He forgets his own name somewhere in the tunnel to Penn Station.

He doesn’t notice, at first. Too busy with all the stuff people usually do when they’re about to reach their train stop: cleaning up the pretzel bags and plastic bottles of breakfast, stuffing his loose laptop power cord into a pocket of his messenger bag, making sure he’s gotten his suitcase down from the rack, then having a momentary panic attack before remembering that he’s only got one suitcase. The other was shipped ahead and will be waiting for him at his apartment up in Inwood, where his roommate already is, having arrived a few weeks before. They’re both going to be grad students at—

—at, uh—

—huh. He’s forgotten his school’s name. Anyway, orientation is on Thursday, which gives him five days to get settled into his new life in New York.

He’s really going to need those days, too, sounds like. As the train slows to a halt, people are murmuring and whispering, peering intently at their phones and tablets with worried looks on their faces. Something about a bridge accident, terrorism, just like 9/11? He’ll be living and working uptown, so it shouldn’t impact him too much—but still, it’s maybe not the best time to move here.

But when is it ever a good time to make a new life in New York City? He’ll cope.

He’ll more than cope. The train stops and he’s first through the door. He’s excited but trying to play it cool. In the city he will be completely on his own, free to sink or swim. He has colleagues and family members who think of this as exile, abandonment—

—although, in the flurry of the moment, he cannot remember any of those people’s names or faces—

—but that doesn’t matter, because they can’t understand. They know him as he was, and maybe who he is now. New York is his future.

It’s hot on the platform and crowded on the escalator, but he feels fine. Which is why it’s so weird when he reaches the top of the escalator, and suddenly—the instant his foot touches the polished-concrete flooring—the whole world inverts. Everything in his vision seems to tilt, and the ugly ceiling fluorescents turn stark and the floor kind of… heaves? It happens fast. The world pulls inside out and his stomach drops and his ears fill with a titanic, many-voiced roar. It’s a familiar sound, to a degree; anyone who’s been to a stadium during a big game has heard something similar. Madison Square Garden sits on top of Penn Station, so maybe that’s it? This sound is bigger, though. Millions of people instead of thousands, and all of those voices doubled back on each other and swelling and shifting into layers beyond sound, into color and shaking and emotion, until he claps his hands over his ears and shuts his eyes but it just keeps coming—

But amid all of the cacophony, there is a through line, a repeated motif of sound and word and idea. One voice, screaming fury.

Fuck you, you don’t belong here, this city is mine, get out!

And the young man wonders, in confused horror, Me? Am… am I the one that doesn’t belong? There is no answer, and the doubt within him becomes an unignorable backbeat of its own.

All at once the roar is gone. A new roar, closer and echoing and indescribably smaller, has replaced it. Some of it is recorded, blaring from PA speakers overhead: “New Jersey Transit train, southbound, stopping at Newark Airport, now boarding on track five.” The rest is the sound of a gigantic space full of people going about their business. He remembers then, as it resolves around him: Penn Station. He does not remember how he ended up on one knee beneath a train-schedules sign, with a shaking hand plastered over his face. Wasn’t he on an escalator? He also doesn’t remember ever before seeing the two people who are crouched in front of him.

He frowns at them. “Did you just tell me to get out of the city?”

“No. I said, ‘Do you want me to call 911?’” says the woman. She’s offering water. She looks more skeptical than worried, like maybe he’s faking whatever weird faint or fit that’s apparently made him fall over in the middle of Penn Station.

“I… no.” He shakes his head, trying to focus. Neither water nor the police will fix weird voices in his head, or hallucinations caused by train exhaust, or whatever he’s experiencing. “What happened?”

“You just kinda went sideways,” says the man bent over him. He’s a portly, middle-aged, pale-skinned Latino. Heavy New York accent, kindly tone. “We caught you and pulled you over here.”

“Oh.” Everything’s still weird. The world isn’t spinning anymore, but that terrible, layered roar is still in his head—just muted now, and overlaid by the local and perpetual cacophony that is Penn Station. “I… think I’m fine?”

“Yeah, you don’t sound too sure,” the man says.

That’s because he’s not. He shakes his head, then shakes it again when the woman pushes the water bottle forward. “I just had some on the train.”

“Low blood sugar, maybe?” She takes the water bottle away and looks thoughtful. There’s a little girl crouched beside her, he notices belatedly, and the two of them are nearly mirrors of each other: both black-haired, freckled, frank-faced Asian people. “When was the last time you ate?”

“Like, twenty minutes ago?” He doesn’t feel dizzy or weak, either. He feels… “New,” he murmurs, without thinking. “I feel… new.”

The portly man and frank-faced woman look at each other, while the little girl throws him a judgy look, complete with lifted eyebrow. “Are you new here?” asks the portly man.

“Yeah?” Oh, no. “My bags!” But they’re right there; the Good Samaritans have kindly pulled them off the escalator, too, and positioned them nearby out of the flow of traffic. There’s a kind of surreality to the moment as he finally realizes he’s having this blackout or delusion or whatever it is in the middle of a crowd of thousands. Nobody seems to notice, except these three people. He feels alone in the city. He is seen and cared for in the city. The contrast is going to take some getting used to.

“You must have gotten your hands on some of the really good drugs,” the woman says. She’s grinning, though. That’s okay, isn’t it? That’s what’ll keep her from calling 911. He remembers reading somewhere that New York’s got an involuntary commitment law that can hold people for weeks, so it’s probably a good idea to reassure his would-be rescuers as to his clarity of mind.

“Sorry about this,” he says, pushing to his feet. “Maybe I didn’t eat enough, or something. I’ll… go to an urgent care clinic.”

Then it happens again. The station lurches beneath his feet—and suddenly it is in ruins. There’s no one around. A cardboard book display in front of the convenience store has fallen over, spilling Stephen King hardcovers everywhere. He hears girders in the surrounding structure groan, dust and pebbles falling to the floor as something in the ceiling cracks. The fluorescent lights flicker and jerk, one of the overhead fixtures threatening to fall from the ceiling. He inhales to cry a warning.

Blink: everything is fine again. None of the people around him react. He stares at the ceiling for a moment, then back at the man and woman. They’re still staring at him. They saw him react to whatever he was seeing, but they did not see the ruined station themselves. The portly guy has a hand on his arm, because he apparently swayed a little. Psychotic breaks must be hell on inner ear balance.

“You want to carry bananas,” the portly guy suggests. “Potassium. Good for you.”

“Or at least eat some real food,” the woman agrees, nodding. “You probably just ate chips, right? I don’t like that overpriced crap from the train dining car, either, but at least it’ll keep you from falling over.”

“I like the hot dogs,” the girl says.

“They’re crap, baby, but I’m glad you like them.” She takes the little girl’s hand. “We’ve got to go. You good?”

“Yeah,” he says. “But seriously, thanks for helping me. You hear all kinds of stuff about how rude New Yorkers are, but… thanks.”

“Eh, we’re only assholes to people who are assholes first,” she says, but she smiles as she says it. Then she and the little girl wander off.

The portly man claps him on the shoulder. “Well, you don’t look like you’re gonna chuck. Want me to go get you something to eat or some juice or something? Or a banana?” He adds the latter pointedly.

“No, thanks. I’m feeling better, really.”

The portly man looks skeptical, then blinks as something new occurs to him. “It’s okay, you know, if you don’t got money. I’ll spot you.”

“Oh. Oh, no, I’m good.” He hefts his messenger bag, which he remembers costing almost $1,600. Portly Guy looks at it blankly. Whoops. “Um, there’s probably sugar in this—” There’s a plastic Starbucks tumbler in the bag, sloshing faintly. He drinks from it to reassure Portly Guy. The coffee is cold and disgusting. He belatedly remembers refilling it sometime yesterday, before he got on the train back home in—

—in—

That’s when he realizes he can’t remember where he came from.

And he tries, but he still can’t remember the school he’s here to attend.

And this is when it finally hits him that he doesn’t know his own name.

As he stands there, floored by this triple epiphany of nothingness, the portly guy is turning up his nose at the tumbler. “Get some real coffee while you’re here,” he says. “From a good Boricua shop, yeah? Get some home food while you’re at it. Anyway, what’s your name?”

“Oh, uh…” He rubs his neck and pretends to have a desperate need to stretch—while, quietly panicking, he looks around and tries to think of something. He can’t believe this is happening. Who the hell forgets their own name? All he can come up with as fake names go are generic ones like Bob or Jimmy. He’s about to say Jimmy, arbitrarily—but then, in his visual flailing, his eyes snag on something.

“I’m, uh… Manny,” he blurts. “You?”

“Douglas.” Portly Guy has his hands on his hips, obviously considering something. Finally he pulls out his wallet and hands over a business card. DOUGLAS ACEVEDO, PLUMBER.

“Oh, sorry, I don’t have a card, haven’t started my new job yet—”

“S’okay,” Douglas says. He still looks thoughtful. “Look, a lot of us were new here, once. You need anything, you let me know, okay? Seriously, it’s fine. Place to crash, real food, a good church, whatever.”

It’s unbelievably kind. “Manny” doesn’t bother to hide his surprise. “Whoa. I—Wow, man. You don’t know me from Adam. I could be a serial killer or something.”

Douglas chuckles. “Yeah, somehow I’m not figuring you for the violent type. You look…” He falters, and then his expression softens a little. “You look like my son. I’m just doing for you what I’d want somebody doing for him. Right?”

Somehow Manny knows: Douglas’s son is dead.

“Right,” Manny says softly. “Thanks again.”

“Está bien, mano, no te preocupes.” He waves off then, and heads in the direction of the A/C/E train.

Manny watches him go, pocketing the card and thinking about three things. The first is the belated realization that the guy thought he was Puerto Rican. The second is that he might have to take Douglas up on that offer of a place to crash, especially if he doesn’t remember the address of his apartment in the next few minutes.

The third thing makes him look up at the Arrivals/Departures board, where he found the word that just became his new name. He didn’t tell Douglas the full name because these days only white women can have given names like that without getting laughed at. But even in modified form, this word—this identity—feels more true than anything else he’s ever claimed in his life. It is what he has been, without realizing. It is who he is. It is everything he’s ever needed to be.

The full word is Manhattan.

It’s a good face. He pretends to be extra meticulous about washing his hands—not a bad thing to be in a smelly Penn Station public bathroom—and turns his face from side to side, checking himself out from all angles. It’s clear why the dude figured him for Puerto Rican: his skin is yellowy brown, his hair kinky but loose-coiled enough that if he let it grow out, it might dangle. He could pass for Douglas’s son, maybe. (He’s not Puerto Rican, though. He remembers that much.) He’s dressed preppy: khakis, a button-down with rolled-up sleeves, and there’s a sports jacket draped over his bag, for when the AC is too high maybe since it’s summertime and probably ninety degrees outside. He looks like he’s somewhere in that ageless yawn between “not a kid anymore” and thirty, though probably toward the latter end of it to judge by a couple of random gray threads peppered along his hairline. Brown eyes behind dark-brown-rimmed glasses. The glasses make him look professorial. Sharp cheekbones, strong even features, smile lines developing around his mouth. He’s a good-looking guy. Generic all-American boy (nonwhite version), nicely nondescript.

Convenient, he thinks. Wondering why he thinks this makes him pause in mid-hand-wash, frowning.

Okay, no. He’s got enough weirdness to deal with right now. He grabs his suitcase to leave the bathroom. An older guy at the urinal stares at him all the way out.

At the top of the next escalator—this one leading up to Seventh Avenue—it happens a third time. This episode is better in some ways and worse in others. Because Manny feels the wave of… whatever it is… coming on as he reaches the top of the escalator, he has enough time to take his suitcase and get himself over to some kind of digital information kiosk so he’ll be out of the way while he leans against it and shudders. This time he doesn’t hallucinate—not at first—but he hurts, all of a sudden. It’s an awful, sick feeling, a spreading chill starting from a point low on his left flank. The sensation is familiar. He remembers it from the last time he got stabbed.

(Wait, he got stabbed?)

Frantically he pulls up his shirttail and looks at the place where the pain is worst, but there’s no blood. There’s nothing. The wound is all in his head. Or… somewhere else.

As if this is a summons, abruptly the New York that everyone sees flickers into the New York that only he can see. Actually, they’re both present, one lightly superpositioned over the other, and they flick back and forth a little before finally settling into a peculiar dual-boot of reality. Before Manny lie two Seventh Avenues. They’re easy to distinguish because they have different palettes and moods. In one, there are hundreds of people within view and dozens of cars and at least six chain stores that he recognizes. Normal New York. In the other, there are no people, and some unfathomable disaster has taken place. He doesn’t see bodies or anything ominous; there’s just no one around. It’s not clear anyone ever existed in this place. Maybe the buildings here just appeared, sprung forth fully formed from their foundations, instead of being built. Ditto the streets, which are empty and badly cracked. A traffic light dangles loose from an overhead fixture, swinging on its cable but switching from red to green in perfect tandem with its other version. The sky is dimmer, almost as if it’s nearly sunset and not just post-noon, and the wind is faster. Clouds boil and churn across the sky like they’re late for the cloud revival meeting.

“Cool,” Manny murmurs. This whole episode probably represents some kind of psychotic break on his part, but he cannot deny that what he sees is gorgeous and terrifying. Weird New York. He likes it, regardless.

But something is wrong with it. He must go somewhere, do something, or all of the bifurcated beauty that he sees will die. He knows this, suddenly, more surely than instinct.

“I have to go,” he murmurs to himself in surprise. His voice sounds strange—tinny and sort of stretched out. Maybe he’s slurring? Maybe it’s the peculiar echo of his voice from the walls of two different Penn Station entryway walls in two different Penn Stations.

“Hey,” says a guy in a neon-green button-down nearby. Manny blinks at him; Normal New York abruptly resumes, Weird New York vanishing for the moment. (It’s still somewhere nearby, though.) The button-down is part of a uniform. The guy is carrying a sign hawking bike rentals at tourists. He faces Manny with open hostility. “Puke your drunk ass off somewhere else.”

Manny tries to straighten, but he knows he’s still a little diagonal. “I’m not drunk.” He’s just seeing juxtaposed multiple realities while being plagued by inexplicable compulsions and phantom sensations.

“Well, then, take your high ass somewhere else.”

“Yes.” That’s a good idea. He needs to go… east. He turns in that direction, following instincts he never had before a few minutes ago. “What’s thataway?” he asks Bike Guy.

“My left nut,” Bike Guy says.

“That’s south!” laughs another bike rental hawker nearby. Bike Guy rolls his eyes and grabs his crotch at her in the iconic New York Sign Language gesture of suck-my-dick.

The attitude’s starting to grate. Manny says, “If I rent a bike, will you tell me what’s in that direction?”

Bike Guy’s suddenly all smiles. “Sure—”

“No, sir,” says Bike Woman, serious now as she comes over. “Sir, I’m sorry, but we cannot rent a bike to someone who appears to be intoxicated or ill. Company policy. Do you need me to call 911?”

People in New York sure like to call 911. “No, I can walk. I need to get to—” FDR Drive. “—FDR Drive.”

The woman’s expression turns skeptical. “You wanna walk to FDR Drive? What the hell kind of tourist are you? Sir.”

“He ain’t no tourist,” says he of the southern left nut, as he chin-points at Manny. “Look at him.”

Manny’s never been to New York before, at least as far as he knows. “I just need to get there. Fast.”

“Take a cab, then,” says the woman. “Taxi stand’s right there. Need me to grab one for you?”

Manny shivers a little, feeling the rise of something new within himself. Not sickness this time—or rather, not just sickness, since that terrible stabbish ache hasn’t faded. What comes instead is a shift in perception. Beneath his hand, which rests on the kiosk, he hears a soft rattle of decades’ worth of flyers. (The kiosk has nothing on it. There’s a sign: DO NOT POST BILLS. He hears what used to be there.) Traffic’s flying past on Seventh, hurrying to get through the light before a million pedestrians start trying to get to Macy’s or K-Town karaoke and barbecue. All these things belong; they are rightness. But his eyes stutter over a TGI Fridays and he twitches a little, lip curling in involuntary distaste. Something about its facade feels foreign, intrusive, jarring. A tiny, cluttered shoe-repair shop next to it does not elicit the same feeling, nor does a vape shop next door. Just the chain stores that Manny sees—a Foot Locker, a Sbarro, all the sorts of stores one normally finds at a low-end suburban mall. Except these mall stores are here, in the heart of Manhattan, and their presence is… not truly harmful, but irritating. Like paper cuts, or little quick slaps to the face.

The subway sign, though, feels right and real. The billboards, too, no matter what’s on them. The cabs, and flow of cars and people—all these things soothe the irritants, somehow. He draws in a deep breath that reeks of hot garbage and acrid steam belching from a manhole cover nearby, and it’s foul but it’s right. More than right. Suddenly he’s better. The sick feeling recedes a little, and his side dulls from stabbing pain into cold prickles that only hurt when he moves.

“Thanks,” he says to Bike Woman, straightening and grabbing his roller bag. “But my ride’s coming.” Wait. How does he know that?

The woman shrugs. Both of them turn away to resume hawking bikes. Manny walks toward the area where people are waiting for Lyfts or Ubers. He has both apps on his phone, but he hasn’t used them. There should be nothing here for him.

However, a moment later, a cab rolls to a stop right in front of him.

It’s like a cab out of an old movie: smooth and bulbous and huge, with a black-and-white checkered strip along its near flank. Bike Guy does a double take, then whistles. “A Checker! Haven’t seen one of those since I was a kid.”

“It’s for me,” Manny says unnecessarily, and reaches for the door.

It’s locked. I need this open, he thinks. The door lock clicks open. So, that’s new, but he’ll process it later.

“What the—” says the woman inside as Manny tosses his bag onto the back seat and climbs in after it. She’s a very young white woman, so young that she doesn’t look old enough to drive, who has twisted around to stare at him. But she’s mostly indignant rather than scared, which seems a good starting place for their future relationship. “Hey. Dude. This isn’t a real cab. It’s just an antique—a prop. People rent it for weddings.”

Manny pulls the door shut. “FDR, please,” he says, and flashes his most charming smile.

It shouldn’t work. She should be screaming her head off and trying to get the nearest cop to shoot him. But something else has occurred between them, helping to keep the woman calm. Manny has followed to the letter the ritual of getting-in-a-cab, introducing enough plausible deniability that she thinks he’s deluded rather than a potential threat. However, there’s power in what he’s done that goes beyond just psychology. He’s felt it before, hasn’t he? Just a moment ago, when he somehow drew strength from the chaos of Seventh Avenue to ease the pain in his side. He can actually hear some of that power whispering to her, Maybe he’s an actor. He looks like That Guy whose name you can’t remember, from That Musical you like. So maybe don’t freak out yet? Because New Yorkers don’t freak out around famous people.

And how does he know all this? Because he does, that’s how. He’s trying to keep up.

So he adds, after a breath passes and she just stares, “You’re going that way anyway, aren’t you?”

She narrows her eyes at him. They’re at a red light, but the walk sign nearby is blinking. He’s got maybe ten more seconds. “How the hell did you know that?”

Because the cab wouldn’t have stopped if you weren’t, he doesn’t say, and reaches for his wallet. “Here,” he says, handing her a hundred-dollar bill.

She stares at it, then her lip curls. “Right, a fake.”

“I have twenties, if you’d prefer.” There’s more power in twenties anyway. A lot of businesses in the city won’t take hundreds, also for fear of counterfeit bills. With twenties, Manny will be able to compel her to take him where he needs to go, whether she wants to or not. He’d rather persuade, though. Force is… he doesn’t want to use force.

“Tourists do carry a lot of cash,” she murmurs while frowning, as if reasoning with her better instincts. “And you don’t look like a serial killer…”

“Most serial killers take care to look like ordinary people,” he points out.

“Not helping your case with the mansplaining, guy.”

“Good point. Sorry.”

That seems to decide her. “Well. Assholes don’t say sorry.” She considers for a moment longer. “Make that two Benjies, and okay.”

He offers the twenties, although he does have another hundred-dollar bill in his wallet. There’s no need to use the bills for power anymore, however. She has completed the ritual by accepting his directions, then performed the orthogonal ritual of haggling for more money. All the stars have aligned. She’s on board. As she’s pocketing the money, the traffic light changes and a car immediately honks behind her. She casually flips that driver off and then wrenches the wheel to drag the cab across four active lanes as if she’s done this, or driven the Daytona 500, all her life.

And that’s that. Even Manny is amazed at how well this strange power works as he hangs on to the door handle and the ancient lap-only seat belt and tries not to look alarmed by her driving. He has some inkling of why it works. Money talks and bullshit walks in New York. In a lot of cities, probably—but here, the nation’s shrine to unrestricted predatory capitalism, money has nearly talismanic power. Which means that he can use it as a talisman.

The traffic lights miraculously stay in their favor for several blocks, which is fortunate because the young woman is likely to break the sound barrier at this rate. Then she curses and slams on the brakes as a light ahead makes a fast switch to red. Too fast; amazing that she doesn’t run the light. He smells a waft of burnt rubber through the open window as he leans forward to squint at the light. “Busted light?”

“Must be,” she says, tapping her fingertips rapidly on the wheel. This, Manny knows, is a gesture required by the ritual of hurry-up-damn-it, but it doesn’t work, because that ritual never works. “They usually line up better than this. Just one light out of sequence can start a traffic jam.”

Manny presses his hand against the cold, spreading ache in his side that is beginning to throb again. Something about the traffic light has pinged his new sense of wrongness—and the wrongness is enough to erode whatever anesthetic effect he’s managed to summon. He opens his mouth to suggest that she run the light, which is risky. The wrongness has probably weakened his influence on her, too, and now there’s nothing to stop her from thinking twice about the strange Black dude in her antique cab. But whatever is happening on the east side of the island—FDR Drive—is growing urgent. He can’t risk getting kicked out of the cab until he gets there.

Before Manny can speak, however, a BMW passes through the intersection ahead. There are long, feathery white tendrils growing from its wheel wells.

He watches it go past in utter shock. The driver sees it, too; her mouth falls open. Feathery doesn’t quite fit what they’re seeing. It’s more like an anemone’s fronds, or the tendrils of certain jellyfish. As the car rolls by, gliding along behind a slower driver, they see one of the tendrils seem to… inhale. It opens itself out a little, revealing a thickened stalk that tapers as it stretches away from the wheels, up to slightly darkened tips. All of it is translucent. Not all of it is here—in this world, that is. Manny sees at once that it is like the dual city: here, but also in that other place where the sky is wild and people are a never-thought.

All of that is academic, though, because in the next moment, Manny notices something that makes the little hairs on the back of his neck stand up. The tendrils twitch as the BMW thumps over a pothole—but it’s not the pothole that they’re reacting to. They’re longer, see. Turning, like some kind of wiggly, wormlike radio antennas. Stretching toward the Checker cab as if they sense Manny inside, and smell his fear.

After the BMW moves on, its driver apparently oblivious, it takes a moment for Manny’s skin to stop crawling.

“So, you saw that, too, right?” asks the driver. The traffic light has finally changed; they speed toward FDR again. “Nobody else was staring, but you…” Her eyes meet his in the rearview.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I saw it. I don’t… yeah.” It occurs to him, belatedly, that she might need more explanation than this, if he doesn’t want to get kicked out of the cab. “You’re not crazy. Or at least, if you are, you’re not the only one.”

“Oh, well, that’s comforting.” She licks her lips. “Why couldn’t anyone else see it?”

“I wish I knew.” But when she shakes her head, he feels compelled to add, “We’re going to destroy the thing that’s causing it.” He means it to reassure, but he also realizes, as he says it, that it’s true. He doesn’t let himself think further about how he knows it’s true. He doesn’t ask whom the we in his statement refers to. They’re too far into this now. If he starts doubting himself here, that will weaken the power—and, more importantly, he’ll start questioning his own sanity. Then they’re back to involuntary commitment.

“Destroy… what?” She’s frowning as she looks at him in the rearview this time.

He doesn’t want to admit that he doesn’t know. “Just get me to FDR, and I’ll handle it.”

Much to his relief, she relaxes and flashes a lopsided smile over her shoulder. “Weird, but okay. The grandkids are gonna love this story. If I, you know, have grandkids.” She drives on.

Then at last they’re on FDR, moving faster toward that vague-but-rapidly-sharpening sense of wrongness. Manny is clinging to the old-fashioned leather handle sewn into the seat back before him because she’s still doing the race-car-driver act, whipping around slower cars and cresting hills with enough speed that it feels a little like riding

the Cyclone? what is

a roller coaster. But they’re getting closer to the source of all the trouble. There’s a knot of small aircraft over and boats crowding along the nearby East River, all of them generally centering on something farther south. All Manny can see from here is smoke. Maybe it has to do with that bridge incident he heard about on the train? Must be; they’ve begun to pass signs warning of delays, detours, and police activity below Houston Street.

But it’s also clear that they’re much closer to the wrongness than to the bridge disaster. Now they’re passing more cars, over on the uptown side of FDR, that seem to be infested with the weird white tendrils. Most are growing from the wheels, same as on the Beemer they saw before. It’s as if the cars have rolled over something noxious that’s allowed a kind of metaphysically opportunistic infection at the site of the damage. A few vehicles have it in their front grilles or curling up from their undercarriages. One car, a newish Beetle, has the tendrils in a spray up one door and crawling over the driver’s window. The driver doesn’t notice. What will happen if it touches her when she opens the door? Nothing good.

Then the traffic slows sharply… and the city’s second, unseen disaster comes into range.

His first thought is that it’s like an explosion, kind of. Imagine a fountain bursting up from the asphalt and flaring twenty or thirty feet into the sky, and wiggling. In lieu of water, the fountain flares with tendrils—dozens of them, anemoneic and enormous. Some writhe together in a way that is both mesmerizing and vaguely phallic as they tower above the roofs of the cars. Manny can tell that the root of the… growth… is located somewhere up ahead on the downtown side, probably in the fast lane, which must be how it’s getting so many cars on the uptown-going side despite the median barrier. He sees a shiny new SUV with Pennsylvania plates pass that is so covered in the tendrils that it looks like a spectral hedgehog. Good thing the driver can’t see them, or his vision would be too occluded to allow driving. But an ancient, rusty Ford Escort with missing hubcaps and peeling paint comes right behind it, and the tendrils haven’t touched it at all. What’s the pattern? He can’t begin to guess.

This explosion of ick is what’s causing the traffic jam, Manny sees, as the flow of cars slows to a crawl and the Checker comes to a near halt. Although most people can’t see the flare of tendrils, they’re still somehow reacting to its presence. Drivers in the fast lane keep trying to pull into the middle lane to get around the thing, drivers in the middle are trying to get into the right-hand lane to get around them, and drivers in the right-hand lane aren’t budging. It’s as if there’s an invisible accident up ahead that everyone’s trying to avoid. Thank God it’s not rush hour or the traffic wouldn’t be moving at all.

They’ve stopped for the moment, so Manny opens the rear passenger-side door to get out. A few of the cars behind them immediately set up a banshee chorus of horns, protesting even the possibility that he might slow things down more, but he ignores these and leans over to speak into the window when the driver rolls it down. (She has to lean across the seat and turn a manual crank to do this. For a moment he stares in fascination, then focuses.) “You got emergency flares?” he asks. “Triangle reflectors, stuff like that?”

“In the trunk.” She puts the car in park and gets out herself—there are more horns at this—but she’s glancing over at the tower of tendrils. Its tips wave above the pedestrian bridge that crosses this part of the FDR. “So that’s what this is all about?”

“Yep.” Manny pulls out the emergency kit when she opens the trunk. He’s keeping most of his attention on the thing, though. If any of those tendrils come at them… well, hopefully they won’t.

“You better hurry and do whatever you’re going to do. Cops are probably already on the way to deal with the, uh, obstruction. I don’t know if they’ll see it—nobody else seems to, or a lot more people would be getting out of their cars and walking—but they’re not gonna help much.”

He grimaces in agreement. Then he notices the way she’s glaring at the fountain of tendrils. He has a tiny epiphany, beginning to understand. “You from here?”

She blinks. “Yeah. Born and raised right over in Chelsea, two moms and everything. Why?”

“Just a guess.” Manny hesitates. He’s feeling strange again. There are things happening around him, to him—a rise in tension and power and meaning, all of it pulling toward a moment of truth that he’s not sure he wants to confront. Beneath his feet there is a vibration, a pulse like wheels clacking steadily over track segments that thrums in time with his pulse. Why? Because it does. Because, somehow, everything on this road and under it and around it is him. The pain in his side is awful, but ignorable because somehow the city is keeping him functioning, feeding him strength. Even the idling of the traffic-bound cars feeds him, pent energy just waiting for its chance to leap ahead. He looks around at the drivers in the nearby cars, and sees that most are glaring at the tendril thing, too. Do they see it? Not really. But they know something is there, blocking the flow of the city, and they hate it for that alone.

This is how it works, he realizes in wonder. This is what he needs to defeat the tendrils. These total strangers are his allies. Their anger, their need for a return to normalcy, rises from them like heat waves. This is the weapon he needs, if he can figure out how to harness it.

“I’m Manny,” he says to the cabdriver, on impulse. “You?”

She looks surprised, then grins. “Madison,” she says. “I know. But Number One Mom says I got conceived via IVF in a clinic just off Madison Ave, so…”

Too Much Information. Manny chuckles anyway, because he’s all nerves and could use a laugh. “Okay, here’s the plan,” he says. Then he lays it out for her.

She stares at him like he’s crazy, but she’ll help. He can see that in her face. “Fine,” she says at last, but it’s just a show of reluctance. Maybe New Yorkers don’t like to be seen as too helpful.

They lay out the flares and triangle markers to encourage people to go around the fast lane. Because the cab isn’t moving, angry commuters glare and honk as they pass, assuming that the cab is somehow making the traffic worse. It probably is. One guy starts screaming at Manny loudly enough to spray the inside of his door window with spittle, though fortunately he’s also too angry to remember to roll the window down first. It’s a measure of how much everyone is picking up on the weirdness, though, that no one veers back into the fast lane even after they pass the parked Checker cab.

The mass of tendrils is growing as Manny watches. There is a low, crumbly sound that he can hear from that direction, now and again when the wind carries it to him: probably the sound of roots digging into asphalt, and probably into the rebar within the asphalt, and maybe into the bedrock that’s under the road. He can hear the tendrils, too, now that they’re close enough: a choppy, broken groan, stuttering and occasionally clicking like a corrupted music file. He can smell it—a thicker, much-fishier brine scent than that of the nearby East River.

Trimethylamine oxide, he thinks out of the blue. The scent of the deep, cold, crushing ocean depths.

“What now?” Madison asks.

“I need to hit it.”

“Uh…”

Manny looks around before spotting exactly what he needs—there, in a convertible sports car’s open back seat. The Indian woman driving it stares at him in blatant curiosity. He steps toward her quickly and blurts, “Hey, can I have that umbrella?”

“How about pepper spray?” she suggests.

He holds up his hands to try to look less threatening, though he’s still a six-foot-tall not-white guy, and some people are just never going to be okay with that. “If you loan it to me, I can clear this traffic jam.”

At this, she actually looks intrigued. “Huh. Well, for that I guess I can give up an umbrella. It’s my sister’s, anyway. I just like to hit people with it.” She grabs the umbrella and hands it to him, pointy tip first.

“Thanks!” He grabs it and trots back to the cab. “Okay, we’re golden.”

Madison frowns at him, then at the tendril flare, as she opens the cab’s driver-side door to get back in. “I can’t see what’s beyond that thing,” she says. “If there are cars, and I can’t brake in time—”

“Yeah. I know.” Manny vaults up onto the Checker’s hood, then its roof. Madison stares while he turns and arranges himself to sit straddling the roof, one hand gripping the OFF DUTY sign. Fortunately, Checkers are high and long, narrow-built for city streets. He can get enough of a grip with his legs to hold on, though it’s still going to be dicey. “Okay. Ready.”

“I am so texting my weed man as soon as this is over,” Madison says, shaking her head as she gets into the cab.

The umbrella is key. Manny doesn’t know why, but he’s okay with accepting what he can’t quite understand, for now. What’s really bothering him is that he’s not sure how to use it. Given that everything in him cries out that the forest of tendrils is dangerous—deadly if it so much as touches him, maybe because the tendrils look like anemones, which sting their prey to death—he needs to figure it out fast. As Madison starts up the cab, he experimentally lifts the umbrella, metal tip pointing toward the tendril mass like a jouster’s lance. It’s wrong. The right idea, but the wrong implementation; weak, somehow. The umbrella’s an automatic, so he unsnaps its closure and presses the button. It pops open at once, and it’s huge. A golf umbrella—a nice one, with no hint of a rattle or wobble as Madison accelerates and the wind pulls at the umbrella. But still wrong.

The tendril mass looms, ethereal and pale, more frightening as the cab accelerates. There is a beauty to it, he must admit—like some haunting, bioluminescent deep-sea organism dragged to the surface. It is an alien beauty, however, meant for some other environment, some other aether, and here in New York its presence is a contaminant. The very air around it has turned gray, and now that they’re closer, he can hear the air hissing as if the tendrils are somehow hurting the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen they touch. Manny’s been in New York for less than an hour and yet he knows, he knows, that cities are organic, dynamic systems. They are built to incorporate newness. But some new things become part of a city, helping it grow and strengthen—while some new things can tear it apart.

They’re speeding now, doing at least fifty. The tendrils shadow the sky and the air has turned cold and the smell of lightless oceans has grown nauseating and it’s getting hard to hold on to the cab’s roof. He hangs on anyway and half shuts his eyes against the wind and the burning salt of the thing’s scent and what is he doing? Pushing out the interloper. But he’s an interloper, too, isn’t he? And if he doesn’t do this exactly the right way, then only one of the interlopers here is going to walk away from this confrontation intact, and the umbrella isn’t strong enough.

Then, when the Checker is only feet away, close enough that Manny can see the slick, pore-flecked skin of the tendrils, and his side screams with agony like someone’s jabbed an ice-cold pike through him—

—he remembers the words of the woman who gave him the umbrella. I just like to hit people with it, she’d said.

Manny lets go of the OFF DUTY sign. Immediately he starts to slide back on the cab’s roof because they’re going so fast that he can barely hold on with his legs alone. But he might survive falling off the cab; he won’t survive contact with the nest of tendrils if he doesn’t get this umbrella up. He needs both hands for that, wrestling against the wind and his own fear, but in the welter of seconds that he has, he manages to lift the open umbrella above his head. Now he might die, but at least his hair won’t get wet in any sudden rain shower.

Suddenly there is energy around him, in him, blazing rusty red and tarnished silver and greened bronze and a thousand colors more. It has become a sheath around the whole cab—a sphere of pure energy brightening enough to compete with the June midday sunlight—and in its suddenly loud song Manny hears the horns of a thousand cars trapped on the FDR. The hissing air is eclipsed by the shouted road rage of hundreds of mouths. As he opens his mouth to shout with them, his cry is delight and the ecstasy of suddenly knowing that he isn’t an interloper. The city needs newcomers! He belongs here as much as anyone born and bred to its streets, because anyone who wants to be of New York can be! He is no tourist, exploiting and gawking and giving nothing but money back. He lives here now. That makes all the difference in the world.

So as Manny laughs, giddy with this realization and the power that now suffuses him, they strike the tendril mass. The sheath of energy surrounding the cab burns through it like a checkered missile. Of course, the cab is part of the power; this is why the city sent it to him. Manny feels the umbrella snag on something and he clings tighter to it, rudely not lifting it or moving it aside because I’m walking here, I have the right of way and he’s playing metaphysical sidewalk chicken with this violent, invasive tourist—Then they’re through.

Manny hears Madison yell from inside the cab as they get through the mass and see that there’s a line of stopped cars dead ahead. She slams the brakes. Manny loses his grip on the umbrella as he frantically grabs for the OFF DUTY sign, catching it even as his whole body flips onto the windshield and hood. The cab spins out as Madison throws the wheel; now, instead of flying forward, he’s being thrown around by centrifugal force. In his panic, he loses his grip on the sign and doesn’t know how he finds the strength to grab for the edge of the hood below the wipers, even as his legs come loose and most of his body flies free in the direction of the stopped traffic. If the cab flips, he’s dead. If he loses his grip and gets tossed onto the hatchback up ahead, he’s dead. If he falls off the cab and under the wheels—

But the cab finally skids to a halt, a bare inch away from the stopped car up ahead. Manny’s feet thump onto the hatchback’s trunk, not entirely of his own volition. It’s okay. Just nice to have something solid under his feet again.

“Get your feet off my fucking car!” someone inside shouts. He ignores them.

“Holy shit!” Madison sticks her head out the window, her face panicky, like how he feels. “Holy—Are you okay?”

“Yeah?” Manny’s honestly not sure. But he musters the wherewithal to sit up, and look back down the fast lane.

Behind them, the tendril forest has gone wild, its fronds whipping and flailing like a dying thing. It is dying. Where they punched through its thicket of roots, there is a Checker cab cutout like something from a kids’ cartoon—complete with an umbrella-shaped hole on top of its roof, and a hunched human silhouette underneath. The edges of the cutout glow as if hot, and the fire rapidly eats its way outward and upward, fast as a circle of flame burning through a piece of paper. Within seconds this burn has eaten its way through the base of the tendrils, then starts burning all the way up. No ash or residue remains in the wake of this process. Manny knows this is because the tendrils aren’t really there, aren’t really real in any way that makes sense.

The destruction is real, however. Once the last of the tendrils has burned away, a hovering, brightly colored knot of energy—the remnant of the sheath that surrounded the cab, now a wild, seething thing of its own—dissipates in a miniature explosion that ripples concentrically outward. Manny shudders as the wave of light and color and heat passes through him. He knows it won’t hurt, but he’s surprised when it warms the place on his side that hurt so badly before. All better now. More dramatically, tendrils that have attached themselves to the nearby cars wither away the instant the energy hits them. He feels the power roll onward out of sight as it passes beyond the nearest buildings and into the East River.

It’s done.

And as Manny climbs off the cab’s hood and settles back onto the ground, once again he feels something waft through him, from the soles of his shoes to the roots of his hair. It’s the same energy, he realizes, that suffused the cab when it torpedoed through the tendril mass—and which soothed him at Penn Station, and which guided him from there to here. That energy is the city, he understands somehow, and it is part of him, filling him up and driving out anything unnecessary to make room for itself. That’s why his name is gone.

The energy begins to fade. Will his memory come back when it’s done? No way to know. Though Manny feels he should be frightened by this realization, he… isn’t. It doesn’t make sense. Amnesia, even if it’s temporary, can’t be a good thing. He might have a brain bleed, some kind of hidden injury; he should go to a hospital. But instead of being frightened, he is actually comforted by the presence of the city within him. He shouldn’t be. He has an inkling that he just had a near-death experience. But he is.

The East River churns at his back. He looks up at the towering breadth of Manhattan: endless high-rise co-ops, repurposed banks, cramped housing projects sandwiched between ancient theater houses and soulless corporate headquarters. Nearly two million people. He’s been here one hour, but already he feels like he has never lived anywhere else. And even if he doesn’t know who he was… he knows who he is.

“I am Manhattan,” he murmurs softly.

And the city replies, without words, right into his heart: Welcome to New York.