Vicious Aliens (continued)

Cycle 14

CYCLE 14

“I wanna wake up in the city that doesn’t sleep

And find your the king of the hill, top of the heap”

—Frank Sinatra, New York, New York (fragments)

In the wake of the catastrophic events of 2019, New York had been radically transformed. The city’s streets and lower depths were contaminated by radioactive elements; “groundshine” was the term used to describe the mix of soot and ash that covered the area, leaving its shops, architecture, and neighborhoods eerily undisturbed and still, frozen in time like a black-and-white photograph. The iconic skyline, a combination of architectural gems of historic significance and towering modern skyscrapers, now resembled an amusement park. Conveyors and tubes connecting the buildings amounted to a network of skywalks, a rail line hovering in mid-air—a sort of city above the city. The Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, The Helmsley, The Crown, The Met Life, The Con Ed, American International, The Municipal Building, not to mention the grand dames of the Upper West and Upper East with their mixture of Art Deco and Beaux-Arts facades were virtually unrecognizable. Their profiles from afar looked like giant pedestals bearing the weight of rotors and pulleys—roller coasters of unseen proportions. Cities are much like beehives; they are honeycombs of humanity. Nestled within the cells of this giant prismatic array was our own grid-like colony, home to artistic technicians and avant-garde renegades, known as The Apthorp.