The World We Make

At the first mayoral debate, the two main contenders are Brooklyn and Panfilo. Brooklyn notes Panfilo’s calm energy, though he has been getting some flak from the press for his associations with the Proud Men. After the debate, Panfilo and Brooklyn run into each other. Brooklyn extends her hand, but Panfilo pointedly does not shake it.

Brooklyn gets into her car with her driver (hired by Manny). While passing through the Midtown Tunnel, the driver alerts her that they are being followed by a white Hummer. When she realizes it is Conall McGuiness behind the wheel, Brooklyn has her driver call the police, afraid of what damage using her city-power could do in the tunnel. A high-speed car chase follows; the police never intervene. As things get tenser, Brooklyn directs the driver to Williamsburg, where she knows someone she believes can help. She finally directs the driver into a body shop with a worn-out sign, and they enter at full speed, passing through the shop and through the back exit. An older Latino man winks at Brooklyn as they pass—an acknowledgment that he will help her. When Conall follows, all the lights go out and the back exit slams shut, trapping him inside. A flash of light follows, and Brooklyn tells her driver that they are out of harm’s way. While driving home, Brooklyn feels some concern over asking for help, like the assistance she’s now getting from Manny’s shadow backers. However, she remembers that she has many dualities to her personality and knows she can both be independent and call in favors.

At their shared apartment, Padmini meets Neek on the balcony. Padmini notes that Neek improves life in the city simply by observing it. His attention to detail allows him to influence and shape life in the city so that people who may need a little extra help get it. She also observes that rather than change people as R’lyeh does, Neek simply appeals to who they already are. She notes that even though they have different approaches to managing the city, they achieve similar results: “What is math to her is art to him” (229). This builds on Padmini’s growing understanding of the metaverse.

Neek tells her that Panfilo is weakening him. They talk about how they cannot feel Manny’s presence as part of the city anymore. Padmini tells Neek that he needs to stop pushing Manny away so that Manny doesn’t fear embracing his new life and identity. As she’s speaking, Manny appears in the doorway, having overheard. Manny tells Neek and Padmini that he isn’t meant to be Manhattan, saying that he’s meant to be the avatar of Chicago and will return home as soon as they’ve dealt with R’lyeh and ensured the cities’ safety. Padmini asks him to stay, but Neek doesn’t argue with him.

The Summit in Atlantis gets underway. Once there, Padmini identifies it as the same mysterious city she returned to frequently during her macrostepping explorations. The group enters the amphitheater where the Summit will take place. They recognize some of the other attendees, including Istanbul, Paris, and Hong Kong. A few accusations fly around that the New York City avatars are exaggerating the danger or have incompetently brought it upon themselves. Padmini addresses the group and speaks of her discovery that they are falling through the multiverse and approaching a “kugelplex,” or point of destruction; soon they won’t be able to reverse their movement. She points to Atlantis as an example of what the Ur can do and warns them that unless they all combine their city-power to counter the Ur, they may all end up dead cities. She hopes they can work together through the shared cultural construct of the underdog uniting against a bigger foe. She points out that young cities have experienced subtler attacks than the brute force of the past, contesting with structures and ideologies. To combat this, the cities’ tactics need to evolve and change.

In the middle of the Summit, R’lyeh suddenly appears and knocks everyone over. Padmini notices that Aislyn is with R’lyeh as the latter declares her intent to kill them all.

Although some of the city avatars immediately retreat, the rest try to fight off R’lyeh. After she easily thwarts their initial attacks, London informs them that they need to try using concepts rather than constructs to channel their city-power. R’lyeh retaliates by unleashing a horde of white nightmarish shapes. Manny realizes that they can’t survive this attack since they’ve been taken by surprise and surrounded. Then a shadowy figure emerges and approaches R’lyeh. They meet each other with recognition, and suddenly the world explodes.

Manny sees a version of the multiversal tree that is dead and black: “The clusters that should be boiling at the tips of each, where new universes are born, are still and cold in this place, lumped together like black knot fungus” (253). Manny scarcely has time to wonder at this before he finds himself with the rest of the New York City avatars, including Staten Island, in Central Park.

Padmini tells everyone that the city of Atlantis was the shrouded figure who saved them and that she broke herself in the process, landing in the place with the black tree. Padmini notes that she saw a whole forest of the dead trees, meaning that the entire multiverse has died a vast number of times. The group discusses what R’lyeh’s plan might be and demands to know if Aislyn intends to join them or not. After they remind her that R’lyeh just tried to kill her, she agrees.

Having gotten enough strength from leeching off Staten Island, R’lyeh prepares to complete the task that she was made for: to put an end to this world. She feels some regret in doing so, having enjoyed her time there, but feels that she is ending something monstrous and completing a worthy task.

Aislyn interrupts her reverie, telling her that she’s joined the other avatars and subconsciously saying goodbye. R’lyeh’s floating city shifts down to Staten Island, disrupting tides, blocking the sun, and causing panic. It then moves her toward Manhattan, striking down anything in its path. The avatars of New York City come to meet R’lyeh in the form of a King Kong made up of various parts of the city and holding aloft a Lenape war club. To match this, R’lyeh grows some extra heads with horrifying features. She unleashes her white minions on the city, but they are fought by an army of rats, pigeons, and cockroaches. As the fight continues, R’lyeh sees the cities of São Paulo and Hong Kong approaching, soon followed by many others. Before she can begin to fight them all in earnest, she feels the Ur pulling her back and dragging New York City along with her.

Then they are all with the Ur, in the kugelplex (as Padmini identifies it). The Ur speak through R’lyeh, telling them they all must die. Neek notes that they saw all the other dead multiverses and know that the Ur have tried this before unsuccessfully. In a eureka moment, Padmini informs everyone that the Ur are causing the collapses: “You keep observing us, and you think we’re bad, so in the moment when we are most quantum, lost in our own rebirth, your observation is what takes precedence” (274). The cities are not causing the destruction of other realities; the Ur are afraid of what they don’t understand and thus generating the action that they consider monstrous. Neek points out that the Ur can’t stop the universe from evolving and new, stronger universes from being born except by completely resetting the universe. Forced to confront the truth of these revelations, the Ur release everyone and agree to remove themselves from the world going forward.

Neek considers how events have played out. R’lyeh has been released from the Ur and is now a city herself. The Ur’s influence, including Better New York, has vanished, and the city is free to evolve without extraterrestrial interference. Brooklyn won the mayoral race, which allowed her to hire Padmini and sponsor her visa. Manny has agreed to stay as Manhattan and deal with the fallout from his family; he and Neek have taken the first steps in a slow-paced relationship. With the Ur gone, New York City is now poised to grow and flourish in its own way.