The World We Make (Great Cities #2)

by N.K. Jemisin

He hums to himself a little, happily, as he walks. It’s always refreshing to meet a young person who has a good head on his shoulders and a clear vision of the way the world needs to go. They aren’t always right, but they do make things so very interesting, and frequently better. God willing, those better days will come soon.

Bronca should reprioritize, focus on the business of the Bronx, forget all this social-life stuff. She’s been pretty happy alone. Her own mom was a single mother who taught Bronca to enjoy her own company and value her own time—a radical way of thinking for any woman, especially back in the Sixties.

Brooklyn laughs without humor. “No, ’cause I had an Eighties record contract and a shitty manager. There was a little in my war chest before all this, which I was building up to run again for city council—but that’s a drop in the bucket, given what you need to run for mayor in this town. I can’t tap my savings, because everything I’ve got is tied up in fighting the city to get our brownstones back. Can’t wait ’til that hits the news. And Jojo, sweetheart, tried to surprise me by putting up a GoFundMe after that interview went viral. It pulled in a lot of money, more than I was expecting… none of which I can access. First because it’s illegal, and second because three other people—none of whom I know, scammers—started crowdfunding campaigns in my name, too. So now I’m trying to get the Campaign Finance Board to at least let me take the non-anonymous and non-foreign contributions from Jojo’s batch…” She shakes her head. “My poor baby is getting a rough introduction to NYC politics.”

“We keep trying to understand how all this city business works, and São Paulo explained about constructs, but I keep thinking small. Music tracks, street haggling, Nathan’s hot dogs. Little stuff. But remember when we were kids? That ‘I Love New York’ tourist campaign? I still remember the jingle. I remember Koch basically hitching himself to that slogan and all the imagery associated with it. There was even a Broadway play about him. I heard it was terrible, but the point is that he weaponized the city’s culture. I don’t think he was any kind of great mayor—started out a liberal then turned on the city’s poor—but to this day he’s one of the people who pops into everyone’s head whenever you say ‘mayor of New York,’ even decades later. Koch got political and public support that every mayor since can only dream of, because he made himself an icon of New York.” “And here you are,” Bronca drawls, “already New York, yourself.”

Veneza’s on her phone, and her video keeps jolting wildly because she’s in the middle of helping Yijing and the other Bronx Art Center staff with an installation. “Uh, I don’t know how I can help,” she says, out of breath after moving a crate. “I got a job, yo, and Bronca’s actually paying me good money for a change. Check it: I got a retirement fund now. And real, actual health insurance. Look at me, livin’ the not-dying-of-preventable-diseases dream! Anyway, what am I gonna do, answer phones and reposition art for you?” “You have a whole degree,” Bronca reminds her. “In, uh, computer art—” “Digital design, oh my God, it has alliteration and everything, why can’t you ever remember it? Old B.” Bronca rolls her eyes. Still, she knows Veneza: the girl is thinking harder about what she can contribute. “Do you do freelance work?” Brooklyn asks. “I could use a better… everything.” She glances at a nearby sign and sighs as if she, too, finds the logo awful. “I need graphics, online ads, the works.” “Oh. Huh. Yeah, sure. Never done print design before but I know some folks I can hit up for tips. You don’t have people for that already, though?”

They’re all surprised, though Bronca’s flat-out flabbergasted. She thought… well, she’s not sure what she thought. They’re six very different people; it follows that not all of them would be 100 percent on board for everything. She just thought this would be one of the exceptions.

tell stories and come up with new ways of doing things. Creativity and social living are the only real constants that every single human species has had, from Australopithecus to us. The only way to get rid of cities is to get rid of that part of our nature! Without that…” She shakes her head. “You’d have to change us into something other than human. No longer a social species. No longer intelligent. We’d be just mindless animals!”

“But intellectually, spiritually dead! You’d ‘save’ us by making us… lemmings or something!”

“The more I hear from you, the less alien you become,” she says to the pixels. “I keep worrying I’m, I don’t know, anthropomorphizing you. Seeing you through my own filters… but I can’t unsee it. You’re a colonizer. All the way from another fucking dimension and still just like the worst people from right here.” She shakes her head. “There’s probably a way we can coexist. If we worked together on it, we could come up with some compromise that’s acceptable to both our peoples. You don’t want compromise, tho, do you? That’s how equals work out problems, but you don’t think of us as equals. Everything you’ve described—segregating us, manipulating us, stealing our fucking children, remaking us—is what people do when they are absolutely convinced of their own superiority. That’s what makes us unable to coexist—your fucking arrogance.”

Also helps that she used the Bronx’s power to do it—big attitude, but also lots of casual blue-collar hypercompetence. The borough knew what she meant.

“All boiled down and crystal clear,” Brooklyn murmurs. Obviously thinking along Bronca’s lines. And Bronca is pleased to see her take a deep breath, square her shoulders, then nod to herself. “And yeah. Now I’m good and mad. Between this and what they did to my Jojo, I’m ready to throw all kinds of hands.” Bronca claps her on the shoulder. “That’s my girl. Let’s get this shit cleaned up, and get back to work.”

New York is a city awash in free books. Manny scans the titles and finds fiction, history, a whole stack of popular science texts on quantum mechanics, some poetry, more.

“Why not?” Brooklyn raises her immaculately shaped eyebrows. “There are something like thirty-five thousand homeless adults in this city, Mr. Milam—a small town’s worth of people all in themselves. And political races in New York don’t usually run on large margins, as I’m sure you know.” “How are they going to vote without an address?” He and his men laugh before Brooklyn can remind him that there’s actually a way to do that. They don’t care.

Brooklyn holds up a quelling hand, although her jaw is visibly tight. “He’s right. The NYPD is either an uncontrolled-but-at-least-not-hostile nuisance for any mayor who pays them off with perks and propaganda, or an occupying army for a mayor who doesn’t. I’m not going to be doing anything they like, politically speaking, so bribery is pretty much my only recourse for a chance at the ‘good’ option.” She sighs. “But right now, I’ve barely got enough funding to field a campaign. No spare cash to grease palms.”

Padmini looks from Brooklyn to Manny with growing incredulity. “You can’t give them what they want. They’ll be able to blackmail you the instant you offer them anything. And then they’ll just terrorize more people and steal more public money! My God—” She laughs a little, wearily and humorlessly. “I just realized. When ICE came to threaten my family, they pretended to be the NYPD. Even ICE doesn’t have the kind of power they do!”

In the renewed silence, Padmini looks around the empty city that she’s grown to love. She gets why, now: it’s because there’s still a spark of personality here, left over from its better days—or maybe that’s just the indestructible core of any city, which lingers after its death. Maybe she likes it here because this is a city she would’ve gotten along with well, if its avatar had not been lost. The ghost of best friends never met. She wonders if it hurt, when—

“I just wanted to keep my island safe. I guess I was afraid that becoming part of—you—would mean the opposite of that. But now she’s changing everything. My family and friends, they aren’t… It shouldn’t be…” While Veneza stares, trying to process this sudden confession, Aislyn’s expression contorts into pure fury. “I don’t even think she likes Wu-Tang!” That’s. Wow. Veneza blinks. Bites her bottom lip. It doesn’t help. She starts grinning. “Oh, well, especially fuck her, then.”

There is a message here. “Family looks out for family, no matter what.” “Well, yeah. But gotta remember family ain’t always the one you get born with. Real family’s the people who are there when you need ’em.”

The whole reason Brooklyn went to law school but then immediately went into politics was because she hated appearing in court. Hated moot court, even, back in school. She’s just lost too many friends to places like this to view it with a neutral gaze—children sent back to abusive parents, addicts jailed when they needed treatment, innocent people imprisoned for years by lying prosecutors or cops. She could do more for her borough, she felt then, by directing policy and building support systems to keep people out of courthouses in the first place—which should stink, damn it, like any charnel house.

“This is part of a pattern,” Allen concludes. “Across hundreds of cases, this program has misidentified properties as distressed—properties overwhelmingly belonging to Black and Brown New Yorkers who are working-class, elderly, disabled, or some combination of the above. In many such cases, the properties cannot be returned because they were immediately sold by the new owners, and the original owners lack the resources to pursue the matter in the courts. To prevent something similar from happening in her case, Ms. Thomason has requested this hearing to vacate the default judgment in the foreclosure proceeding, and restore her ownership rights.” It’s a good opening. Then it’s Better New York’s turn. Their lawyer, a Mr. Vance, gets up. He doesn’t dispute that the Thomason deeds were transferred due to error. However. “This program was intended to benefit the less fortunate,” he explains. “Now that the deed has been transferred, sale of the property will help fund our nonprofit organization. Let me tell you how this money will be used.”

She leans over to whisper to Ms. Allen. “Are these people trying what I think they’re trying?” Allen’s got her own poker face on now, but she isn’t taking her eyes off the judge, which means she’s worried. “Yep. ‘Sucks that we took these folks’ home, but we’ll do nice things with the stolen goods!’”

“I don’t care what you call your arrondissements here. I’m talking to you because you’re the one I could find most easily. I’m also told you’re the only one who actually acquired the lexicon we assembled in order to educate you younger ones, and I don’t feel like explaining myself. You’ll do.”

Paris looks taken aback, but then she takes a deep breath. “I apologize,” she says, after a moment. “Everyone here seems rude to me. It’s hard not to respond in kind.” The apology actually helps.

Paris lets out a long, irritated sigh, though it doesn’t sound personal this time. “You fail to comprehend that a good number of us are in denial,” she says, her tone going sour. “I used to think only Americans could be so selfishly self-destructive during an emergency, but I suppose it is a human failing.”

Maybe it’s just that Paris is old enough to have seen many cities die, and one tragedy melds into another, after a time. Bronca can relate.

She’s done enough gardening to know that some plants give back some of what they take, like clover or beans, which fix nitrogen. Most plants just take, however, sucking out water and nutrients, and if nobody adds compost or fertilizer, then eventually you end up with a lot of useless dry crumbly stuff in which nothing can grow. So what exactly are these pylons taking out of her island? She doesn’t know, but she has her suspicions, based on what she’s seen missing from her fellow islanders. Vitality. Individuality. Reality, even. Things quintessential to making Staten Island the weird and wonderful place Aislyn’s loved all her life.

“Well, yes. That’s precisely the problem.” When Aislyn falters silent, the Woman sighs. “Why are there a thousand different ways to make pizza? That’s not hyperbole, I’ve counted, and it’s actually one thousand four hundred and twenty-two. Those are just the recipes. Add in different cooking techniques and equipment, normal variances in ingredients across source—mozzarella from buffalo, mozzarella from cows who only eat grass, low-moisture pre-shreds with sawdust filler—and the actual number of ways to make this one dish becomes exponential. So, yes, in order to make Staten Island less New York and more me, I need to make its pizza consistent with that of several well-regarded national chain restaurants.” The Woman tilts her head, a why do I have to explain something so basic look on her face.

Except it’s not just about pizza. She’s upset about her mother’s soft, too-pleasant smile, and her father’s frictionless friendliness. She hates that she suddenly has “friends” she neither knows nor trusts, and even that the racists are just ordinary hateful people instead of fitting into Staten’s unique brand of pro-Wu-Tang anti-Blackness. She hates that the shoreline scent has gone rotten, and that the island’s unique, iconic, weird-but-delicious food is being remade into something… normal.

She doesn’t need dreams of her own, ambitions of her own, friends or lovers of her own; a person can be happy without those things, damn it. And until lately, she’s been grateful that so much of what she does need to be happy is located here in this singular, once-perfect place. But this isn’t her Staten Island, anymore.

It’s wrong, though. Maybe it’s not wrong to be selfless and choose the greater good, but it definitely feels wrong to… to drug herself into oblivion while it happens. If Aislyn has chosen this path, then she feels like she should face the consequences head-on, with eyes open. She owes that to her island, and her family, and herself. It’s the Staten Island way.

Then the Woman takes a deep breath. “Well. Matters are coming to a head, anyway. There’s going to be an actual confrontation, apparently—a nice proper mano-a-mano, good-versus-evil moment! I’m rather excited.” She beams, and Aislyn cannot help smiling with her. “I’ve always wanted one of those! I’ll give a ‘the reason you suck’ speech, and they’ll monologue about how evil I am. I’ll reply with some bitchy one-liners. Then we’ll fight. I’ll make it properly climactic, all the best special—well, actual—effects. Then goodness and righteousness will win out over badness and selfishness! Then I gather I’m supposed to kiss someone, but everyone in this universe will be dead so I suppose I’ll have to handle that part myself.” She folds her arms, thoughtful. “I should come up with a way to roll credits.” “You are so damn strange,” Aislyn says, but it’s affectionate.

Panfilo is very clearly the front-runner, though his main challengers have been more serious—some right-wing talk show host, and a tech CEO who seems to think that all New York needs is a hefty dose of libertarianism and ten thousand extra cops, never mind the contradiction.

American politics aren’t truly democratic; if it isn’t whole demographics being excluded from the franchise, it’s corporations and wealthy donors endlessly meddling with the whole system. Extradimensional meddling fits right into that tradition, but Brooklyn can still mourn the loss of fairness and ethics, even as she uses every means at her disposal to win.

Her people do an excellent job of running interference when the other two Dems and the lesser Republicans drift close. The Democrats can’t help her and the Republicans are probably hoping for a nice photo op of themselves cursing her out. However, she’s given instructions that Panfilo be allowed to approach, because she can’t be seen avoiding him—and because she’s genuinely curious to see if he will. When she realizes he’s working his way toward her, she finds herself… pleased? Man, it really has been too long since she played that rap game. She must miss having worthy opponents.

New York green is the light of old subway stations, and the Coney Island rides at night, and poorly maintained streetlamps. It is the light of the lost Williamsburg Bridge, first and worst casualty of R’lyeh’s hostile occupation, along with the hundreds who died when it fell. Brooklyn starts grinning as they fly through the building. This shitty green light means that everything is going to be just fine.

She’s been trying to run from her old self. MC Free was a performance. The world has so much hate for Black girls, and by sneering at a camera and pouring her rage into lyrics, she could at least make it pay attention to her for a time. She could demand the respect that the world gives to everyone else by default. But when that part of her life was over, she shed her MC Free skin and tried not to look back. That was childhood, she told herself, and it was time to put away childish things. But she is both the woman and the child who became the woman, just as she is both a human being and a city, and just as any Black woman must both be hypercompetent and keep it real. Some of that isn’t fair. No one should have to be so many things. But since Brooklyn is…

Most of the old numbers she hasn’t called in years; they’re probably defunct. But there’s one number that she knows is still good, because she and its owner exchange texts every now and again, just to check in on each other. That’s not friendship, not really. They’re colleagues at best. It’s just that back when they were both young, ladies in the business had to look out for each other, and things along those lines haven’t really changed for either of them since. So Brooklyn hits the dial button. And when the call is answered, she smiles. “Hey, Bey,” she says. “Sorry to hit you up out of the blue, but—yeah, you got it. I need a favor.”

How does that work? Padmini can’t guess. How did he know to try it? Because he is New York. And maybe because, as Padmini is rapidly coming to suspect, Neek is some kind of polymath genius, self-educated and unacknowledged because Americans don’t actually seem to like when people who aren’t well-off white men turn out to be smart.

Neek gives them all a contemptuous glare worthy of any rapper or real estate developer. “Look at this shit,” he says to the rest of the New Yorks. He’s normally soft-spoken, but the amphitheater picks up his voice easily; he’s pitching it deliberately. “All of us falling through the multiverse and y’all wanna stand around playing Who’s In The Club.” “We’re in danger because of you,” snaps a man on the third tier. “No other city has had the problems you have. Of course fucking Americans would screw everything up—”

“We can’t do it on our own because you motherfuckers had like a thousand years to handle this shit yourselves and you didn’t. Sitting around calling yourselves ‘the Summit’ like that means something. Letting new cities die and blaming ’em for it! So either sit your bitch asses down, or shut the fuck up and help. Do or die, show and prove. Can’t be no in-between.” There are a surprising number of murmurs of assent throughout the amphitheater, at this—the majority of the room, Padmini notes. She’s letting the histrionics of the denialists fool her; there’s only a few of them. They’re just loud. But then everything goes very, very wrong. “Yes, exactly,” says the Woman in White, stepping out of thin air.

So New York takes off its spiritual earrings, turns its extradimensional rings around, and surges forth into battle.

R’lyeh has been betraying Aislyn all this while, in fact, promising her comfort while stripping it away, proclaiming friendship while harming her family, her island, her universe. Even now, as R’lyeh gathers her resources for the moment of excision, she’s mostly surprised that Aislyn’s stuck with her this long.

R’lyeh’s footmonsters are suddenly met by an equally vast flood of—oh, God, rats and pigeons and cockroaches, and pigeons carrying rats holding cockroaches!

And… pretty sure we gon’ be okay now.

And of course big thanks to you for buying my books, reading my books, and talking about my books. I wouldn’t have a career if not for word of mouth and people who are willing to take a chance on all the weird things I write. Success has been a huge surprise for me, in both wondrous and unpleasant ways. (Remember, for those of you who read my intro to How Long ’til Black Future Month?, I started this journey just hoping to pay some bills.) But knowing that people are reading my work, and thinking about it, and yelling about it, and putting it on class lists, and wait-listing it at the library, and everything… gives me the greatest joy. Thank you so much.