In the City of Time by Gwendolyn Clare

Author:Gwendolyn Clare
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

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They took a portal upstream, expecting to find a bustling East German metropolis on the other side. The view outside had changed somewhat—the century’s worth of greenery erupting through the pavement had been undone by the rewinding of time—but the city was still empty of people.

“Okay … what.” Riley stepped into the middle of the street, spun a slow 360, and listened. A pigeon cooed from a rooftop. “Are you sure you targeted the right year?”

Jaideep glanced at the program on his phone. “Yeah, 1988. I guess we should’ve installed those upgrades before going upstream.”

Willa said, “From your reactions, I take it the city’s not supposed to be abandoned yet?”

“Not for another two years,” he said. “We must’ve had another temporal displacement with the portal.”

“Or maybe not.” Riley paused near the entrance of the closest cement-slab apartment complex. There were markings spray-painted on the door, and a wooden board hammered across it to keep it closed. “It’s an evacuation. This whole area of the city has been cleared, building by building.”

Jaideep said, “Yeah, but why? We’re in the middle of the Dresden Stability Island; these folks were the safest, luckiest people in Central Europe, next to the Lithuanians.”

As she figured it out, the knowledge opened a pit in Riley’s stomach. “Exactly,” she said. “If somebody’s home is already getting swallowed up by the cataclysm, they’re gonna jump at the chance to evacuate into an artificial world. You only have to force people to leave at gunpoint when staying is a viable option.”

It was obvious, now that she thought about it, that the exodus of the communist countries to Mars couldn’t have happened without conflict. There must have been some citizens who, for various reasons, didn’t want to leave, and their governments probably hadn’t dealt with the problem by sending them on their merry way to Western capitalism. The way she’d learned twentieth-century history in school, as if the end of the Cold War had been some sort of global victory for those who remained … maybe that was all patriotic fluff, devoid of any nuance with regard to what actual people went through.

Willa pursed her lips. “I suppose this doesn’t speak well for our chances of catching a train out of Dresden, then. They won’t be running regular service to an evacuated city.”

“Awesome. So we’re walking.” Riley looked to Jaideep. “Which way?”

He answered the question with a who, me? sort of glance.

“Jai. How do we get from here to Berlin, Mister It’s-All-Good-We-Can-Handle-This?”

Sheepishly, he said, “Look, I was prepping for us to land in northern Italy in 1891. I didn’t download street maps for every city in Europe across all of time.” He parted his fingers against his phone screen, zooming in. “I can tell you that Dresden’s on the Elbe River, and Berlin’s due north, and that’s about it.”

Riley ran her hands through her hair, trying to keep her cool. “Okay. This is fine. They had road signs in the eighties, so we’ll just find a major route and figure it out.

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