2062

History's Kinshasa was genocide, corruption, violence, mechanized dystopia wrought by Doctor Wily himself. The locals' Kinshasa was a once crippled by foreign oppressors but able to find its footing with the aid of Wily's technology. The Cataclysm broke its skyline, but not its people; they rebuilt, greater than before.

The Kinshasa rising from the Congo's edge before Grace Njobe was the latter: glistening glass and steel and promise. From the moment she had boarded the ferry on the opposite shore she had not taken her eyes off it—a surreal splendor that might vanish if she looked away, leaving her back in her muddy village without any chance of leaving. At first, she thought she finally believed her cousins descriptions, but the closer it came—the closer it drew her—the more she thought his letters undersold it.

The deck was crowded. Hopeful murmurs swelling to excited chatter, the laughter of disbelief, sighing of a long journey's end. Along the river, more ferries were pulling up to the docks, unloading hundreds. Men on merchant boats nudged each other, studying the newcomers. A handsome young man, his top three shirt-buttons undone, raised a bottle and shouted right at her; she giggled and covered her face.

The ferry pulled up alongside a ferrocrete pier, two of the crewmen unfolding the ramp down from the deck and announcing their arrival. Her cousin had been at pains to warn her about the elbow and jostle of disembarking, and Grace hung back with her single bag in hand, letting the crowds thin. Some—mostly young men—struck out alone with lean, hungry looks. Which villages and communes they had come from? Which would be going back home before the year was out, and which would find their place? Those who had family waiting for them had more surety and less of the loners' fire. She hoped she had both.

Her cousin stood there with his hands stuffed deep in his jean pockets, eyes tailing the gathering-and-departing knots and flicking back up to the deck.

"Andre!"

"There she is." He embraced her tightly. "You've finally made it."

"I can't begin to tell you how excited I am."

"Oh, I'm sure I will hear about it several times a day for the next few months." He grinned and patted her shoulder. "Little Grace is ready for the big time."

Grace's stomach growled over the shouts of dockworkers and sailors.

"Well, maybe ready for lunch first?" Andre asked.

"I wouldn't say no."

"Come on, I know the perfect place. Let me help you with your things."

Steps led up from the docks to a crowded sidewalk, waves of cyclists and velomobiles, and an avenue that didn't end, but vanished to a point on the horizon. She nearly lost Andre in the crowd as the traffic stopped and he started down the stretch so casually, with her rooted to the spot. Each building rising around her was taller by far than any she had ever seen in person. People crowded around the carts of food vendors, tourists clogged every side street snapping photos, men and women in suits brushed past—a million places and people to be.

Andre led her into a cafeteria. The floor-to-ceiling windows, brushed chrome, and the simple geometric decor reminded her of pictures she'd seen in a schoolbook of the Robot Age. A waitress spotted them from a dessert counter, led them to a booth, and took Andre's order of two strawberry shakes with a blinding-white smile. Her parents would have mourned the excess; but then, they had stayed back home and she was here, gawking out the window at the throngs pushing past.

They whiled away a couple hours catching up, Andre asking after her job, telling her a bit about the neighborhood he lived in, what sort of place she'd be sharing with him until she was on her feet. Andre settled the bill; one look told her this would be a luxury.

Well, I expected that, she told herself.

They gathered up her things and stepped back onto the street.

The smell bumped into her first, then the man it belonged to. She had seen filthy people back home enough times, but this was different. The clothes he wore were not the dull linens of a country laborer, they were synthetics stained with time and, to judge by the stink, his own waste. She had thought up until then that synthetics didn't rot, but was reevaluating that as she instinctively said "I'm sorry."

"Just keep—"

"The lie!" the man wailed, turning his face to the sky. Andre's hand was firm around Grace's arm and he pulled her back, forcing himself between her and the stranger, who tried to reach out for her. "Don't believe the lie!" he said.

Tears streamed down his cheeks, and he covered his ears, clawing at the skin around them so hard she thought he'd draw blood. "It's all a lie! Everything. Gone. Gone! My children, my cousins, the wine, lie!"

"All right, friend." Andre shoved him back, quickly fished a crumpled banknote out his pocket and pressed it into the man's suddenly limp hand. "Better luck to you. Come on, Grace."

The man started muttering to himself, swaying in place and staring at the ground. The whole episode had played out without notice from any of the passersby. At the time, she imagined that she would forget that moment whether because it would be buried under better memories, or it would blur into other such incidents that Andre had warned her of.

But some part of her refused to ever forget it, knowing that if she did, nobody else would remember it.