“2198?!” Nahum and Ima said at the same time. They stepped out of the elevator onto a glass platform. The air felt thin and tight and caught in Ima’s throat, threatening to choke her. Ima forced herself not to look down—the tallest building in Chicago towered a whopping twenty-two stories over the ground. She had never been any higher.
“What year did you think it was?” Vaughn asked.
The question floored Ima, as if they would even be thinking that the year they knew was a lie after everything that had happened to them since meeting Vaughn.
“2052,” Nahum said, and Ima nodded in agreement.
Nahum grabbed her hand. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Ima followed his eyes out past the platform, the light nearly blinding her. Thousands of spirals of metal and glass spun toward the clouds, like castles in the sky. Patches of dewey sunlight crashed down all around them, reflecting off of the thick piles of snow that covered the ground. Ima guessed it was the early hours of morning.
“Bizarre,” Vaughn said. “Your world appeared to be a mashup of the early 2000’s and the late 2000’s, when everyone lived in domed cities. The ozone layer fixed itself around the turn of the century, by the way. But only about 5% of the earth’s population survived The Scorched Years.”
Ima tried to sort through the hundreds of questions racing through her mind, trying to choose the one that might reorient her. “Are we still in Chicago?”
Vaughn shook his head. “No, you’re not still in Chicago, you’rein Chicago for the first time. This is Chicago. Not where we were before.”
Ima’s eyes adjusted to the light, and she began to see details in the spirals. The walls of every building were white or clear, like blank canvases. Unlike her Chicago, none of the buildings had names or ads on them. The only words she could see were scrawled across a tall, skinny building in the distance: “Welcome to Silicon City.”
A gigantic wall to the left of them had layers of artwork covering it. Hundreds of artists walked along glass balconies with no railings and used paint, chalk, stencils, and more to express themselves along the wall, going over others’ work with additions and subtractions.
Vaughn followed Ima’s eyes to the wall. “Purists who prefer the old methods. There’s no tracking mechanism though, so they can’t make money off of it.”
“Tracking?” Ima asked.
Vaughn didn’t answer her implied question. “You have a lot to learn about this world.”
Nahum clutched his forehead. “This isn’t possible.” He inhaled and exhaled heavily, like he might have a panic attack.
Ima squeezed his hand. “We’ll figure this out together, okay?” Nahum nodded, letting go of her hand and wrapping his arm across her shoulders.
Vaughn’s entire body stiffened and he coughed to get their attention. “It’s 5:21am and we’re meeting Nasser at seven. We have to move.”
With much effort, Nahum started walking, though he seemed to be in a daze still. They reached the edge of glass platform and Vaughn found a set of bins full of gloves. He dug through them and found two pairs, handing one to Ima and one to Nahum.
“You might need these for the drop.”
Ima took her gloves, trying not to feel overwhelmed. She didn’t know what he meant by “drop,” but if it had anything to do with falling, she was in for trouble.
Vaughn walked to the corner of the platform and sat on the edge of a carved-out hole in the glass. The hole had a pole sticking up from it. “I’ll slide first,” he said. “It’s only about 40 stories down, but people have been known to fall.”
YOU ARE READING
Socialpunk (Socialpunk #1)
Teen Fiction"This book would be good for those that enjoyed the Hunger Games!” ~ Cover 2 Cover Blog "When I read the first page, I did not anticipate that I would be finishing the book that night, but I did. I had to. I didn’t care that I was up until 3:00AM."...
