The World We Make

CHAPTER ONE

Living Just Enough in the City

It’s job offer day at Evilcorp.

Padmini knows she probably shouldn’t think of it as Evilcorp. Yes, it is evil—a multinational financial services company that makes billions per year in exchange for the small price of the environment and economic stability and anything resembling human decency—but it is also her employer. She knew what she was getting into when she accepted the offer of an internship with them, and for the most part this devil’s bargain has worked in her favor. She’s gained a ton of experience and gotten paid for the privilege, while many of her grad school peers are struggling along on SNAP benefits, forced to do all their professors’ dirty work if they want to graduate. The money’s been good enough that she helped Aishwarya buy clothes for the baby, and sent something back home to her family in Chennai for the first time ever. She can remember her mother, a quiet but determined woman, working all day in a government position and then doing call center shifts at night from home, surviving for years on only four or five hours of sleep just to make sure Padmini’s education fund kept growing. Now Padmini is contributing to the education fund for her younger brother. This is late-stage capitalism; evil is everywhere. But if she can help her family, then at least she’s getting a little good out of it.

(Such an odd term, “devil’s bargain.” Hinduism is full of “demons,” but half of them are just gods having a bad day. As far as Padmini can tell, the same applies to Christian demons, who are supposed to be fallen angels. But Hindu demons don’t run around trying to trick people into shady spiritual contracts; they mostly just start fights and kill people while obsessing over their own personal affairs. Christian demons really need to get a life.)

Padmini and her boss are meeting in the prettiest conference room on the fifty-sixth floor. It’s got a big mahogany meeting table, elegant exotic plants that someone gets paid well to keep alive, and actual wood-paneled walls instead of the ubiquitous glass that’s supposed to suggest transparency. That small measure of privacy is why it’s being used for this meeting, since HR matters have to be kept confidential. Padmini picks a seat facing the window, which takes up one whole side of the room, gifting them both with a bright midmorning view of lower Manhattan, the East River, and, ah yes of course, Queens. Nice to have her emotional support borough here with her.

Remember to call him Joe, Padmini reminds herself for the umpteenth time. Her supervisor is Joe Whitehead. All the other interns call him Joe. Padmini’s tried on his given name a few times, but using it still feels disrespectful and overly familiar, so she always reverts to “Mr. Whitehead” when she’s not thinking about it. Thing is, she’s not the same as those other interns, and no amount of fake-casual familiarity is going to make her ever forget that. Most of the others are Ivy Leaguers while she’s from NYU, which is just an Ivy League–priced wannabe. A lot of them are getting MBAs, PhDs, even JDs—terminal degrees—while she’s in a STEM master’s program, hired only because nobody else can handle the data crunching. She gets along with all of them, of course, because she knows how important workplace relationships are. She laughs at their unfunny jokes; she answers their questions about how to make good chai even though she hates the stuff. Meanwhile she works longer hours than everyone on the team, Joe included.

But whatever. Here she is at last, at the finish line.

“Padmini, how’s it going?” Joe asks, as he strolls in and sits down, laying out several documents in front of himself. She sees that the top one carries the letterhead of HR, which is a satisfying-enough sight that it almost distracts her from the mangling of her name. Padmini is not that hard to say, but he frequently transposes the consonants: pah-dee-mee instead of pad-mee-nee. She grits her teeth into a bright smile.

“I’m doing great, Joe!” Excellent, got that “Joe” in. It works like magic; he relaxes visibly, which is good because he’s always a little stiff around her. “Just enjoying this beautiful view.”

“Oh, is it?” He glances at the window and then back at his paperwork, which he’s shuffling around. “Always preferred the harbor view, on the south side of the building. Statue of Liberty and all. I figured you’d like that yourself.”

There was a time when statements like this went over her head. These days she pings on them immediately—but a meeting with your boss, who’s about to offer you a permanent position, is not the time to point out that not all immigrants like the Statue of Liberty. Especially immigrants for whom the whole Send me your tired, your poor schtick has turned out to be more like Send me your smartest and hardest working so we can suck the life out of them then ship the exhausted dregs right back. So Padmini shrugs and plays it off. “Well, but facing that way you have to look at Staten Island, Joe.”

It’s not a fair joke. First because the southern view also features Jersey City. Second because Staten Island is going through some stuff right now, and people in the city are likely less sympathetic toward it as a result. Sure enough, Joe laughs, too loudly. He’s always so loud. “Perish the thought! You’re so funny, Padmini.” Then he sighs, pressing his lips together in awkward discomfort. “That’s what’s going to make this so difficult.”

It’s such a swift change in the meeting’s mood that it takes Padmini a moment to catch up. “What do you mean?”

He hesitates, then puts on a neutral face that immediately makes her tense. She tries to think of all the possible scenarios that she’s prepared for. He’ll say, The salary is below market, unfortunately, and she’ll have to find a politic way to say that she’ll accept anything, even minimum wage, as long as the company sponsors her H-1B visa application. Or he’ll say that she didn’t get the title she requested—something without Administrator, and hopefully with Researcher in it—and she’ll counter with, “Well, maybe we can consider that at my first performance review.” She’s rehearsed this with a career counselor, and practiced interviewing with her uncle. She’s ready.

He says, “I’m afraid our department wasn’t able to come up with a line item that would fund a postgraduation position for you, Padmini.”

There’s a beat of silence between them.

Then she blurts, “What the actual fuck did you just say?”

He’s already halfway to saying something else; the f-bomb stops him in his tracks, and he blinks, then lets out an uncomfortable chuckle. “I’m sure this comes as a shock, so I’ll let that slide. But I just wanted to say that I’m sorry—”

She interrupts him. She knows better, but she can’t think. “Why?”

“Well, the management team met, and there was concern about your organizational fit—”

It hits like a punch to the belly. “My fit?”

“Yes.” Joe looks defensive, probably because her tone communicates clearly that she thinks this is the shittiest excuse that ever got shat. Her facial expression’s probably helping to convey her open disgust, too; she’s always been the face journey type. “As you know, fit is extremely important to teamwork, and since we do solicit feedback from other interns about anyone we’re considering for a permanent position, there were… concerns, as I said. Some of the others seemed to feel that you were, well, condescending at times.” When Padmini continues to just stare at him, he resumes, with visible unease. “Others felt that you were unwilling to listen to feedback.”

She narrows her eyes. “Is this about Wash still insisting that my projection was wrong?”

“This isn’t about anything specific—but yes, that was one of the incidents that got discussed. And your reaction to Wash was professional, certainly, but…” He spreads his hands, as if she’s supposed to know what that means.

The horrible thing is that she does know what it means. Wash—family name Washbourne—is one of the PhD interns, with several years of experience as a tech company CFO and an unhealthy tendency to assume that his quantitative skills are much better than they are. During an analytics review a few months back, Padmini took care to speak to him deferentially even though they’re both interns with the same rank, but she also did not back down when he got defensive over an error that she pointed out. When he insisted he was right, she asked for time in another team meeting and then used that time to walk everyone through the details of her point, including white papers on the common error Wash was making. Joe agreed, the team agreed, and Wash even apologized and laughed it off afterward. Now, though… Padmini narrows her eyes. “Wait, did Wash file some kind of complaint? Because there was nothing about my fit in my performance review, and… and even if there was, that…” She shakes her head, her mouth faltering because she’s completely unable to believe what she’s hearing. It’s the stupidest reason she can think of not to hire someone, especially given that they need her. “What was I supposed to do, let him put that error into the final report?”

“Of course not. And no, he didn’t file a complaint; if he had, I would’ve told you. Padmini.” Joe sighs and leans forward. “You’re getting very emotional about this. Honestly, I didn’t think you had a temper at all.”

“You’re telling me I’m going to have to leave the country I’ve spent almost half my life in because I’m not polite enough to let incompetence slide, and you think I shouldn’t be emotional?”

Joe sets his jaw. “And that’s part of the problem, too. You’re only here for the visa.” When she audibly gasps, Joe presses the case. “You don’t care about our organizational mission. You don’t have any curiosity about other departments or teams; no one outside of Data Analytics knows you—”

Oh, hell no. Padmini pushes herself up to stand, palms planted on the edge of the mahogany conference table. If the thing didn’t weigh a ton, she’d flip it. “I don’t know anyone in other departments because I put in sixty-hour weeks on a regular basis,” she snaps. “I’m not supposed to work any more than twenty-four hours per week, remember? Because I’m also a full-time student. I didn’t report the excess to my internship supervisor. I could lose my student visa for that—but I did it, because I thought that was the way to prove I was worthy of long-term investment. I spend half of my time correcting other people’s work as well as doing my own, to make sure the team looks good. I go home exhausted every day and still do my coursework at night, I barely see my family even though we live in the same house”— She’s shaking with rage, but has enough presence of mind to rein it in when she hears her voice echo off the walls—“but I don’t complain. Not when Ed makes his little comments about how different my lunch smells from his Trader Joe’s vindaloo, or… or when Judy keeps stroking my bloody hair like I’m a doll, and when Rajesh won’t even look me in the eye because he can tell I’m Dalit! And you think I don’t care about the mission?” He opens his mouth and she runs over him, too furious to care anymore about treading carefully. “This organization’s mission is to make money, which I support by making 43 percent less than Wash, who can’t be bothered to check his fucking math!”

“Padmini—”

But she’s done, done, done, and her heart is in her throat and her eyes are blurry with anger-tears as she shakes her head and starts snatching up her things. Joe gives up and watches in awkward silence while she emotionally walks out of the conference room. And as she storms past Wash’s cubicle, of course she sees that he’s facing its opening, watching for her. Grinning, at the look on her face. Then Padmini hates herself for not being able to hold in the tears anymore, though she at least keeps it to a silent trickle as she passes Wash and heads to her own cubicle.

She’s already on her way out when security arrives to escort her. That’s standard practice in tech and finance companies, and she expected the escort given that it’s her last day. It still feels accusatory to have two hulking men walk along with her as she carries a box containing the sum total of her professional belongings: a tiny aloe plant, some reference books she’d kept in her office, and the WELCOME TO NEW YORK! snow globe that someone gave her at the last office Christmas party. She’s concluding an internship that would be counted successful by most measures, but it still feels like she’s leaving in disgrace. Probably because she might as well be.

Then she’s outside and they shut the doors behind her and she stops on the sidewalk for a moment to try to regain her emotional feet. That’s impossible because those feet are numb, like her heart and her mind. Some part of her clinically, cynically notes that she’s going to need to apologize to Joe pretty quickly so that she can maybe scrape a good referral and internship review out of it, at least. But How could you? is what she really wants to say to Joe, and she’s pretty sure she’s right to feel that way. It is a betrayal. She was the best employee on that damn team. A postgraduate offer would have meant she could relax a little, for the first time since she came to the US. Make a mistake every now and again. Take a whole weekend off, even.

But now when she graduates, she’ll have to find different employment before her student visa expires. That won’t be too difficult given her skill set, but what she needs is an employer who’s willing to sponsor her for the next step in the process: the H-1B specialty worker visa. It can easily cost ten thousand dollars for a company to hire lawyers and file all the different fees required, and whether the attempt is successful is a crapshoot because the government only gives out so many per year. Given the added cost and risk, few companies are willing to take a chance on an entry-level employee who hasn’t already interned with them. Padmini can continue to work in the country for a couple of years and at least earn some money, but after that she’ll have to go home to Chennai, a city she hasn’t seen in more than ten years. Her chances of being able to legally return to the US for work or citizenship after that will drop from slim to infinitesimal.

She makes it to the subway, at least, before she breaks down sobbing.

There’s nothing particularly esoteric to New York in how people react to a woman crying on public transportation, though the range of those reactions does vary depending on what borough one is in. Nobody says anything while she’s in Manhattan. It’s still early afternoon; not many people on the train this time of day, except tourists who just gawk at her. As the train approaches the bridge, however, the Manhattan passengers leave and Queens-bound passengers replace them. Somewhere around Queens Plaza an old white-maybe-Jewish woman leans over and says, “You okay, honey?” In the same moment another older woman, this one Desi with a soft Mumbai accent to her Hindi, says, “Younger sister, why are you crying?” while a Latino guy somewhere near Padmini’s own age goes, “Hey, you need tissues? I got tissues,” and pats his pockets.

It’s like a group hug of concern, her borough folding gentle arms around her and slapping away all that Wall Street coldness, and for a moment Padmini cries harder. Can’t help it. “I’m okay,” she blurts, taking a tissue from the packet that the young man waves at her. “I’m sorry. It’s just… hard, sometimes. This damn city.”

There are nods around her. “Fuck this city,” says the old lady. “That’s how you gotta be to live here, sweetie. Fuck it right in the ass.” There are more nods at this bit of nonsense, and a few enthusiastic “Yeahs” of agreement from people who are watching. It’s enough to pull a laugh from Padmini, which helps a lot even though absolutely none of her problems have been solved. Well—maybe one problem. In a moment when the world has made her feel valueless and alone, this little bit of human connection is exactly what she needs.

And then suddenly, out of nowhere, she gets booted into a different reality.

It’s a familiar reality, at least. The subway lights shift from their infamous green-toned white to something more red-yellow, almost twilit. The people that were around her, the anxious young Latino and the foulmouthed Jewish lady and all the rest, are gone, though Padmini sees a packet of tissues on the bench across from her, where the Latino guy left them. Padmini herself isn’t present anymore, either, not in any visible form—but she’s used to the peculiar re-centering of her awareness that occurs whenever she shifts into this place. It’s a metaphysical paradigm shift, a background process switchover from the perspective of a small flesh-and-blood human being into something vaster, stranger, many-minded. One of the reasons she and the others became cities is precisely because they are capable of making this leap of identity; they are not driven mad by the sudden ability to see and think as gods.

But never mind all that. Why has the city suddenly brought her here?

Padmini visualizes herself going to the windows for a look outside the train, and fortunately her disembodied consciousness cooperates. Beyond the windows she sees not the graffiti-limned buildings of Queens, but something at once familiar and unnerving: the metaversal tree. It exists at a scale great enough to encompass all worlds, both nowhere and everywhere at once, where one can witness the dynamism of the entire multiverse in an exponential cauliflower-cluster fractal spread of possibility. Spreading from where? she wonders for the first time, craning her figurative neck in an attempt to see beyond the nearest churning cluster. In the very far distance—farther than human eyes should be able to see, handy not being quite human anymore—she can make out a massive, impossibly long trunk below the tree. The trunk is universes that came into being countless aeons before Padmini’s own, and whose growth was obviously less varied and chaotic than what dominates the tree’s canopy. Figures; there probably wasn’t a lot of thought impacting the multiverse back when life was nothing but amoebas.

But Padmini can’t see to the trunk’s roots—if a mass of endlessly spawning universes can have roots. That’s because what she can see of the trunk eventually vanishes into a blaze of light so bright and white that it’s impossible to see beyond. We aren’t supposed to go there, she feels with sudden instinctive certainty. But that makes sense, doesn’t it? A leaf dies when it drops from a tree’s canopy onto the same soil that nourishes its roots. Not the leaf’s fault, or the soil’s; the leaf is just specialized for a different role in the tree’s life cycle, and what it requires to survive are things that simply aren’t present down on the ground. Also, this light is too bright. There’s sunlight, and then there’s whatever this is: a supernova of radiance, overwhelming by degrees. Even without eyes, Padmini has to stop looking in that direction, because it hurts.

What are you trying to show me? Padmini asks her borough.

The borough responds in the language she knows better than any of the other three she can speak—not words at all, but numbers and symbols and equations, writing themselves in panicky black strokes into the air around her. It’s all quantum state stuff, she recognizes at once, and in particular it’s

which is one of the Schrödinger equations. The one for the collapse of a wave function? As she watches, variables fill themselves into the equation and begin cycling with increasing speed. Counting down, as the train’s wheels scream and the subway car rocks faster and faster. She only got to take elective physics courses in undergrad, and she doesn’t remember all of it, but she thinks this might have something to do with eigenstates? The measure of how much quantum energy is in a system, basically. But what does it mean here? Damn it, she should’ve at least done the physics minor back in undergrad, but she was worried about her GPA, and…

… And for some reason, as she floats bodiless amid the branching, churning expanse of ten billion universes, she feels like she’s being watched. But when she “looks around,” there’s no one there. What the…?

perception dampeners inadequate, awareness imminent, abort abort abort

Then reality snaps, and Padmini is a human-shaped person on the R train again, clutching a small packet of borrowed tissues in one hand and leaning on the Mumbaikar lady, who’s crossed seats to put an arm around her shoulders. What the fuck.

Okay. “Thank you,” Padmini mumbles, trying to smile and trying not to look too disoriented as she pulls herself together. “Thank you, I’m sorry, you’re so kind, I love you all, I’ll be all right.”

But that is a lie. She has no idea what the hell she just saw/felt/heard/became in that other place, but she knows when something’s wrong.

The train’s at Jackson Heights, though, so she gets off and just stands there for a moment as the premonition of wrongness escalates.

Something in the station? The platform here is aboveground like most Queens trains. The air smells off in a way that’s not exactly bad, nothing stinks (for once), but nevertheless is different enough to make her wonder. Things sound weird, too—flatter, softer, a little tinny. The cardboard box has softened from the humidity and is starting to sag in Padmini’s hands, and her fingertips feel numb. Is that because she’s been holding the box too long, or…

… or is it because Queens is no longer alive?

Holy shit. It’s only been three months since Padmini became New York, but in that time she’s gotten used to perceiving the city through senses that ordinary, unidimensional human beings lack. Suddenly those are gone. But how is it possible for Queens to not be alive? She’s still alive. There hasn’t been any kind of mass catastrophe that’s left a crater between Brooklyn and Long Island—but suddenly, for the first time since the city awakened, Queens is just a place. Not dead, but nothing special. And Padmini is also… nothing special.

In a daze she wanders out of the station, letting habit guide her feet toward home. Same route every day. Strange to see it in daylight, given that she rarely got to go home before dark while she was working. So much stranger to feel her steps just land on concrete, without sending little reverberations into it and receiving emotions and energy in return. She breathes and the city does not breathe with her. Before becoming Queens she used to get winded going up even one set of subway steps; the internship plus maintaining a 3.9 GPA haven’t left her a lot of time to exercise. Stations like Times Square, where the interchange to reach the 7 train is such a marathon that the MTA actually emblazoned its longest stretch with a poem about how it felt to be So tired, always left her sweaty and out of breath before. For three months, however, she’s been breezing through it without her heart rate even going up and she didn’t notice, until now. How—

“Fucking chinko bitch,” mutters a voice behind her.

Padmini flinches and immediately regrets it. She’s had to deal with street harassment in both Chennai and New York pretty much since puberty, so she knows not to show any sign of discomfort or fear. Guy might not even be referring to her; she’s not Chinese, or whatever a “chinko” is supposed to be. Maybe he’s saying chico? Mistaking her for Latina, or trying to insinuate she’s a man? Doesn’t matter. The guy notices the flinch.

“Yeah, you,” he says, louder. She hears him get up from where he’d been sitting, hears feet start to follow. Other people on the street, those walking in the opposite direction, start frowning at something behind her. Padmini speeds up her pace a little even though this is a reaction as well, but the guy speeds up to match. “I’m talking to you, chink. Li’l brown turd. Illegal. Comin’ over here and spreading viruses everywhere and stealing our jobs.”

That, on a day when Padmini has just lost her chance at a job because a less-competent white man disliked her, hits like a slap. She’s already turning, already furious, already shaping her mouth to blurt “Fuck off” before her more sensible self can rein it in.

The guy following her is a dude she’s seen before around the subway station, Black and maybe fortysomething, dressed in pajama pants and a Mets hoodie and flip-flops. She doesn’t think he’s actually homeless; he’s always clean and well rested, locs groomed, and she’s seen him going into a big apartment building down the block from Kebab King. He’s a fixture in the area, though usually he just sits against a wall and mumbles to himself while occasionally asking for spare change. She thinks she’s given him a few bucks over the years. But he’s on his feet today, and more focused than she’s ever seen him, though he stops and looks confused when she rounds on him.

“Fuck off,” she says again, “and kiss my fat brown ass. Nobody’s taking a job from you! Or if they are, maybe it’s because you spend all your time shitting on other people? Fix yourself, you stupid son of a bitch, and leave me the fuck alone!”

Someone nearby laughs. Someone else claps. The dude looks genuinely hurt, however, and that breaks the back of Padmini’s rage. Poor fool is probably schizophrenic or something. Doesn’t mean his insults are harmless or that he can’t help himself—he clearly chooses to feed his delusions a diet of stereotypes and Fox News—but beyond just getting him to shut the fuck up, she’s taking out her day on him. When he falls silent, she turns away and resumes walking, with a little snarl of frustration. Fuck all this shit. Fuck this city, whatever’s happening to it. She just wants to go home.