The City We Became

by N. K. Jemisin

  “You should’ve gone, too,” Bronca says to Paulo. It’s useless, but she’s never been able to keep herself from saying, I told you so. Probably the biggest reason why she’s single now.

  Paulo takes a deep breath. “There’s a not-insubstantial chance that whatever happens will simply push me back home to my city. Until the universe ends, in any case.”

  “Do you think Hong, then—?”

  “Uh. Old B?”

  They all turn, startled. That’s because Veneza sounds dazed. When she looks up, she’s breathing harder, her face all over sweat. But she doesn’t look ill or faint, which Bronca is glad to see, because she doesn’t want to think about what it means if that awful creature stung her or bit her or poisoned her in some unearthly way. Maybe it’s foolish to fret so over one person’s life when the entire city is about to get cosmically curb-stomped, but that’s how the human heart works sometimes.

  So she goes over to Veneza. “Yeah, kid? What—”

  And then she stops. Veneza abruptly backs up a step. Bronca stops, too. They stare at each other, eyes widening.

  She is a dirty, tired little thing—struggling in the shadow of greatness, but proud of what she has. Potential is what she’s got, in spades, and she stretches out stubby little piers and puffs a sunken chest of long-vanished industry and tosses her crown of new, gaudy skyscrapers as if to say, Come at me, I don’t care how big you are, I’m just as badass as you—

  “No,” Bronca breathes, stunned.

  “Um,” Veneza says. She’s shaking a little. But she’s also grinning. “Man, what the fuck.”

  “What?” Manny looks from Veneza to the rest of them and back. Queens is just as visibly confused.

  “Nothing that matters,” Brooklyn murmurs. Her head is bowed; she’s already mourning her family.

  Paulo, however, is staring at Veneza, his eyes wide with realization. A strange look comes over his face. He scrambles around the newspaper pile, fast, and grabs Veneza by the arm so hard that she yelps. Bronca reacts immediately, grabbing his arm in turn. “Hey, what the hell are you—”

  “Living cities aren’t defined by politics,” he says. It’s almost a shout, so urgently does he speak. “Not by city limits or county lines. They’re made of whatever the people who live in and around them believe. And there is no other reason for her to have instantiated, here, now, than—” He gives up on words and yanks Veneza again, toward the newspaper pile. Bronca gets it this time. Her hand has gone numb. She lets him go, then hurries to follow.

  The little room has begun to darken. Part of that is because the museum director’s flashlight is starting to run down, but it’s also because the sunlight is gone, completely gone. When Bronca looks up, she can see blue sky, but it’s a dark blue, as if the stars are about to come out. And when she squints, she sees that something is solidifying out of nothingness, an unearthly foundation forming in the air high above New York—

  Veneza resists Paulo, looking wildly back at Bronca. “B! B, this is freaking me out, what—”

  Bronca bats at Paulo until he lets go, then she pulls Veneza into the circle around the primary avatar. “Every single person I’ve ever met from Jersey City says they’re from New York,” she says, speaking with low urgency. “Not to New Yorkers, because we’re assholes about it, but to everybody else. And the whole world accepts that. Right? Because to most people with sense, a city that’s in spitting distance of Manhattan, closer even than Staten Island, might as well be New York. Right?”

  There is a sound building around them, above them, throughout the city. A rumble would come from the earth; this is a low, howling siren, like a choir of ten thousand voices screaming at once. Or—no. Like wind howling as it is displaced, shoved aside so fast that the air grows hot. Bronca has not heard anything like it since Hurricane Sandy’s freight-train blasts of destruction, and this is much worse. R’lyeh comes.

  But the others get it now. Even Veneza, who’s staring at all of them. Tears have welled in her eyes. She’s grinning, elated—because, Bronca realizes very belatedly, this is what she’s hoped for. She’s been with them since the beginning, after all, watching and wanting to help. Understanding enough to envy, perhaps. And the city of New York, which gobbles up any newcomers foolish enough to want in, has reacted accordingly.

  It’s impossible not to smile, too, even here at the end of the world. Joy is joy. Bronca takes one of her hands, letting her love show; they are family now. Manny takes the other, his expression intent.

  “What are you, Young B?” Bronca asks her. She’s grinning.

  Veneza laughs, tilting her head back like she’s drunk. “I’m Jersey City, goddamn it!”

  Manny’s expression clears finally. He exhales in relief as strange mechanisms within his psyche shift and bring into focus the path forward. They all feel this. “And who are we?” he asks them, just as the little chamber goes dark.

  All of it, that is, except for the light that surrounds the primary on his bed of tabloid tales and buried ledes. He’s glowing, they see at last. The light never came from anywhere else.

  And as they watch, he inhales, stretches, rolls onto his back, and opens his eyes.

  “We’re New York,” he says. And grins. “Aw, yeah.”

  They are New York.

  They are the single titanic concussion of sound from every subwoofer and every steel drum circle that has ever annoyed elderly neighbors and woken babies while secretly giving everyone else an excuse to smile and dance. It is this sound, a violent wave of pure percussive force pouring from a thousand nightclub doors and orchestra pits, that slams upward and outward from the city. If it were happening in peoplespace, there would be a lot of hearing impairments in its wake. It happens in the place where cities dwell—and where rude R’lyeh has actually dared to try to usurp New York’s seat upon the world. Oh no the hell you don’t, they snarl, and shove the interloper away.

  They are methane-green sewer fire that races through the streets, unreal and yet extradimensionally hot, tracing out gridlines and curbs—and searing away every atom of alien universe that has made its unwelcome home on the city’s asphalt. Every tower and white structure freezes, then crumbles into nothingness. Office workers who’ve spent the morning covered in tendrils stop midwalk, blinking, as suddenly they are blasted clean. It doesn’t hurt. At worst their skin prickles a little. Some of them sigh and put on eczema cream, then go on about their day.

  But they have become hunting packs of many-limbed, faceless stockbrokers, as hot on the scent as they are on an insider tip, who crawl along the city’s walls and leap across its flat rooftops, grinning with feral teeth. They are stick-figure stick-up kids, scarecrows dressed in knockoff Burberry, who lurk in the shadows to ambush their prey. They stoop out of the sun as screeching PTA helicopter parents, brandishing standardized tests in one hand and razor claws on the other.

  Their prey is the Woman in White as she runs through the city. There are dozens of her, they see at last; many bodies, infinite shapes, one entity, all of her working together and wholly dedicated to the war she was built to fight. But she is a city, in the end—fair R’lyeh where the streets are always straight and the buildings all curve, risen from the brine-dark deep well between universes. And no living city can remain within the boundary of another while it is unwelcome.

  As each iteration of the Woman in White is caught and rent apart into the featureless, undifferentiated ur-matter of which she is made, R’lyeh quails in fear. She is caught now, helpless between realms, too committed to the invasion to return to the buffer dimension. The towers were both adaptors and guide-rails for what parts of its substance have already transferred, and as the cleansing wave of New York energy roils outward from Manhattan toward Westchester and Coney Island and Long Island, not a single tower remains standing. Anchorless, R’lyeh will be lost in the formless aethers outside of existence itself, if she does not find and claim some kind of foothold. Anything will do. She flails, desperate to survive. Any chance—
/>
  There.

  It’s so tiny, though. Not nearly enough to contain the entirety of a massive city… but perhaps the whole borough can act as a singular sort of anchor all by itself. R’lyeh cannot come through, but with Staten Island’s help, she can hold. She can anchor her substance in this new exurb of itself, and establish a commerce of citizens and resources that will keep her alive, for now at least. And in the process, this small angry part of New York that has chafed to be free for so long now gets its wish.

  But they? New York’s remaining embodiments, plus the now-honorary borough of Jersey City? They are just fine.

  We are all fine, thanks for asking. We’re New York. Welcome to the party.

  CODA

  I live the city. Fucking city.

  Never liked Coney Island. Too many damn people, in the summer. Too cold, any other time of year. Nothing to do if you don’t have money and don’t know how to swim. Still. I’m standing on the boardwalk, feeling wood vibrate under my feet with the kinetic energy of thousands of walking adults and running kids and bounding dogs, and feeling something more intrinsic to my being reverberate in concert with five other souls. My soul’s in there, too. We’re conjoined now, a spiritual freak show more than fit for Coney Island; that was what that whole “devouring” business meant, see. If you can’t eat ’em, join ’em.

  I’m enjoying myself in spite of everything. Today is July 9th. Not July 4th. This is a day that means something to us, since New York declared its independence from England on the ninth of July in 1776. Fashionably late as usual. We’ve decided that it commemorates almost three weeks since we turned into cities, so it’s time for a celebration. Still alive, woop woop, pass the blunt.

  Paulo gets off the phone and comes over to where I stand at the railing, and we both relax there for a while. Beyond us, out on the sand, Brooklyn’s daughter, Jojo, is playing Marco Polo in the water with Queens and Jersey. She’s kicking their ass, because she’s fast and clever like her mama. Queens is having too much fun letting herself get caught, and Jersey’s too scared of the water—can’t swim, thinks every warm current is somebody’s piss and every blop of seaweed is a Portuguese man-of-war—to really do much. Up on the assemblage of blankets, Queens’ aunty is cooing to her baby while her husband, a small man with an enormous moustache, crouches over a portable hibachi nearby, making something that smells amazing. Bronca is half-asleep in the full sun, a broad bronze lump spread out across the cloth. She’s wearing a bikini. I don’t know where old girl found a bikini that big, but she’s got maximum Don’t Give A Fuck mode engaged, and I’m surfing on her bitch wave. (No idea why so much of me is apparently female, but I’m down with it. It’s so me. And I am them.)

  Manhattan sits on the blankets, too. He’s been swimming, but has mostly dried out by now and is just watching the others, vicariously enjoying their pleasure. Part of him is still so much the newbie, amazed to find this place of sand and sun stuck onto the ass end of the greatest city in the world, but the rest of him has relaxed into acceptance already. He’s Zen like that.

  Then I see the muscles in his back tense just a little as he senses my attention. Most people would ignore it, but not this guy. He twists around to look at me, and I’m the one who looks away, unable to meet the intensity of his gaze. I never asked for a knight? An enforcer? Whatever the fuck he is. But of them all, I know that he is the one meant to… serve me. Which sounds way too damn BDSM for my ass, and I don’t know what to make of it. He will kill for me. He’ll love me, too, if I let him. Jury’s still out on that because I never wanted a fuckshit-crazy light-skinned Ivy League boyfriend. Like, I mean, he’s nice to look at? But the rest… There’s reasons I haven’t done the rest for a while, except as pretend.

  His eyes lower a bit. They all know me, we all know each other, but he’s the one who’s most sensitive to my moods. He gets that he makes me nervous. (He also gets that I don’t like admitting that it’s nervousness.) So he backs off, for now. He’ll wait ’til I’m more comfortable with the whole thing. Then, somehow, we’ll figure it out.

  I sigh and rub my eyes. Paulo lets out a breath of amusement. “It could be worse.”

  Yeah, we could all be getting gnawed to pieces by non-Euclidean Ding Hos, I get that. Still. “This is some what the fuck, man.”

  “It’s you. Whether you like that or not.” He sighs, watching the others, looking entirely too smug with himself. He’s better now that I’ve purged the part of myself that didn’t want him; it means that he’s no longer unwelcome in New York. He’s got serious shit to talk about, though. “The other cities of the Summit are astonished. Everyone thought you would be like the tragedy of London, but perhaps that was foolish on its face. I cannot think of two cities more different than this one and that one.”

  “Yeah, I get it, yo.” He still talks too much. I straighten and stretch a little. (Manny looks again, his gaze hungry, before he turns away. Such a gentleman.) “Your boy in China okay?”

  “Hong is not my boy. But yes. When he recovered from suddenly finding himself back in his home city, he called the others to meet in Paris. New York as well, now that you have become a full-fledged city. The Summit will need to speak with all of you, and discuss…” He sighs and gestures around at the beach, the sky, the high-rises behind us. And then he looks across the water.

  This isn’t the touristy part of Coney Island, so even though it’s a gorgeous summer day, it’s not too crowded. Technically we’re in Brighton Beach, except the beach part is still called Coney Island, which makes about as much sense as keeping that name when Coney hasn’t been an actual Island for a hundred years. Anyway. We’re at this end of Coney Island for a reason, see. From here, you can see a long stretch of Staten Island. There’s not much to it—mostly flat on this side, trees and elevated houses, the island’s low profile interrupted by the occasional industrial crane or cell signal tower. Pretty. Boring.

  All of this, however, sits in a deep well of gloom. There are no clouds overhead. No satellites, no eclipses. No one’s reported on it in the news, though we’ve seen a few people commenting on it in social media, as a curiosity more than anything else. Only we can see it easily, us and those others throughout the city who have been granted the gift/curse of its sight. No big deal. Just a huge, perfectly circular—Brooklyn took a helicopter ride across the harbor and told us that part—shadow over Staten Island.

  Yeah. It’s like that. She has betrayed us more completely than we ever believed she could.

  Paulo straightens away from the railing. “My flight leaves in a few hours. I’d best head to the airport.”

  It’s out of nowhere. I knew it was coming, of course; he only came here to see me through the change, the next-youngest city helping the newbie, and now his duty is done. Still. I bite the inside of my cheek and try not to show how hurt I am.

  “My sublet is paid through the end of the month,” he continues, “if you want to remain there. Just leave the keys and close the door when you go. Try not to make a mess.”

  I sigh. “And after that.” Back out on the street. At least it’s summer.

  “After that,” he says, looking meaningfully from me to the people sitting on the beach before us, “you have five other selves to take care of you, instead of me.”

  It’s gentle. I’ve had worse breakups. This probably doesn’t even count as a breakup. Still. I fold my arms on the railing and prop my chin on them, trying not to resent my other selves. Take care of me, Paulo said.

  “They need you,” Paulo says. This, too, is gentle.

  “To live.”

  He shakes his head. “To be great. I’ll see you in Paris.”

  Then he takes out a cigarette, lights it up, and walks away. Just like that.

  I gaze after him and don’t miss him, and then I gaze at the others and don’t want to be with them. But we’re all New York. New York is so full of shit sometimes, and nobody knows that better than New York.

  So Queens comes over first, laughing and dr
ipping from the sea, to grab my arm and complain that I must be too cool to walk on sand like everyone else, until I finally give up and let her pull me off the boardwalk. And then Jersey City—she prefers Veneza, so we use that name, but she’s also Jersey City—runs over and hands me a foil-wrapped sandwich of some kind, because, she says, “I’m sick of feeling how hungry you are. You need to eat more.” She pulls me across the sand to the blankets. (The sandwich is good. Chicken kebab. I’m not supposed to get hungry anymore, Paulo said, but New York is always hungry.) When Jojo flops down and sprinkles all of us with water, Brooklyn wryly hands me a paper towel to wipe my face. Then Bronca tells me to lie the fuck down because I’m shadowing the sun, and she’s trying to soak up enough light and warmth to get her through next winter even though that’s like six months off. When I sit down, Manny moves aside to make room for me—but he stays bodyguard-close. Also near enough to touch, if I want. When I’m ready.

  “Welcome back,” he says, handing me a Snapple from the cooler. Pink lemonade. Probably just chance that it’s my favorite flavor.

  “No place in the world that can compare,” I say, and we all smile with the magic of this truth.

  Acknowledgments

  It’s been a surprise to me—and perhaps it shouldn’t have been—that writing a story set in a real place, even a real place that I know well, has required more research than all the other fantasy novels I’ve written, combined. Most of this is because real worlds feature real peoples, and therefore it’s important that I not depict them in ways that disrespect or cause harm. Also, though, I know a lot of these people, and they’d rag on me mercilessly if I described, say, Shorakkopoch wrong. Leave me alone, y’all. New York is fucking huge. I did the best I could.

  Unfortunately, for various reasons including real-world events, I was unable to visit Hong Kong or São Paulo during the writing of this book. I based both men’s personalities and abilities on what little information I could glean from books and articles and some friends who’d been there, but end of day, I took substantial creative license with both. I hope to “meet” both cities (and their people!) someday, but I don’t know if that will happen before I’ve finished this trilogy. That said, I hope residents of both cities will accept my long-distance admiration in lieu of a visit, for now.