The City We Became

by N. K. Jemisin

  “Not wherever you go. Just places where you’ve rejected this reality to some degree or another. Even before you were a city, such acts had power. Superpositioned objects change state depending on observation, after all.”

  “Okay.” She doesn’t like it. She doesn’t even understand it. But it can’t be a big deal because the Woman in White is a nice woman who looks okay, and so Aislyn has no real reason to be afraid, or to feel used. And anyway, she’s telling Aislyn about it, so isn’t that better than lying? “Oh… ah… okay, then.”

  “That’s why I like you, Lyn.” It is her mother’s nickname for her. Her father has never called her Lyn. She’s never allowed anyone else to do so, either. “You’re so accommodating. Who would have thought this city, of all of them, would have such an accommodating component? Such a tolerant girl-shape.”

  Yes. Aislyn has always tried to be tolerant. She takes a deep breath. “So, the… adapters?”

  “Oh, right. Well, if I can just put down a few more like the one in your yard, I’ll be able to align the… hmm. Errrf.” Aislyn hears the Woman in White shift in irritation, maybe fidgeting. “This place is so primitive. I’m not even sure I can come up with enough analogies to explain it, since you barely understand how this universe works, let alone others.”

  “Oh, wow, I didn’t know there was more than one.”

  “See? How could you not know something so basic? But oh, there are ex-approaches-infinity-llions. Hakretimajillions. More every minute!” But for once, the Woman in White does not sound delighted by this. “That’s the problem, of course. Once, there was only one universe. One realm where possibility became probability, and life was born. So much life! On nearly every plane and surface, floating along every layer of air, stuffed into every crack. Not like this stingy universe, where life huddles on only a few wet balls surrounding a handful of gassy balls. Ah, Lyn, if only you could see how beautiful it is.”

  And in the rearview mirror, something changes, as if in response to the Woman’s wistfulness. Aislyn tries not to stare because she’s driving, and even though it’s only a two-lane road in an area where there are fields and stands of woods in between neighborhoods, she still isn’t interested in learning what a head-on collision feels like. And yet… In quick glances at the rearview, she no longer sees the car that’s tailgating her or the road beyond it, or the school bus that should be turning onto that road from an intersection she just passed. Instead she sees that empty, shadowed room again, from when the Woman first spoke to her. Then she notices a swirl of vapor in the air… or is it liquid? Or is it, more simply, just color? Just a sinuous swath of color that darts and flows across the mirror like something liquid, but also like something alive, and pinky pale against the stark shadows of the background. Something else moves across it—and here Aislyn feels a bit of alarm because it is a black something, and black things are usually bad. It’s only a little bit of alarm, though, because then she sees that the black thing is a rounded, cylindrical blackness, and nothing bad ever came in that shape. This thing makes her think of hockey pucks. She likes hockey, even though the Rangers aren’t very good. (She prefers the Islanders, even if they’re not of her island, exactly.) Or maybe this thing is something like those chocolate cakes that used to come wrapped in foil when she was a kid, and which she hasn’t eaten since she was thirteen because her father once said she was gaining too much weight. What were those called? Ring Dongs? Ding Hos? Regardless, once upon a time she loved them, so when she sees this thing scuttle across the mist-stream of pink and sort of erase it, she just thinks, Huh, weird but kind of cute, and keeps driving.

  (Is that movement scuttling, though? The pink mist flinches away. She hears a faint, high-pitched gibber that makes her think of pleading, of pain and struggle and then hopeless despair—and then the mirror is empty again, and the road demands her attention.)

  “There are no cities in that first universe,” the Woman continues as they pass woodlands and strip malls. “There are wonders you can’t imagine. Convolutions of physicality and intellect beyond anything this world might ever achieve, but nothing so monstrous as cities. It seems strange to you, I know, to think of something so central to your existence—you are one!—as monstrous. But to the people of that realm, there is nothing more terrifying and terrible.” She utters a little sad laugh. “Than cities.”

  Aislyn contemplates this, and finds it not at all difficult to understand. She has stood on the docks of the ferry and gazed across the water at distant, looming Manhattan, and she has trembled in its shadow. “Cities are monstrous,” she says. “Filthy. Too many people, too many cars. Criminals and perverts everywhere. And they’re bad for the environment, too.”

  “Yes, yes.” The Woman flicks a hand; Aislyn sees the edge of fingers in the rearview, momentarily occluding the stark-shadowed place. When the Woman’s fingers have passed, Aislyn sees that the black cylindrical thing is back, lingering now at the edge of the mirror. It’s not still; it’s bouncing up and down, arrhythmically. Weird, but cute.

  The Woman continues, “All of that is true, but that’s not what really makes cities so awful. You must understand some of it now, yes? You’ve seen beyond this realm into the edge of other realities. It is the nature of all thinking entities to know ourselves, at least to some degree.”

  “I—” Aislyn starts to protest. She dislikes being told that she is this thing she loathes. She also doesn’t understand whatever the Woman is trying to say. “I guess?”

  “Yes. Well.” Another hand flutter. The hockey dong—Aislyn snickers at this, it feels dirty, better go with Ding Ho instead—abruptly stops bouncing or pulsing or whatever it’s doing, as if it has noticed the Woman’s movement. As if the two images have anything to do with each other. But the place of stark shadows isn’t real, is it? It seems farther away, somewhere well beyond the rear window of the car. She has been sure, until this moment, that it was an optical illusion—a reflection off one of the back seat windows, combined with passing shifts of sunlight. Or a weird daydream. She did have corned beef hash for breakfast; maybe the mirror stuff is undigested beef or underdone potato.

  (Much, much, much later, when the whole business is nearly over, she will look back on this incident and think, Confirmation bias is a bitch.)

  “The problem,” the Woman continues, now working up to a real rant if Aislyn reads her voice correctly, “is that cities are rapacious. There is infinite room in existence for all the universes that spin forth from life—even universes as bizarre as this one! Room for everyone. But some life forms cannot be content with just their ecological niche; they are born invasive. They punch through—and when they do, they turn ten thousand realities into nothing, like that.” She snaps her fingers. “And they can do much, much worse, if they put their backs into it. Or even if they don’t.”

  Something odd is happening in the world of stark shadows. The Ding Ho—is it bigger? No, just closer to the mirror, although the perspective seems off. Abruptly there’s a faint waft of cold air on the back of Aislyn’s neck, which feels like bliss. It’s June, and the car’s air conditioner isn’t working well; it only sporadically spits out gusts of actual cold. Probably needs fluid. Maybe the Woman in White has opened one of the vents in the back seat.

  “That, uh, sounds awful,” Aislyn says, trying to keep an eye on her speed. She’ll never hear the end of it from her father if she gets a ticket.

  “It is a catastrophe that makes the end of your entire species a mere triviality.” Aislyn actually hears her shrug. “What’s one more extinction, after all, when numberless intelligent species are wiped out every day by the horror of cities?”

  The Woman has just lost Aislyn. “Wait, what?”

  “You work in a library. Have you read any Lovecraft?”

  Aislyn rubs the back of her neck. The cold is starting to give her a muscle spasm or something. She wants to say something to the Woman in White about shutting the back seat vent, but around them, the occasional woods have given way
to auto shops and gas stations, and billboards for shopping malls in New Jersey. This means they’re almost at the library where Aislyn works. She’s got some muscle relaxants in her purse if it gets too bad.

  “I’ve read him a little,” she replies. Science fiction and fantasy have never really been her taste, except in romance; she enjoys giggling over stories about alien men with big blue penises. One of the senior librarians is a big Lovecraft fan, though, and he kept insisting that she read some until she finally gave in. “I mean, The Shadow over Innsmouth was really rambly, but I get why people make movies about the monsters. I tried some of his short stories, too.” Those had been even more rambly. Still, the one she’d read that was about New York—set in Red Hook, where Ikea is—had sounded pretty accurate to how her father describes Brooklyn: full of criminals and scary foreigners, and gangs of foreigners being criminal. She’d liked that one, at least, because its protagonist was Irish, and afraid of tall buildings.

  The Woman’s voice has grown grim. “Lovecraft was right, Aislyn. There’s something different about cities, and about the people in cities. Individually, your kind are nothing. Microbes. Algae. But never forget that algae once wiped out nearly all life on this planet.”

  “Wait, what?” That doesn’t sound right. Algae? “Really?”

  “Really. Cities are an endemic problem of life amid these branches of existence: put enough human beings in one place, vary the strains enough, make the growth medium fertile enough, and your kind develops… hybrid vigor.” Aislyn can actually hear the Woman in White shudder elaborately, the cloth of her outfit shifting. “You eat each other’s cuisines and learn new techniques, new spice combinations, trade for new ingredients; you grow stronger. You wear each other’s fashions and learn new patterns to apply to your lives, and because of it you grow stronger. Even just one new language infects you with a radically different way of thinking! Why, in just a few thousand years you’ve gone from being unable to count to understanding the quantum universe—and you’d have made it there faster if you didn’t keep destroying each other’s cultures and having to start over from scratch. It’s just too much.”

  Aislyn frowns. “What’s wrong with learning a new language?” She taught herself some Gaelic as a child. It’s hard to pronounce, and with no other Gaelic speakers around that she could practice on, she’s forgotten nearly all of what she learned, outside of a few colorful phrases and some songs. But she cannot comprehend how learning it was a bad thing.

  “Nothing. I’m just describing your nature. I don’t judge. But it’s a problem because as you grow, your cities grow. You change one another, city and people, people and city. Then your cities start bringing multiple universes together—and once a few such breaches have occurred, why, the whole structure of existence is weakened.”

  Now the Woman in White leans forward. Aislyn can see her hand on the headrest of the passenger seat. “Countless people, dying on countless worlds, and you don’t even notice. Galaxies crushed beneath the dread, cold foundations of your reality. Some of your victims are aware enough to cry out to you, you know, but you do not hear. Some try to fight you, flee to nearby realms in hope of sanctuary, even worship you in hope of mercy—but not one of those poor souls has a chance. Does that sound fair to you, Aislyn? Do you understand why I have to stop you?”

  In a horrible way, Aislyn does. And if it’s true… God, it’s awful. But… she frowns, and feels a little guilty for thinking this, but… is it evil? To some degree, what the Woman is talking about sounds like what Ms. Pappalardo, one of the librarians, who’s also a vegan, always tells Aislyn: Countless living beings have been enslaved so you could have honey in your tea. Aislyn’s read that this is wrong anyway; the bees make more honey than they can use, and the relationship between bees and humans is more symbiotic than slavery. But the real reason Aislyn doesn’t stop putting honey in her tea is because… for God’s sake, it’s just honey.

  “Maybe there’s another way,” Aislyn finds herself saying. She recalls a bumper sticker on Ms. Pappalardo’s car. “For all of us to… coexist?”

  “No. It’s been tried.” Then the Woman sighs, a little sadly. “The thing is, I know you’re not evil. I was created to help the people back home understand you, after all—and I do, more than any of them ever could! But understanding doesn’t always help.”

  Da-dump.

  Aislyn, in the middle of making a turn, twitches the steering wheel a little late, distracted by both the conversation and that weird sound behind her. The car’s turning radius is off; she hits the curb and curses out loud, jerking the wheel sharply to correct. She overcorrects at first, and then has to slew the wheel in the other direction to keep from hitting an oncoming car. The whole car lurches from side to side, and once again it feels weirdly sluggish and heavy as she does so—

  “What—Damn it, I told you to stay in the staging area,” the Woman snaps as Aislyn finally regains control of the car. “Now look what you did.”

  Stung, Aislyn blurts, “Sorry! I just—There was a weird sound—”

  “I didn’t mean you, Lyn dear, sorry.” Abruptly there is the sound of a door being firmly closed, and then the cold draft stops. The car lifts immediately, struts up-creaking in what Aislyn imagines is relief. She’s going to have to get those checked.

  Pulling into the library’s parking lot, Aislyn picks a parking spot, shuts off the car, and lets out a little breath of relief at the close call. She’s going to have to have her front rims checked for dings, too, and her dad’s going to kill her if she’s damaged the car badly enough to need major repairs, but she’s glad it wasn’t worse.

  When she glances at the rearview, it’s normal again: the parking lot, the street beyond where cars pass, a guy walking by while picking his nose. She turns around and finds the Woman in White turned around as well, glaring out the back window as if she is personally, deeply offended by nose-picking. It’s weird, but no weirder than usual, so Aislyn says, “So, do you need me to call you a Lyft or something?” She really doesn’t want the Woman in White following her into work.

  “What? Oh. No, dear.” And the Woman smiles as she turns back. It is a kind, fond smile. “Always so thoughtful. I’m going to miss you.”

  “Are you going somewhere?”

  “No. Listen.” She reaches out to touch Aislyn’s hand where it is braced on the passenger seat. “You understand that I don’t hate you, yes? Belief matters in the multiverse, and I’m just enough like you to crave trust and connection and all that other nonsense. So… do you believe me? When I say that I care about you, and wish circumstances could be different?”

  “Of course I do!” Aislyn has never had it in her to hold good intentions against people. And the Woman in White seems so sincere in her regret; Aislyn’s heart goes out to her. She cannot imagine a world where people who mean well can do any real harm. She cannot reconcile all these big, elaborate topics—multiverses and inevitable doom and life as a living city—with the simple reality of the Woman, who is a genuinely nice person. The world needs more nice people.

  So she pats the Woman’s hand awkwardly, given their positions. “It will be all right. You’ll see.”

  The Woman smiles. “You’re a good dimension-crushing abomination,” she says. “I’ll do everything I can to take care of you, for as long as I can.”

  And then—if Aislyn hadn’t been looking right at her, she wouldn’t believe it—the Woman in White vanishes. There’s no puff of smoke or popping sound or magical door opening and closing. She’s just gone.

  Aislyn sits there for a moment, stunned and confused and wondering why she smells a whiff of ocean brine. But she’s about to be late, so after a moment she just shakes her head, accepts the things she cannot understand, and hurries into work.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Beaux Arts, Bitches

  It’s what happened with London,” explains the living embodiment of the city of Hong Kong, with barely concealed impatience. “There were well over a dozen ava
tars in that case. Then something happened and there was only one—but the city was safe from then on.”

  Silence falls. After a moment of this, in which Manny and the others stare at Hong, speechless, he seems to grow even more irritated. He glares at Paulo. “You haven’t told them?”

  Paulo, still leaning on Veneza, sighs loudly. “I haven’t met them, until now. And I would have explained it once they were ready, in a way they could understand, because I am not a blundering insensitive ass.”

  “Consume us,” Manny says, speaking slowly to be sure he understands. “As in ‘eat.’”

  “As in ‘cannibalism,’” Queens blurts, her eyes wide. “As in, ‘death’!”

  “As in Sodom and Gomorrah,” Hong says, putting his hands on his hips. “Although I’m told the Enemy killed the former before the merger was complete—while they were in a transitional state akin to what you are, now. ‘Fire and brimstone’ consumed them then, the legends say; it was a volcanic eruption. The actual event destroyed four cities in the region, including two that weren’t even alive yet.”

  Manny’s shocked to realize Sodom and Gomorrah were real places. No volcanoes here, at least, he thinks, in a kind of giddy, terrifying denial. New York is islands on the edge of a sea—and climate change looms. A flood is more likely.

  “Something like that is what could happen here,” Hong continues, as if he has heard Manny’s speculation. He’s relentless. “If New York doesn’t hurry up and eat all of you, it will happen. Except, given the interconnectedness of this metropolitan region, we believe the resulting cataclysm will take out parts of New Jersey, Long Island, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut in the process. Possibly western Massachusetts, too. There is a significant fault line in this region.”