A young man returns home after years of absence to find that, as always, some things have changed while others, as always, have remained the same. He comes back to the hometown he escaped from to try and sell the two things still left untouched on his body. His story, though, is just an illustration, a guide to lead you into the sunny corridors of Southern California, but never out of them. It is a symptom of suburbia receding in a fade-out that cannot be reversed. Of course, it could be read as the hidden tale of a family dissolving in the bowels of Southern California, or taught as the secret history of the State, dreaming itself into oblivion.

 

The Mundane History of Lockwood Heights is the first story in the System Socal story cycle.