The City We Became

by N. K. Jemisin

Before them, in a pool of mottled light, lies the primary avatar of New York. He curls atop a bed of ancient newspapers, asleep. There’s a layer of pale dust on his Black skin; he’s been here for days. He looks so alone there, self-contained but unguarded, so young, so fragile. The thought comes: I will do anything for him, which is not Bronca’s thought—Manhattan, whose conviction is part knight-errant discovering the quest to which he needs to devote his life, and part raw lust. Still, Bronca feels it with all the conviction of her own heart. Ours, is what she does think, which surprises her because she’s never been the possessive type. Someone else in their gathering reacts to this, but there is pleasure in the reaction. Yes, flows the thought, echoed this time by all of them. It doesn’t really matter anymore who it comes from. Ours. He is

  ours, and we are his, of course, but

  wait, this isn’t good, how are you in my head

  Focus, Bronca pushes through their growing anxiety. Too many strong egos all tangled up together. This isn’t going to last long. Where?

  The pool of light spins, and for the first time they get a good look at the walls of the place where the primary lies, albeit fleetingly. There are white tiles in patterns, arches decorated with a mosaic of colored bricks—(Bronca gasps suddenly. She knows those tiles.) There is no real sense of placeness or direction. Bronca tries to stop the spinning, reaching out—down—toward the primary again, but she cannot control it—

  And far below them, as they pull away, the primary avatar’s one visible eye suddenly opens.

  Getting warmer, he says without words.

  Then he opens his mouth, and they twist and fall again, into the yawning blackness between his teeth—

  Someone shakes Bronca roughly. She resents the hell out of whoever’s done this. “Leave me alone,” she snaps. “I’m old. I need my fucking rest.”

  “Old B, if you don’t get up right now, I’mma pour cold coffee on you, and if that doesn’t kill you with a heart attack, you’re gonna die from cussing me out. Get up.”

  So Bronca pulls herself awake. She’s lying on the rattier of the two couches in the staff meeting room, which means she’s going to be sore and achy whenever she manages to sit upright. Some of the keyholders are busy upstairs; she can hear one of them distantly doing something with the circular saw, and it’s a testament to how tired she is that she actually slept through that racket. There’s still daylight coming in through the exhibit hall glass, so she couldn’t have slept that long. It’s maybe 8:00 p.m.? In June, the sun doesn’t really set ’til around nine.

  The others are still there, flopped across the chairs or couches. Veneza’s the only one on her feet. Manhattan’s actually sitting on the floor near a couch, which Bronca feels compelled to warn him against; he’s not going to have any feeling left in his ass if he spends too much time on industrial concrete flooring. Too late, though, because he’s blinking blearily as if he, too, just woke up. Brooklyn’s awake, barely. Queens is rubbing her face, but then she rummages in her backpack and pulls out a packet of chocolate-covered espresso beans, popping a handful into her mouth. She offers some to Brooklyn and then Manhattan.

  And then someone else walks into their circle: a tall Asian man in a business suit, maybe in his fifties, with a face like carved marble and a mouth set in a permanent downturn. He’s not Bronca’s main concern, however. The man is carrying someone else over his shoulder. A limp body in a more stylish suit, although grass-stained and filthy.

  “Oh my God,” Brooklyn says, reaching for her phone and immediately thumbing the “emergency call” button. Manhattan scrambles to his feet, shaking his head to clear it.

  “Put that away,” snaps the stranger to Brooklyn. He’s got an accent, but it’s unusual. Chinese-inflected British English, Bronca decides. “He’s a city. Paramedics can’t fix this.”

  They all stare, but Brooklyn puts her phone away. The Asian man flaps his hand rudely at Queens until she gets off the couch, and then he lays the unconscious man across it. This man is younger, leaner, Latino-ishly brown although in a more ambiguous way than usual. He reeks of cigarette smoke. There’s no blood that Bronca can see, but he’s gray in a way that has nothing to do with skin color. It’s the strangest thing to see—as if the whole of the world is in HD color, but this man has somehow regressed to the days when televisions were just three channels and grainy black-and-white pixels. And there’s something… around him? Bronca blinks, squints—and then, when she shifts her awareness partly into cityspace, she understands. There is a kind of translucent envelope surrounding the unconscious man and suffusing his flesh. It has an attached line, like an umbilicus, which trails away to someplace in… South America. Brazil, she guesses, though she’s only 50 percent sure she could pick that country out on a map, and she can’t remember the names of any cities there except Rio.

  She blinks back to find the older man examining her. “Not useless, then,” he says, which makes Bronca stiffen in fury. Then he glances around at all of them, assessing in the same way, unimpressed by all. “But none of you even noticed his injury, even though he was within your own borders.”

  “He’s a city? What’s happened to him?” Queens reaches out and touches the unconscious man gingerly, though she draws back her fingers at once when the envelope around him dimples preemptively, averse to her touch.

  “And who the hell are you?” Brooklyn’s still sitting, but she’s shifted her weight forward a little, aggressively. Manhattan stands at her back, his whole posture very still. That they are both braced for some kind of attack is obvious. But Bronca shakes her head, pushing herself to her feet so that she can wave them calm. Because she can see this stranger in the other place, too, and he’s definitely not another variant on the Woman in White.

  “Call me Hong,” he says, glaring down at the unconscious man. With a sigh, he bends and rummages in the man’s jacket—the envelope does not resist him for some reason—and takes out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. “He said the situation here was a mess, but he’s dramatic. I didn’t think it could be so bad. Yet here we are.”

  Manhattan looks around at the rest of them and mouths, Hong… Kong? Bronca nods. She’s never been to that city, but she’s seen its skyline in photographs—that one dick-shaped tower is distinctive—in her memory and in the other realm, where she sees the totality of him. The city of Hong Kong is standing before them, scowling and lighting up a cigarette.

  “Hey,” Bronca says. When he glances at her, she points at the sign on a nearby wall: NO SMOKING.

  “Fuck off,” he says. It’s said with so little heat, not even the same emotion that one would use to say no, that Bronca’s mouth falls open. She’s not really offended, just surprised. Then, however, Hong coughs and turns a sour look on the cigarette. “I hate smoking.”

  “Then why the hell—” Veneza begins. Before she can finish, however, Hong takes a deep drag from the cigarette, then leans down and blows the smoke out in a long stream over the unconscious man.

  It is as if his whole body absorbs the smoke. He shivers all over, and some of the grayness and blurriness fades. Now he is sepia toned, almost as clear as a Nineties-era third-tier computer monitor. Bronca gasps in spite of herself. Manhattan comes forward quickly. “Maybe you should do that again,” he says to Hong.

  “No,” says Hong, stubbing out the cigarette. “Once is all I could have done, and even that barely works because it’s me that’s doing it, not him. What he really needs is the polluted air of his own city, but it isn’t safe to travel through macrospace right now. And unless one of you is willing to get on a ten-hour flight to bring him there—as I just got off of a fifteen-hour one, and don’t want to see a plane again for a week—then I’m not sure what else to do to accelerate his recovery.” He slumps into a nearby chair, rubbing his face.

  “Okay, wait,” Veneza says. “You’re Hong Kong? Who’s he?” She points at the unconscious man.

  Hong lifts his face long enough to glower at her. “São Paulo, of course. Who
else could he be?”

  “Rio? Some whole other city?” Queens stares at him. “How are we supposed to know?”

  “Rio has not yet been born,” Hong snaps in an acid tone. “Only two cities in this hemisphere are currently alive: his, and yours. That is why he’s here. As the last city born, it’s his duty to help you through your time. Now do you understand? Are you caught up yet?”

  Queens stares at him for an instant, stunned at his rudeness—and then she flares. “You don’t have to be such a fucking asshole!”

  “Don’t I?” Hong stabs a finger at São Paulo. “I see him barely capable of manifesting in this world, half-dead, but none of you seems remotely concerned. And none of you has asked the obvious questions of a supposed ally: Who did this to him, and how might he be avenged?”

  “São Paulo, São Paulo.” Veneza, murmuring to herself, slides off her chair and trots over to the meeting room fridge, starting to rummage through its freezer. The others stare, but Bronca, long used to the girl’s peculiarities, ignores this.

  Manhattan moves over to Hong and the unconscious man; Bronca wonders if it is intentional that he has positioned himself between the strangers and his fellow boroughs. Queens leans around him. “We don’t know this guy,” she says to Hong. “You seem to expect that, but if he was supposed to help us, he didn’t. Is he going to die?”

  “São Paulo still stands, doesn’t it?” After delivering this cryptic remark, Hong leans back in his chair and regards them all with a hard, dispassionate glare.

  Brooklyn says, with strained patience, “Look, we don’t know this guy from Adam. I’m sorry your friend is hurt, but there’s pretty much only one person who could’ve done this to him, if I understand all this correctly. We’ve been calling her the Woman in White, but—”

  Hong is smiling. It’s a far more unnerving smile than even Manhattan’s, because it’s so obviously false. Bronca’s never seen active hate in Manhattan’s eyes, and there’s definitely a glimmer of it here. “She didn’t do this,” Hong says.

  Brooklyn is so thrown as to actually exchange a look with Bronca. Who shakes her head, because she doesn’t get what Hong Kong is on about, either. “And you know this how?” Bronca asks.

  “This kind of injury happens only when we step within the boundaries of another city and that city takes exception to our presence.” Hong’s gaze rakes over each one of them. “In this place, at this time, only New York could have hurt São Paulo so badly.”

  “Whoa, wait, that’s crap,” Manhattan says, scowling. Belatedly, Bronca registers that she’s never heard Manhattan curse. What a strange trait for the island of Fuck You. “None of us did this. We were all here, anyway, except—”

  Silence. Slowly, inexorably, the realization hits. Brooklyn groans softly. Queens shakes her head in disbelief. Manhattan’s expression hardens. Bronca doesn’t want to believe it herself… but the conclusion is undeniable.

  Hong watches each of them—evaluating them, Bronca realizes. Checking to see if any of them is faking surprise or dismay. “Well,” he concludes finally, his tone softening just a bit, “I’m told that New York has five boroughs, and I see only four of you. And that one.” He nods after Veneza, who has by now worked most of her upper body into the freezer. She seems to be digging for something behind the ancient tub of Neapolitan ice cream left over from the staff birthday party for Jess.

  Staten Island. Attacked São Paulo. And because it happened here in New York, where São Paulo did not have his city nearby to protect him, the attack has injured him badly.

  “No.” Manhattan gets up and starts pacing. “It has to have been some kind of misunderstanding. She’s part of us.”

  “Maybe…” Bronca rubs a hand over her hair. She’s tired. Not enough sleep in the past few days, plus gallivanting all over the multiverse takes it out of you. “Maybe Staten Island thought he was the Woman in White. Maybe this was an accident.”

  “Or maybe,” says Brooklyn, who has moved to lean against the wall, her arms folded, “it’s just like what always happens with Staten Island. We should have expected this.”

  Manhattan rounds on her. “What?”

  She laughs humorlessly. “Right, you wouldn’t know, new guy. Staten Island is the sore thumb of this city. The rest of New York votes blue, the island goes red. The rest of us want better subways; the island just wants more cars. You know why the Verrazano Bridge toll is so high? They wanted that. To keep the ‘riffraff’ from Brooklyn out!” She makes a disgusted noise. “So if anybody’s gonna stab an ally in the back, it would be that borough.”

  “We can’t awaken the primary without all of us.” Manhattan still hasn’t raised his voice, but his words have grown clipped, his tone dangerous. “We need her.”

  “Then one of us is going to have to go talk to her,” Bronca says. “Convince her to work with us.”

  Silence.

  Hong sighs and takes a silk handkerchief out of his pocket, mopping his face and neck with it unnecessarily. “He was right; this is worse than London. Though I suppose that’s why this ‘Staten Island’ turned on the rest of you, if she figured out the danger.”

  “What danger?” Bronca frowns at him in confusion. “What’s London got to do with—”

  Then Veneza exclaims in muffled delight and emerges from the freezer. In one hand she’s got a plastic grocery bag, which has been partially wrapped around some kind of square tray inside. Immediately she crouches, and yanks the bag open. “These are frozen, but you can still kind of suck on them,” she mutters. “I was worried my mala half brother would eat them when he comes over to my place, because he would, so I stored them here at work, then forgot about them… Ha!”

  And she triumphantly lifts a small round chocolate-looking thing out of the plastic container.

  “What the fuck,” Brooklyn says.

  Veneza rolls her eyes. “Brigadeiro. Some kind of Brazilian candy thing, like, oh, truffles. My dad’s Portuguese, not Brazilian, but we eat them, too, because yay colonialism. And it’s not specific to São Paulo, but…” Hurrying over to the couch, Veneza crouches and holds the brigadeiro to the man’s lips. If Bronca hadn’t already been staring, she might not believe what she now sees: São Paulo shivers all over and gains more clarity, just at the touch of the sweet. Now he’s full color, if still a bit undersaturated. Veneza murmurs something in Portuguese, coaxing, which seems to help in itself; he shivers brighter, closer to human color. São Paulo opens his mouth. She pops the little thing in—and to everyone’s relief, after a moment he starts to chew. “Ah, beleza. Fucking beautiful. I was just faking the São Paulo accent, though; I hope he doesn’t think I was making fun—”

  São Paulo opens his eyes. “Valeu,” he replies, and then sits up.

  Queens claps in delight. Then she slides over to crouch beside Veneza, stage-whispering to ask if she can have one of the brigadeiros.

  Hong regards São Paulo with disfavor. “Good, you’re not dead.”

  São Paulo glares at him blearily. “It took you three days to get here?”

  “I had to take a plane. Planes take time.”

  “It still shouldn’t have taken—” Then São Paulo’s eyes narrow. “The Summit. You notified them, and they balked. That’s what took you an extra day.”

  Hong snorts a little in amusement, and then he takes out his smartphone and starts scrolling through it. “I’ve told you that it’s nothing personal, Paulo. The old ones hate the younger cities on principle. And maybe they think you’re arrogant.”

  “Of course I’m arrogant, I’m São Paulo. I’m also right, and they don’t want to admit it.” Paulo extends his arms for some reason, examining them as if he expects to see something other than his own limbs. He flexes his hands, and whatever he feels satisfies him, so he relaxes. “So they’ll deny the facts on the ground and make this to be incompetence on my part. You keep asking me why I hate them? This is why.”

  “I set the bones when I found you. Healed them with some Café do Ponto coffe
e that I had in the car. Thank fancy New York airport coffee shops for that, and thank me for my foresight. Brazilian cigarettes taste like shit, by the way.” Then Hong finds whatever he’s looking for on his phone. “Here’s a thing that should concern all of us.” He turns his phone around.

  Bronca comes over to see, as do the others. Paulo glances at the image from where he is, and sighs. The others gasp, but all Bronca can make out is a blur. With an irritated sigh, she pushes through them and takes the phone from Hong, lifting it close enough to see.

  It’s an aerial photograph of New York City, taken at sunset. She’s seen photos like this before, artsy shots taken from drones or helicopters and using specialized equipment. This one is typical in centering Manhattan—but unusual in not excluding the other boroughs from the shot. The helicopter seems to have been hovering somewhere around the midpoint of the island, maybe over Central Park, pointing south. In the foreground spreads lower Manhattan, with its cluster of skyscrapers huddling uneasily on the tongue of landfill that makes up that part of the island. To the left—the image is slightly curved, a deliberate distortion probably meant to suggest that New York encompasses most of Earth—is probably Long Island City, Queens, and maybe Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, curving away toward the Verrazano Bridge. To the far right is Jersey City, or maybe Hoboken; Bronca can’t tell. All of it sparkles in energy-efficient LED-lit squares. The photographer has added a slight orange filter, to warm the coldness of the lights and give the whole image more life. It’s New York at its brightest and most beautiful.

  Except for the farthest point of the image, across a dark stretch of water from the lowermost tip of Manhattan. Staten Island.

  Its lights are much dimmer—so dim, in fact, that Bronca wonders why she hasn’t heard anything about a brownout. But as she squints at the image, she realizes the problem isn’t dimness. It’s that Staten Island seems much farther away than it should be. She blinks, shakes her head. No. The borough is where it should be, but its perspective is off. An optical illusion, maybe, caused by the distortion of the photograph? Whatever it is, it looks as if Staten Island is miles farther from Manhattan than it actually is.