It seems like days, weeks, months I’ve been on this transit, spiraling endlessly towards the heart of the city. I am recording the streets as I go, sketching schematics in my notebook, gathering the names before they mutate–before the signs are removed, blocks isolated.

I look out the window and watch the grey city slide past.

Stark Street & Nest, I see the clone ghettos, a mess of concrete and brick, cloaked in mud and rain. Between the tenements that smell of candle wax and cheap perfume stretch lines of twine full of drab laundry. Clones infest the streets, brash voices and misshapen faces, deadpan dumb and gazing. They walk the battered sidewalks to their factories, gather on the transit, and grow suddenly quiet.

Blocks linger until we reach The Street of Dreams, and the dirty, musky aroma is replaced by sugar and fresh linen. There are well-scrubbed parks and neat little row houses between shops that sell pastries, candies, clockworks, clothing. The street sparkles and bustles with a vibrant energy, a frenetic joy clinging to the faces of its citizens. Masks, they’re called. A bland shine marks their plastic skin, and a mere twist of head reveals the strings or bolts that precariously hold them together. They are no more than extensions of the clockworks they build, fallout humans, victims of flesh-rot and disease.

But now the street ends. Citizens fall in or out of the transit, exchange places, and we travel further into the city’s corpus. I can see the wall now, black mock-horizon against the oppressive storm clouds. The transit twists and buckles, winds its way towards Skadus Street, towards the courthouse with its crazed Gothic spires.

Often I wonder what life was like before the courthouse, before the wall; when all roads led out of the city if one cared to follow them; when the maps told of a world beyond these boundaries; when the streets never changed. My memory is as blank as the outer perimeters of a map. I have always been in this transit, tracking the present before it too disappears.

As I step out, a soldier in black watches, gun strapped tight against his shoulder. He could be a Mask, or a clone, or neither. Like me, he could be a Normal with no choice but to suspect everyone around him. I push my sketchbook into my satchel and pull out a laminated card, which I hand to him dutifully. Nodding, he hands it back; I’m good, I’m clear, I’m supposed to be here.

I move on down the street towards an office building from the lost age, a white marble box, ornamentation eroded and blackened by acid rain. I float easily through the entry and up the stairs, straight into Hatcher’s office.

Maps are spread on long wooden tables, illuminated by tall arched windows. On one of the walls, I can see it: the city in full. From a bird’s eye perspective, the body is a clump of knots, a network of chaotic veins and nerves leading along the spine to the ribs, to the belly of the beast where sits the courthouse. The wall is an unseen boundary containing all of this; there is no use in recording it, as it is always present in our thoughts.

Hatcher, suddenly aware of my presence, turns to me, compass in hand and thick eyeglasses magnifying his beady eyes. With his white beard and tweed jacket, he exudes an air of academia, filling the room with a stuffy, yet intoxicating, aroma.

I show him my sketchbook and folio of fresh schematics, cleaned and prepared for his viewing. He takes one sheet in hand and traces a trajectory across the page. “The Street of Dreams, perfectly lined. It never falters.”

“Yesterday,” I tell him, “I noticed they blocked off Fifth and Chester through Sixth. I passed by today, and it was gone. There.” I point out the week-old schematic. “I recorded it.”

He sets down the sheet that interests him, taking this new one and studying intently. “I’ll give you a dollar for it.”

“Dollar fifty.”

He pauses, frowning at me.

“I have to eat.”

Grumbling, he accepts, hands me the money, and takes the drawing.

I pile the rest back into the leather folio and push everything back into my satchel. Already, Hatcher’s staring at the sketch like I’m not here. I say good-bye, but he barely nods. Tonight the changes will be made, and the hydra will lose another head.

I move on the way I came, ready for home, when I see a man entering the main hall. From a distance, he’s no more than a vague shadow, but as I draw closer to the door his face is almost familiar. I have seen those dark eyes and faintly smirking lips.

“Mara,” he says, and suddenly I know him.

“Jack.” I am blunt and unemotional. I smile for effect.

“Have you been in the city all this time?”

“Where else is there to go?”

He grins boyishly, like I remember, like he knows some dastardly secret he’s itching to share. “Five years.”

“Where are you going?”

His lips straighten, ugly and tight. “I have an appointment with a watchmaker. You see, my watch is broken.” He pulls a dead pocket watch from his trousers. “But I’d rather talk to you. Want to get some coffee?”

I shrug, trying to remain casual, nonchalant, but already I miss his company. “If you like.”

As we move out onto the street, night begins to blanket the city, shrouding the wall as if it were only a memory. But I feel it, all-encompassing and omnipresent, like the god whose name they once whispered in the courthouse vaults–before it was the courthouse, before it was anything.

Jack leads me to The Street of Dreams, where I feel common in my street clothes, what with all the plastic and rhinestones surrounding me. We dive into a small cafe on the edge of Forty-First, a dim, cozy place that smells of fresh mocha and biscotti. Our lattes, bitter and full of foam, come in over-sized white mugs, and we drink heartily as the weather outside cools to a chill.

“What have you been up to?” he asks.

“Lately, it seems like I’m always on the transit, sketching the streets.”

“Still obsessed with maps, I see.” He gives me that little smirk.

“Always.” I smile easily, without having to think about it. “What about you? What have you been doing all this time?”

“Surviving. I got a job with Records.”

“At the courthouse?” I stifle a gasp.

“You act like I’ve become a Judge or something.”

“But don’t you ever consider that you’re helping them? They’re the reason for all the soldiers, you know. They say it’s for our protection, but it’s just another way to control us. Don’t you ever think about that?”

He knots his brow. “Calm down. You’re talking like one of those old revolutionaries. And not even intelligibly at that. It’s a job, steady work, decent pay.”

I gulp down more coffee and continue my train of thought: “It doesn’t bother you that they just go around destroying whole blocks under the guise of reform? That they rename the streets whenever they like?”

Exasperated, he sighs, and his face lightens. I can see traces of that old sardonic wit returning as he grins. “Mara, my dear, I can barely remember my own address half the time. I doubt changing the street name would make much of a difference.” Stretching a single finger, he strokes the surface of my hand.

“You haven’t changed that much, I see.”

He grows quiet, and then: “Do you ever miss it sometimes? When we were in the hospital together?”

I stare at him blankly and try to shift the conversation. “You want to see my drawings?” I remove the folio and open it to an intricate ink drawing. “The Street of Knick-Knacks. It was a tributary of Skadus, short-lived, barely remembered. But I have it here.”

He takes the drawing with perplexed interest.

“The Street of Brief Entrance,” I go on, “name changed to Street of Ill Regard, blocked path.”

He takes this one too, and tells me, “These names are like miniature stories… ‘Street of Dreams,’ ‘Street of Ill Repute.’ But they have no meaning, really–”

“These names are the only memories we have. The city’s like an island trapped in a barren sea, and we have to build and rebuild memories of its past to make any sense out of it, to survive.” I twist the hem of my skirt between my fingers, nervous at what he might say, as if his eyes might cast a look of judgment–he’s part of the system now, after all.

Instead he gazes at the maps in fascination and follows the lines with the finger that touched me, the map becoming an extension of my skin. “This is us. Dreams and Forty-First.”

I smile at him, just like when we were friends.

He looks down again, more intently this time. “What’s this line around the city?”

My beaming face sags into a frown. “That’s the wall.”

“What wall?”

For a moment I can’t speak. I think, maybe he’s still crazy–but he was never delusional. “Bipolar” the doctors called it, and you can take pills for that, whittle down the sharp edges of mood. Delusions are something else entirely.

“What do you mean ‘what wall?’ The wall that surrounds the city.”

He gives me a strange, twisted look. “There is no wall. None that I can ever remember. I think in the days after the war they considered it. But they considered a lot of things back then.” His thin lips curl with some sneaking suspicion. “Is this some kind of game–a trick? Was it an accident we met today?”

“Of course,” I insist. “I was selling some street schematics, like I always do. I didn’t expect to see you–ever again.”

“I didn’t either. At the time I thought I’d left it all behind, but in the back of my mind, I always sort of hoped…” His voice trails like smoke from the transit, and he shakes it all away. “The streets I can understand. Things change so much every day in this city, it’s hard to remember what’s here from one day to the next. But the wall–well, if there was a wall, if it surrounded the city for so long, I would have seen it eventually.”

My fists are balled so tight my nails burn into my palms. He reminds me of all the doctors I’ve ever known, the lies they spat while my mother signed the forms. When the city has lost its mind, only the sane are mad. “You’re just like everyone else who passes by it every day and refuses to look up,” I tell him. “The courthouse never speaks of the wall and pretends it doesn’t exist–but have you ever found a way out of the city? Have you ever taken one road that led straight out?”

“No, but I’ve seen that road, and it doesn’t go anywhere. There’s nothing beyond this city but the wastelands, and what’s the point of going out there?”

It must be the days before the wall he remembers. I remember them too, how limitless the flat, scorched earth seemed, how the scraggly growths of trees and dead weeds spotted the hills on the horizon. But I haven’t seen that plain or those hills in years–he must be mad.

A new look of pity lights his face, and I feel exposed, as if my clothing had been removed down to my knickers. I want to run and hide; I want him to go away.

Outside, thunder growls, and he turns to watch the dark sleet fall. He forces his hair behind his ear, and I swear I can see the strings holding his face together.

“I… I have to go.” I rush upwards, nearly knocking over the dishes and the table. I grab my drawings and stuff them carelessly into my satchel.

With slick, clammy fingers, he tries to grasp my hands. “Please, don’t go. I’ll take back what I said about the wall.”

“Get off me,” I say. “You’re one of them.”

“One of who?”

“A Mask. I saw the strings. It must have been a very good job, because you don’t look any different–if that really is you.”

He lets go.

“I’m no Mask. You’re seeing things again. Just like that damned wall. Who knows the last time you took your medication. You’re delusional.” He flashes that familiar smirk again, but now it’s cruel, bereft of all its former charm. “There is no wall.”

“I don’t want anything to do with you anymore. I’m going.”

I leave the coffee shop and run through a wet, busy street. All the Masks and clones are arriving home from work or on their way. I weave like an ant through mounds of black and grey rags, seeking a way out through the one-ways and cul-de-sacs. The address is on my lips, and The Courthouse lurches in the purple sky. Racing into the office building once again, I know that Hatcher will set my mind straight, will speak truth through his bookish murmurs. I’m up the stairs and at the glass door, panting, knocking. Everything’s so dark, I can’t see in, just the sign that says CLOSED and the janitor down the hall.

I slump to the floor and I look at him. His mismatched eyes, hunched body, small stature all read clone, and he looks at me with the kind of numb that comes from pills.

“Where’s Hatcher gone?” I ask him.

He gazes at me quizzically, as much as a clone can, and shakes his head. “Who’s Hatcher?”

But why would he know? He’s only a janitor, and a clone at that. I need to leave this place, to put it out of my mind, to forget I ever saw Jack again, to forget that I ever remembered.

I go out to the street. The transit passes by, carrying a new set of passengers, heads hung low as it glides down the street, a street that might be gone tomorrow. Desperately, I keep walking. I am going towards a wall I cannot see in the ever-fading dusk, but I know these streets, and I know its location; I could find it in my sleep. I wind through the heaps of people until their faces are but smears. I keep my head up; I keep looking.

Finally I see a cold stretch of concrete rising 90 feet up. I can feel the hairline cracks and see the scratches on the surface declaring the names of lost loves, smell the rain in its core. I pound my fists and know it’s real. It must be.

But then I think about Jack and what he said, that maybe the strings I saw were spiderweb tricks of the eye, and if that’s true–maybe he’s not crazy, maybe he’s right. Maybe this wall is something I’ve imagined. I don’t know.

Through the rubble along the base I search for a sturdy rock or pebble, a way to prove its physicality once and for all. I find one that’s jagged, one that fits inside my palm, and I throw it at the wall. It cracks and echoes against the houses, bounces and falls into the street.

It must be real. It must be.

As I turn to retrieve the rock, I see a lumpy middle-aged woman–a Normal like me–in a raincoat and kerchief, walking slowly across the street, eyeing me discreetly.

“You see it, don’t you?” I call out to her. “The wall? You see it too, right?”

Her mouth falls agape, and she hurries into an alleyway.

I want to keep screaming at her, to reaffirm the thought in my head, but I just stand there and stare at the crooked tributary leading to the courthouse, lit by white vapors from streetlights. Those towers hang like barren trees in the sick reflections of the sky.

As the noise of the city dies off, the transit crawls its way towards me. Save the driver, the glowing car is empty. I step inside.