The City We Became

Paulo cradles the collapsed young man, the avatar of New York, in his arms. For a moment, he vanishes, and Paulo fears the city has died, but it has not. It is merely experiencing “postpartum complications.” Paulo makes a phone call. He tells whoever is on the other end, “The Enemy was routed” (22). Paulo is tasked with a mysterious errand to assist the still-vulnerable city.

A young man about to begin grad school rides a train into New York. As the train pulls into Penn Station, he is dimly aware of news flashes—a bridge collapse, possibly the work of terrorists—but he pays them little mind. As he steps off the escalator into the terminal, a cacophonic noise fills his ears. It is the shout and echo of a million voices screaming at him: “Fuck you, you don’t belong here, this city is mine, get out!” (25).

Then, he is on his knees in the main concourse with no memory of how he got there. A woman offers to call 911. She and a middle-aged man tend to him while he tries to clear his head. As he stands, he has a sudden vision of Penn Station in ruins, a vision that passes a moment later. Disoriented, he realizes that can’t remember where he came from, the name of his school, or even his own name, so he invents one: Manny. He realizes that this “fake” name is a truer marker of his identity than he’s ever had; Manny is the avatar of Manhattan.

In the station bathroom, Manny examines his face in the mirror as if seeing himself for the first time. As he exits the station, he is rocked by another vision. He sees two versions of the city—one real, the other surreal and post-apocalyptic. The streets are deserted and cracked, as roiling clouds rush across the sky. Manny finds a strange beauty in the latter vision, although he wonders if this is a result of a psychotic break. Accompanying his vision is a clear and urgent directive: head east to the FDR Drive, and he instinctively knows a ride is on its way. Moments later, an old Checker cab pulls up, and he climbs inside. After haggling over payment, the driver, Madison, agrees to take him to his destination.

While waiting at a stoplight, a BMW drives past, and Manny notices strange tendrils squirming out of the tires. They are a vestigial presence of the “other” Manhattan that Manny saw earlier, and they sense his awareness. Manny is surprised to find out that Madison has seen the tendrils as well. He reassures her, “We’re going to destroy the thing that’s causing it” (39), although he doesn’t know how.

Speeding along the FDR, Manny senses they are approaching the “wrongness,” but he can’t define it clearly. He notices cars on the uptown side of the median are infected by the same tendrils as the BMW. Soon, traffic grinds to a halt. The problem—the “wrongness”—is a huge flare of the white tendrils that have burst forth from the street; the drivers cannot see it, but they stop for it nevertheless. Manny gets out of the cab and sets up emergency flares on the street. He feels the power of the city—in a sense, he is the city—and he plans to harness that energy and anger from all the stalled cars on the FDR to battle the tendrils.

He borrows an umbrella from a convertible and climbs on the roof of the cab, as Madison drives toward the tendril flare. He opens the umbrella, points it to the sky, and somehow channels the energy of the city, creating a prismatic shield around the cab. They drive through the tendrils, burning them away from the roots. He feels the energy course through him from the ground up, cleansing him of his past self and creating space for who he will become.

Madison drops Manny off at his new apartment. Getting off the elevator, he experiences a moment of heightened awareness—the hallway seems strange and eerie—but it passes, and everything feels safe again. He meets his roommate, Bel Nguyen, fellow PhD candidate at Columbia University, and they explore the neighborhood. While walking through Inwood Hill Park, Bel casually mentions he’s a transgender man, something he told Manny during a previous Skype meeting and another fact of his old life Manny has forgotten.

They come upon a plaque which details some of the park’s historical significance. Bel suggests they check out a nearby monument, and Manny agrees, feeling it’s important somehow. They reach the monument—a boulder marking the location of a displaced, indigenous American village—and Manny senses “definite energies here, strange and palpable” (59), similar to the energy that surrounded the cab on the FDR. While Manny tries to comprehend the nature of these energies, a woman approaches, taking a video with her phone and accusing them of lewd behavior. As she turns away, Manny notices something long and thin jutting out from the woman’s neck, which may be another tendril. It responds to Manny’s gaze, flicking toward him as if disturbed. He addresses the woman, demanding that it reveal itself, and she suddenly changes, turning completely white. For a moment, she mistakes Bel for an embodied city before realizing he’s “just human.” She then turns to Manny, recalling their battle on the FDR; she is surprised he’s still intact. Through her cryptic hints, Manny perceives that four others like him exist, one for each New York City borough. The creature vanishes, leaving only the original woman.

The danger has not passed, however, as white tendrils worm out of the ground and cracks in the path, moving toward Bel and Manny. The woman is unaware of them; she continues to record them as she calls the police. Backed up against a boulder, Manny notices that the tendrils stop at the ring of dirt surrounding the boulder in which he senses innate energy. He urges Bel to climb on the boulder while he rummages through his wallet, seeking a talisman that will trigger the energy just like the umbrella did earlier. He touches a $5 bill and feels the power in it; it is the power of “land valuation,” or of historically stolen real estate. He tosses the bill—and some of Bel’s cash also—on the ground and the tendrils back away, but only slightly. Without enough monetary value to “buy” the land back from the tendrils, Manny and Bel are cornered. Then, Manny hears the beat from an old-school rap song and sees a Black woman approach, the song blaring from her phone. As she brandishes her phone, the tendrils retreat as if each beat is a hammer blow. By the end of the song, all of the tendrils have vanished, and Manny realizes this woman is another borough like him—Brooklyn, it turns out.

As they hear sirens approaching, Manny grabs the woman with the phone, covering her mouth and threatening her if she screams, and scrolls through her phone. These are not empty threats. He has hurt people before, although he doesn’t know how he knows this. Then he understands: As the embodiment of Manhattan, he is also the embodiment of its sins, the massacres of indigenous people, the muggings and rapes, and the disenfranchisement and displacement. As they exit the park, they see remaining fragments of the tendrils, along with people and animals infected from walking through the park. Manny must find the other three boroughs and needs Brooklyn’s help. She reluctantly agrees, and they both instinctively feel that another of their kind is in danger. They board a bus, heading for the borough of Queens.