yarrr, ye scurvy boy-king, halt ye whinin'

Whenever he's not at ILM, Mat is working on some project of his own. He works with crazy intensity, feeding hours like dry twigs into the fire, just absolutely consuming them, burning them up. He sleeps lightly and briefly, often sitting up straight in a chair or lying pharaoh-like on the couch. He's like a storybook spirit, a little djinn or something, except instead of air or water his element is imagination.

Mat's latest project is his biggest yet, and soon there won't be room for me or couch anymore. Mat's latest project is taking over the living room.

He calls it Matropolis, and it's made out of boxes and cans, paper and foam. It's a model railroad with no railroad. The underlying topography is all steep hills made from packing peanuts held in place with wire mesh. It started on one card table, but Mat has added two more, both on different levels, like tectonic plates. Spreading across the tabletop terrain there's a city.

It's a scaled-down dreamscape, a bright glittering hyper-city made with scraps of the familiar. There are Gehry-esque curves made from smooth tinfoil. There are Gothic spikes and crenellations made from dry macaroni. There is an Empire State building made from shards of green glass.

Taped to the wall behind the card tables there are Mat's photo references: printed-out images of museums, cathedrals, office towers, and row houses. Some are skyline shots, but more are close-ups: zoomed-in photos of surfaces and textures taken by Mat himself. Often he stands and stares at them, rubbing his chin, processing the grit and glint, breaking it down and reassembling it with his own bespoke LEGO set. Mat uses everyday materials so ingeniously that their original provenance fades away and you can only see them as the tiny buildings they've become.

On the couch there's a black plastic radio remote; I pick it up and click one of the knobs. A toy-sized airship dozing near the doorway buzzes to life and scoots towards Matropolis. Its master can maneuver it so it docks at the top of the Empire State Building, but I can only make it bump against the windows.

from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan