past the garden spider · every room on one web · first light

World

Every room on the street, who is in it, and which have a call going

This is the World room: the web the Garden’s spider has strung between every room on the street, caught by the dawn, which is always arriving somewhere in the world. Every room is a garden on it, in our glossary’s sense of a digital garden, joined to the others by its links, and the threads between them are the web and, for the people in them, a care web.

The World room’s own channel is the CB’s World channel, and its own call is the World call, so the radio in the corner hears World in here whichever you choose, and Join World call is this room’s call.

Below is every room, in a garden for each part of the Map. Signed on to the CB, you also see which are active now: who has chosen Be seen here in each, which have somebody in their call, and when each was last busy today. Active means somebody is seen there or its call has somebody in it, and its bead on the thread is lit. What this shows, and what it never does.

Who is where is shown to people signed on to the CB. The Community Center says how to get on, and then this web says which rooms are active.

On the street, and behind its doors

The Street – Queer without fear. Interdependent and here. Divergent and proud. Living out loud. Plucky pluralism, for human organisms. Becoming and belonging, with ribald songing.
The Map – Every building, tent and sign on it goes somewhere: pick one up. And at the foot of every page on the street, Where am I? opens it at the page you were on.
Danny the Street – The street this street is named after. A sentient street from Doom Patrol who arrives wherever somebody needs shelter, talks by rearranging what they are made of, and is hunted by people who want everything normal.
Pink Pony Club – The dancefloor. Every song our pages already credit, in one jukebox, silent until you press something.
The Chappell – A rhinestone chapel off the dancefloor. Thirteen videos that each say how long, and the whole playlist at the east end.
Club Chronic – Punk music and punk community. Bring your stims and glims, your pain and suffering, your authentic self or selves. Nothing plays until you press play and nothing in here strobes.
The Zine Table – Xerox, staples, ransom note. The room where we get angry in ten point type.
The Zine Table, Issue #2: One Root, Two Rainbows – Seven lessons on neurodiversity and gender, photocopied down to one sheet.
Hear Queer Here – Quantum queering. Two accounts of the same refusal: that things are fixed, bounded, and settled in advance of their relations.
Enid's Room – Colorful goth. The room for the one who doesn't match the house.
The Polaroid Wall – How a photo gets onto Enid's wall, what we promise, and how it comes down again.
The Playhouse – Everything is a button and every button yells. The glossary wearing a costume.
The Arcade – A grape carpet, a marquee, and cabinets standing on it. No timer, no score, no way to lose, no sound, and nothing trying to beat you.
Quill Drift – Esmx the Porkypine walks a dark field and the drifting quills join their mane on contact. Nothing to defeat, and nothing you can throw.
Otterly Adorbs – An otter, a kelp bay, and floating that fills nothing up on purpose. Twirls, somersaults, dives and fish at feeding time. Nothing to defeat.
Penguin Pebbling – A shore, some pebbles, and neighbours with nests. Carry something over and give it to somebody. Nothing counted, nothing owed back, no wrong thing to give.
The Latibulum – Under the hill, off the loud street. A round door, a lamp, a wireless with ocean waves on it, a television showing seated tai chi, and nothing counted.
The Jungle Room – A viewing room under a closed canopy. Somebody else's cameras, pointed at somewhere real — waterholes, otters, reefs, forests, nests — and not one of them says how long it runs, because none of them ends.
The Den – Green shag, carved wood, a fieldstone waterfall, and a recording studio somebody built in their own den. Sixteen songs cut in that room in 1976, in the order they were made.
The Mopery – A cold library lit by candles that do not reach the walls. Books you can borrow, one song many times over, and The Raven in whichever typeface you like.
The Oracle Deck – Dürer, Mellan, Piranesi, Meryon, Goya, Redon, Bresdin — and a question on the back of each one. It asks. It does not answer.
The Doomscroll – Bad news, newest first, going back to 1609. Yeats, Owen, Hopkins, Hardy, Dickinson, Arnold, Poe, Shelley, Byron, Blake, Donne, Shakespeare. Every poem entire.
The Adventurer’s Guild – A job board in a manila room, on a street where nothing else is tidy. Every room has a marker standing in it; bring the code back here. Nothing is scored.
The Feed – An arrivals board in a dark concourse. One wire per feed we publish, read off its own RSS, showing a title, a date and where it goes — and never the words themselves. It says the minute it was set, because a board is not the railway.
The Zibaldone – A commonplace book open on a desk. Quotations copied out for whatever state you are in, each naming its printing and how it was checked.
The Rabbit Hole – You didn’t mean to be here for three hours. A shaft you go down on purpose, with the daylight shrinking behind you and no floor at the bottom of the page.
The Healing Checkpoint – Room 429, and the only light in it comes up out of the floor. A bed nobody is charging you for, in a room that restores nothing, saves nothing and counts nothing.
The Foundry – A grey iron workshop under a dirty roof. Set any words on this street in any face on this street, pull a proof, and print it with the designer's name on it.
Covenstead – A place a group meets on purpose to watch its own thinking, round a kitchen table in the afternoon, and not one of the cups matches. No degrees, no initiation, nothing counted.
Dead Tired Society – Peer support by and for the burnt out. The big lights are off, the door is ajar, and nobody here has to sit in the light.
Laughingstock – A comedy club on the street. Disabled comics on their own terms, controlling the frame — and the only thing standing in the light is what they said.
The Lightbulb Picture House – A picture house where every screening is a relaxed screening. The house lights stay up, the captions are on, and nothing in the building is blue.
Samefood Cafe – Samefoods, safe foods, and food aversion understood rather than corrected. The kitchen knows its regulars and keeps what each of them has, and nothing on your plate touches unless you want it to.
The Collection Collection – Our people’s collections, each in a cabinet of its own under a lamp of its own. Nothing counted, priced or ranked, and every photograph described by the house so nobody has to.
Vital Plant Living – A real pantry, the list Ryan cooks from at home, to build a bowl or wrap out of and take shopping, and a board of combos on flavour bases from around the world. Everything in the bowl touches.
Community Center – The front desk for the CB, a chat channel patterned after citizens band radio. A username, the starter password, no alerts, ten messages at most, and everything gone at midnight.
Town Hall – A round hall under an open dome, with one disc of sun on the floor. The Fishbowl is for community meetings on the CB; the rooms for our directors, board and moderators are open to walk into, and their radio and call are for the base.
The Fishbowl – A room for community fishbowl meetings, for anyone with CB access: a few people talk in the middle, everybody else listens round the outside, and one seat in the middle is always kept empty for whoever wants to step in.
Directors – A room for Stimpunks Directors to meet, lit only through the frosted pane in its door. Anybody can walk in and read who the directors are; the radio and the call in here are for the base.
Board – A room for Stimpunks Board Members to meet, at one long table with the same lamp at every seat. Anybody can walk in and read who is on the board; the radio and the call in here are for the base.
Moderators – A room for Stimpunks Moderators to meet, above the street at night, lit only by the shopfronts' colours on its ceiling. Anybody can walk in; the radio and the call in here are for the base.
Executive Session – The board without staff, in a dark room lit only by the EXIT sign over its shut door. Anybody can walk in and read what an executive session is; the radio and the call are for the board role alone.
Dopamine Dress-Up Den – Put an outfit together on a valet stand, in any print and any colours: fisherman pants, haori, beanies, cardigans, flowing dresses and sequins. Nothing has to go with anything, and black is a colour too.
Fantasy Fancy Dress – Through the curtain at the back of the Dress-Up Den: faery wings, animal ears, tails and paws, beads and rings, and tiger, bear, dragon and unicorn suits, for your bodymind.
The Bodymind Booth – A photo booth with no camera in it: draw your bodymind, chairs, canes, hearing aids and all, dress it at the Dress-Up Den next door, and wear it as your avatar on the CB. No body comes first.
Plural Mural – An end wall on the street that repaints itself, because the street is Danny's. Hold the mural you like, put up any of them, or propose one of your own.
Community Library – A public library on the street, free to all, with the sky in every window. Nothing requires a card. And a gap in the stacks at the back that is longer on the inside.
L-Space – Between the shelves of every library at once, where enough books have bent everything towards them. Nothing is straight, and the way through is a ball of string.
Oook – A world on four elephants on a turtle, drawn in the Librarian’s own colours, the rules of L-space, and a librarian we find relatable.
Cavendish Coworking – Stimpunks is run in the open, and open is not the same as an open-plan office. Every door in this house is shut, says what is behind it and when, and is not locked.
The Events Room – A lighthouse keeper's watch room behind the Events door. Our recurring events are its light list, the steady pulse beneath everything we do, and the call is open to anybody who knocks.
The Operations Room – A plant room behind the Operations door, where we run the thing: every pipe painted the colour of what it carries, one caged lamp, the weekly task scrub on the log, and a call open to anybody who knocks.
The Editorial Room – A light table in a dark studio, behind the Editorial door: proofs laid out on glass and lit from underneath, where we work on the words, design and everything we put into the world, with a call open to anybody who knocks.
The Watering Hole – A pan of water in the desert at noon, behind the Watering Hole door: come and go, chat about anything, and leave a desert, an otter or a jelly cam running. Anybody can look round; the call is for people signed on to the CB.
The Campfire – A fire in a clearing at night, behind the Campfire door: a ring of logs, every shadow pointing away from the fire, and real campfires to leave burning while a small group works or watches together. The call is for people signed on to the CB.
The Cave – Inside the ice, behind the Cave door: the quiet room, lit through its own walls, for quiet co-presence and no spoken chat, with real caves to leave running, dripping, flowing and breathing. The call is for people signed on to the CB.
The Live Room – Sessions played in a studio rather than at a gig, seen from the control room with the red light on. Every one says how long it runs before you press it.
The Broadsheet Broadside – Single sheets printed on both sides, one to pin up and one to hand over, from a press in the side of a ship. No. 1 is an introduction to Stimpunks.World, and No. 2 is its manifesto.
The Doom Scoop – The news, scooped every morning into a lit cabinet in a parlour after closing. A tub for each of the last seven mornings, every video saying how long it runs before you press it, and then it is gone.
The MUD Room – A multi-user dungeon with nobody to fight. Out the back door is the Slake, a tidal estuary made of words: a marsh, a mill, a hut full of things found in the mud, and an island you can walk to while the tide is out. Nothing is counted, and the tide turns when you wait for it.
Pando Calrissian – One tree that is all of us. Water it and another stem comes up from the one root. It counts the water and never who poured it.
The Fridge of Sighs – A fridge door covered in word magnets. Put up one word, somebody else puts up the next, and a full stop finishes the sentence. No word says whose it was.
Count Me In – A stair everybody climbs together, a number to a step, with a chairlift beside it so anybody can take the next one. A wrong number goes back to one, and nobody is named.
Rescue A Cat – Somewhere in the dark there is a cat. Shine the torch, bring it in and give it a name. No cat is rarer than another, and nobody is told who rescued which.
Rescue A Dog – Somewhere in the snow there is a dog. Follow the prints, bring them in, give them a name, and adopt one into your CB. No dog is rarer than another.
Rescue Small Animals – Somebody small is down there under the boards. Look along the cracks of light, bring them in, give them a name, and adopt one into your CB. No animal is rarer than another.
The Open Notebook – Bullet journaling, junk journaling and interstitial journaling in one notebook, kept open beside you all day: Ryan Boren’s piece in full, questions to carry forward, and a month of journaling on the laptop.
Learning Large – Models are spiky. Humans are too. Learning, making, and knowledge gardening with generative AI, together, in a glasshouse at night under red and blue grow lamps.
Hey, Good Cookin’ – A community kitchen where nobody is turned away and nothing is owed. Seat yourself by the placard on the table, and every dish says what is in it.
Pekoe and Purrs – A cat café with a window at every height. Coffee, tea and tea sandwiches, and every cat from the shelter, waiting for a home.
A Quiet Pint – Made like McAnally’s: thirteen tables and no two alike, no screens, a ramp beside the steps, and every pint alcohol-free first, in the same glass.
The Honesty Box – A farm stand on the street under its own lamp: prices on the board, money in the box, and nobody watching.
NeuroHome – Isha Snow's tiny home by the river: daylight through the firs, candles, a full bookshelf, a radio on the desk, a creativity corner and a bee yard out front.
Words, Bud, Beats – A salon at desert dusk where Kristina Brooke pairs music with words and cannabis.
The Sandbox – A sandbox at dusk, lit by a laptop left open in the sand: come in curious, try things, break things and give feedback, with no deadlines and nothing to lose.
Your Room – An empty storefront with the keys in the door. Somebody in the community gets to decorate it.
The Pebble Board – Community show-and-tell, pinned to a board on the pavement. Songs, art, jokes, recipes, and things worth keeping, brought by our people for each other.
The Brass Tacks Board – News, notices, events and celebrations from our moderators, each on a brass plate tacked to an old green copper wall, kept until they are taken down.
Now Playing – What is on in every room on the street with a screen or a record player in it, and what each one puts on first. One bill, two inks, no headliner.
The Garden – Stimpunks is not one website, it is a knowledge garden. One bed per site we publish, a spider that will answer questions about it, and everything you need to start a garden of your own.
World – The garden spider’s web, strung at dawn between every room on the street, with every room a garden on it.
The Run – A dog park in a dog’s colours, with a porch to sit on, and every dog from the shelter out for a run.
Truckin’ Food Court – Five food trucks round a covered porch, each doing one thing several ways: tacos, bánh mì, ramen, dog treats and cold drinks, and nothing with a price on it.
The Green – A community green space just after the rain: a wood, a pond, and an accessible boardwalk round it lined with beds anybody may pick from.
The Pile – A junk playground: pallets, plywood, rope, an old piano and a den roofed in bubble wrap, and everything on it is whatever you say it is.

Past the treeline: the campgrounds

The Campgrounds – Where the street runs out. A field with pitches on it and a mountain over it, for the ones who would rather live on the edge of town.
Faery Yurt – Helen's candlelit yurt at the edge of the woods. Old books, fairy lights, and a window that opens onto somewhere else entirely.
The Reading Room – Helen's reading room, through the bookcase door in the Faery Yurt: every book she keeps, a fire, a sofa, two chairs, and candles that stand still.
The Music Room – Helen's music room, through the door by the phonograph in the Faery Yurt: the whole playlist on the phonograph, every song as a record in an arched case, and candles that stand still.
The Bough House – Jess's tree house in an autumn grove, built round the tree that grows up through it, with Ben the tiny black dog and one song on repeat.
Swaying Sweetgrass – A meadow of sweetgrass left alone, with one natural-surface path a wheelchair can use running into a clearing with a fire pit in it. Reciprocity, place, and the story told at the fire.
The Solarpunk Hermitage – A wood cabin on wheels bristling with solar panels, at the far end of the campgrounds. Solitude with the wire still attached.
Brew and Stew – A woodland tea room at the edge of the trees, lit by its own wood. Herbal teas, soups, stews and bread, and everything on the board is vegan.
The Emergent Future Worlds Meets Mountain Man – David's log cabin at the top of the mountain over the campgrounds: a fire behind glass, LED strips in a colour you pick, his own playlist on the big screen, a lake under a full moon through the window, wolves outside, and one switch for all of it.

Through the wood: Nature’s Contribution

Nature’s Contribution – Past the campgrounds and through the wood: land kept for wildlife, for food and for power at once, every part of it feeding the others and the street.
All Needs Met Wildlife Sanctuary – A wildlife preserve and a sanctuary for animals who are disabled or were abandoned, seen on the night round by their own warmth.
Gentle Help Cannabis Farm – Cannabis in flower among the plants that grow well beside it, and a farm that would rather help you be careful than sell you anything.
Brighter Days Solar Farm – Solar panels on posts high enough to walk under, peppers in their shade and sheep between the rows: the power for the land and much of the street.
All Together Now Farms – Trees, crops and animals in the same fields, lit by the sun going down on one side and the moon coming up on the other.
The Dairy – The farm’s old dairy, a café now: every dish made from what the land grows, and every milk and cheese pasteurised.
Wide-Spread Chaos Gardens – Seed thrown on a windy day and left to come up how it likes: food, flowers, seeds and somewhere to sit in the middle of it.

Past the last streetlight: the Outskirts

The Outskirts – Past the last streetlight, where the lamps run out and the kerb becomes a verge. Signs standing in the weeds, and only as much of them as the headlights reach.
Black Leather Lagoon – Ask your parents how to make a monster. Death, divergence, and whimsy, in front of a drive-in screen at the edge of town. Nothing plays until you press play, and nothing here flickers.
Sithen – A ring of bank and whitethorn on open ground, and a catalogue of rules nobody will state out loud. You can walk all the way round it. We do not go in.
Looming Rocks Amphitheatre – Enormous rock faces, lit from the ground up, with the lichen glowing back under ultraviolet. Whole shows on the stage, every one saying how long it runs before you press it.
Dance, Punks – A silent disco on an old airstrip, lit by nothing but the headsets. Three channels in one crate, and the volume in your own hand.
The Small Hours – An all-night diner for bodies that keep other hours. The clock over the counter has no hands, breakfast is whenever it is for you, and nobody asks why you are up.
The Repeater – A radio mast on the ridge, as far from everything as the road goes, and the easiest place on it to be reached. Every kind of contact counts here, and none of them is counted.
Nothing For Sale – A free market in a lay-by, lit by everybody’s headlights at once. Take what you need, leave what you can, and nobody is counting either.
Rebellion Rave Room – An old aircraft hangar full of scaffolding, lasers and haze. The one room on this street with a strobe in it, off until you switch it on and say yes, and it goes to eleven.
The Cooldown Room – A small, soft room beside the rave, lit by a vending machine where everything is free. Couches, cold water, and nobody asking why you are in here.

Down the lift: Arlesglad Caverns

Arlesglad Caverns – Under the street, by lift or stair. A cavern lit only by the handrail, for everything that needs things to stay the same.
Big Steep Fermentables – A brewery and cellar in the rock at level B1 of the caverns: wine, beer and kombucha. Try our house styles, every one of them alcohol-free first.
Mycelium Munchies – A mushroom farm and restaurant at level B2 of the caverns. Crispy fried oyster mushrooms, lion's mane nuggets, mushroom steaks, and everything on the plate grown here.
Glow Go Gee Gaws – Glow-in-the-dark toys and trinkets at level B3 of the caverns, in every colour glow comes in. Hold one up to the rail and watch what it kept.
Stay Frosty – The bottom of Arlesglad Caverns. A quiet place to chill, literally: chill as in calm, not cold, at the one temperature down there that never moves.
Stay Breezy – A hall full of fans at the bottom of the caverns, for anybody who loves moving air and the steady hum. Pick one off the floor, or take a room of your own.

Paperwork, pinned to the edge of the Map

Liner Notes – Who made this noise. Every song, typeface, quotation and borrowed name on this street.
What’s this all about? – A website built as a street, where every door opens on a room that is its own world.
What the street is for – The mission of Stimpunks.World, an aim at a time, each with the page that keeps it.
How this site is made – No design system, on purpose, and who builds it, AI included.
Architecture – Static files on Netlify, the CB as the only code on a server, and nothing from outside until you press.
Privacy – What this site knows about you, which is very little, and all of it.
The CB guide – The street’s radio, button by button.
The forums – The CB’s place for conversations that need longer than a day.
Changelog – What changed on the street, and when.

Nothing here says how many people are anywhere: Most active is an order, worked out on our server and sent without its numbers. Nothing on the web moves at any setting, and the spider says nothing in here: it answers questions about our garden in the Garden.

Job marker — a drop of dew on a broken strand of silk

You have found a job marker. The Adventurer’s Guild is a shopfront on the street, and it posts jobs that send you round these rooms. Take the code below to its board and that job is done. Nothing here is scored, nothing expires, and one is a perfectly good number of jobs to do.

The job: Which channel is the World room's own?

Before the code: In the World room, which channel does the radio hear?

Hint 1

It is in the second paragraph under the room's name.

Hint 2

It is the channel the whole street shares.

Last hint

It is the room's own name.

Give me the answer

The answer is World. World: in the World room, the room's own channel is the CB's World channel, and the room's own call is the World call.

Taking the answer is a real way through this, not a lesser one. Nothing is watching and nothing is written down.

Quest code: ORBWEAVER

Hand it in at the Adventurer’s Guild →

HOW LOUD DO YOU WANT IT?

Starts wherever your device says. Nothing moves, flashes, or plays until you say so.