http://www.hotwired.com/Ren2.0/Twain/Rim/city_missing.html (The Risc Disc Volume 2, 10/1995)
A C I T Y T H A T W A S M I S S I N G H A L F T H E T I M E"Urban dematerialization" is how the world's leading scientists refer to one of the strangest phenomenons of human history. After the Megaquake of 2026 (11.2 on the Richter scale) struck the islands of New Nippon, Neo-Tokyo vanished from the face of the earth. It reappeared again three weeks later, without any visble signs of damage and with a collective amnesia blanketing the nation. Thereafter, it has been undergoing a daily cycle of materialization and dematerialization. It is visible during the daylight Matrix hours, but no one is quite sure where it disappears to at night.
Gobi's friend, Hans Ulbricht, a "new physicist" who works at the Lawrence Livermore lab, speculates: "According to the data we're receiving, it appears that Neo-Tokyo is undergoing a state of flux on an atomic and subcellular level, perhaps as a result of being triggered by the earthquake. We don't know why . . . The city is in what you would call a state of accelerated transformation into another energy matrix."