I tried to point out the euthanasia shop to Travis, but he missed it.
“Super senses?” I asked, speaking softly and, turning away from the window to look at him.
Travis frowned for a moment. “Night vision,” he muttered. “Not this. Besides you’ve got the window seat.”
I smiled at him. “You were polite.”
He had been. He let me on the bus first.
Something about Bullet’s attitude rubbed me the wrong way, so I didn’t make a big effort to hurry. It didn’t matter. Half the people in front of us did.
Travis stood up before I even put my hand on the seat.
It didn’t allow either of us to exit the bus any faster—not with everyone getting up at the same time.
Eventually we did, and instead of being in a line waiting to get out of the bus, we stood next to the door, waiting to pick up our CDPS’s, split into groups, and step into an impossible place.
Why it took as long as it did, I have no idea. We’d been told which groups we were in before we’d even gotten on the bus. Plus it was cold. Standing on a grassy plain in the month of November isn’t something I’d recommend to anyone.
Grandma Vander Sloot told me about the city, how it existed simultaneously in an infinity of alternate dimensions, how an alley could lead you somewhere Kaiser Wilhelm and Germany won World War I, and you might meet the version of yourself that lived there.
She told me about the people imprisoned there, exiles from too many universes to name.
You’d think a place like that might put you in mind of Victorian Gothic novels—Wuthering Heights’ moors and ghosts, a decaying aristocracy, and their uneducated, superstitious servants.
If you did expect that, it would only be the first of a long list of disappointments. Continue reading Rachel in Infinity City: Part 1