City Out of Time. William Robison III
and easier to maintain – especially with an easy supply of older parts available via time travel.
As they traveled, Celeste noted the avenue names as they passed – Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, etc… Each of the North/South streets were named after the States of the Union in alphabetical order. She explained that it made it easier for everyone to remember where they were in the City.
She noted that the name of the boulevard they were on was McKinley Way – and that it was the 25th east / west street in the city. Each of the east/west avenues were named after Presidents of the United States and went in order that they were elected.
“Except that Grover Cleveland only gets one street – otherwise everyone would just get confused.”
“Clearly the person that laid out this town loved Jeopardy,” Lanz Franco replied.
Celeste wrinkled her face and asked, “What’s Jeopardy?”
“It’s a TV quiz show…“
Celeste said “I don’t have much time for TV.”
As the trolley continued east down McKinley Way, Celeste returned to pointing out useful, if not terribly interesting things like the bank, the movie theater, a library. Lanz’s eyes would always wander to whatever she was pointing at, but then immediately snap back to her arm and follow her supple form back to her shoulder, neck, and then face. Celeste’s eyes were captivating with a gravity of their own, pulling Lanz’s gaze to them almost involuntarily.
“You certainly know your way around here. Did you grow up here?”
“Something like that,” she replied.
“Must have been a boring life… is that why you joined the Retrieval Corps? To see the world?”
She turned her gaze to the window and watched the street racing by them.
Almost absently, she said, “Not everything I’d been told was true. I needed to see things for myself and come to my own conclusions.”
“Did you find the truth?”
Celeste turned back to Lanz, a quick flash of anger in her eyes; almost as quickly subdued. She smiled false sincerity.
“All I found was more lies,” she noted. “The truth is as elusive in the past as it is in the present and future.”
She looked out the window again and said, “Our stop is coming up.”
At Ohio Street, they got off the trolley. Ohio and McKinley Way was a major intersection – not only for automobile traffic, but also for foot traffic and for trolley lines. Two trolley lines crossed here; the McKinley Way East/West Line and the Ohio Street North/South Line. Celeste crossed the street to the Ohio Street trolley stop and Lanz ran to keep up.
“If you really want to see this town, you need to go up to the Heights.”
They boarded the northbound trolley a minute later and found a couple of seats midway along the car. Lanz took the window seat this time and Celeste sat next to him on the aisle.
The second the trolley started moving, Lanz spotted a building approaching and asked, ‘What’s that?”
Celeste leaned across Lanz to see what it was that had drawn his attention while Lanz surreptitiously smelled Celeste’s hair and perfume and thrilled at her touch as her body crossed his frame.
“What? That?” Celeste asked.
“Mmm hmm,” Lanz agreed without even looking at whatever it was that Celeste was now pointing to. He was really admiring her… attributes… up close.
“That’s a requisition center,” Celeste noted. “For any appliances you want to ask for, but don’t probably need. Bloody nuisance hauling those appliances through time.”
Celeste sat back in her chair and Lanz turned his head away quickly so that she wouldn’t notice that he’d been staring.
“Everyone wants… no… Needs their gizmos and appliances and whatnots,” Celeste continued, “And yet, they leave all of that stuff behind to come here – in order to see the world. Why? What do they hope to find here that they can’t find in their world of appliances?”
“What does anyone look for?” Lanz returned. “They don’t call it the pursuit of happiness for nothing. People just want to be happy and together.”
“Life isn’t about being happy,” Celeste countered. “It’s often cruel, uncompromising, and completely random.”
“People don’t care. They want to be happy anyway. They want to defy the world and live happily ever after – free from want, free from fear, free from oppression. They never stop trying to be happy.”
Celeste turned to look at Lanz, “Is that why you came here?”
Lanz thought about this for a moment as the trolley rolled up Ohio Street. He hadn’t actually set out to come here. He hadn’t even known here existed. And yet, if he really thought about it, he had been about to leave Las Vegas for parts unknown. His life was in such a shambles that casting about in any other direction had been preferable to staying behind in wasted existence. In short, Lanz had finally overcome the lethargy of his life to seek happiness in whatever form he might find it.
He’d ended up in the City.
“I guess it is,” Lanz admitted.
“Was your life out there that bad?” Celeste asked.
“It wasn’t good. I was struggling just to exist. I felt like I was getting nowhere – like I was spending up my best intelligence, my best effort, and the best years of my life in a meaningless pursuit of just getting by. I did what I could to help others, but it never really seemed to matter. No matter how high I aspired to reach, there was already someone there ahead of me not only ready to collect their toll, but also to remind me that I owed everything I’d ever accomplished to some sort of hierarchy that I was only vaguely aware of and that didn’t need to reward my allegiance. I just wanted to get away from that and to achieve something on my own. I want to own my own soul.”
The trolley reached the end of Ohio and turned right, entering a tunnel in the side of the mountain. The car plunged into darkness. Lanz looked out the window and could see light at the end of the tunnel up ahead. The trolley banked left and started up hill.
“We’re going to the Heights now,” Celeste explained. “We’re almost there.”
For five minutes they ducked in and out of tunnels that bore through solid rock as the trolley worked its way higher up the side of the mountain. Every time they emerged from a new tunnel, it was to an increasingly more spectacular view of the City. The trolley ride reminded Lanz of a trip he’d taken through the Alps by train when he’d been stationed in Germany.
Finally, the trolley emerged at the top of a large clearing with rolling hills off to the right leading to the higher elevations, and with a two story low slung building off to the left nestled into the side of the hill. The trolley rolled to a stop and Celeste took Lanz’s arm and pulled him towards the exit.
They stepped out onto the street and moved away from the trolley. It sped up and disappeared through a tunnel on the other side of the clearing, already heading back down to the City below. With the trolley out of the way, they both turned and admired the view.
Even with the building in the way, the City stretched below them in a surreal almost water-color painting way. The clear desert air bounced the reflected light of the sun off the river in such a way as Lanz had never seen water reflected before. It almost seemed alive – as if the light and the shadows were playing with each other in the air above the water; like a flock of geese playing tag. Stretching away from the river both north and south, the City’s grid pattern made it very easy to pick out highlights of the City’s design. There in the upper right quadrant was the Central Plaza, and McKinley Way stretched away from it a few blocks away. Lanz could see parks and gardens and farms that he never would have found