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.