliant.

Self-satisfied, each city flies home first class. On arrival, one of them goes the distance and declares itself New Troy. Soon, it’s kitted up with alabaster walls, empurpled turrets, and a hard-partying princeling who deploys rent-a-cops to keep the peace, and sponsors burnt offerings that buy off fickle gods.

Neighbor-cities complain about the noise, the odor, and the brutal drunkenness. New Troy ignores them. Then it gets ugly. Those other cities hire young Achilles to bring New Troy to heel. He sucker-punches Hector, New Troy’s hero, chains that boy to the Ford pickup’s back fender, then drags that body down the freeway till it’s in pieces. This offends the gods, who order in a drone strike on the hero’s heel.

New Troy cheers that bastard’s death. But the gods don’t love the hubris of New Troy, so they let the neighbor-cities run berserk with arson, murder, rape, and other horrors. On the target list are wedding chapels, neo-natal units, kindergartens, anything that might bring joy.

Some years later, the demolished city in-gathers its survivors. Remember New Troy! proclaims the ruin. A war widow raises the national flag. A policeman sings an anthem. Then the crowd lifts a hundred thousand cell phones, illuminating tear-streaked faces.

New Troy! they shout. Our City on a Hill! Again we rise!

---