A Second Chance

Part 61 - No rest for the wicked

I woke up with my cheek against the window and took a second to remember where I was.

The scenery had completely changed while I was out. The dramatic mountain views and the strange blue-leaved trees were long gone, replaced by wide stretches of flat, open farmland that rolled out in every direction. Windmills dotted the fields in loose clusters, their blades turning slowly, and the sky above them was a pale, washed-out grey. It was an interesting transition, scenic to stark, like the landscape had just decided to stop trying.

I glanced across the aisle. Charlotte was asleep with her head tilted against her own window.

I checked my phone for the time and saw I'd been out for nearly five hours. 

That meant I was probably a little over an hour from the final stop, which was fine. What was not fine was the small text sitting underneath the time that read "City of Glass" as my current location.

I sat up straighter and looked back out the window.

This was it? Fields and windmills and a few houses scattered around like an afterthought? 

I'd signed a fourteen point agreement and surrendered a week of my life preparing for this trip, and the city looked like a quiet farming region that still hasn't gotten the memo about being famous. The houses were nice, very nice actually, well built and clean with neat little properties around them, but they were still just houses in the middle of flat land with nothing remarkable going on.

I looked back at my phone to make sure I'd read it right. 

"You're looking at the outskirts."

I turned. 

Charlotte was awake, watching me with the calm expression of someone who had seen that reaction before and found it quietly entertaining.

"The city itself is further in," she said, sitting up and stretching. "Most people expect to see it right away. The outskirts are pretty spread out though, farms and residential areas mostly. I live in the other side after the city, but it's a big territory."

"So this is all still part of it," I said, looking back out at the windmills.

"Yep. Has been for a while." She pulled her sleeve back down and looked out the window herself. "The windmills are actually part of the city's energy grid. They're connected to the main system."

I looked at them with slightly more respect than I had thirty seconds ago.

"How far does the territory actually go?" I asked.

"Pretty far," she said. "You'll start seeing more infrastructure soon. Roads are get wider, buildings get taller, stuff like that" She smiled a little at that last part. "Downtown kind of sneaks up on you."

I leaned back and looked out at the wide open fields again. Somewhere past those windmills and quiet houses was the city I'd been trying to get into for two weeks, and apparently it was just going to show up whenever it felt like it.

I could respect that, honestly.

The bus rolled on through the flat land without any hurry, and I watched the windmills pass one by one and wondered what the first building I'd actually recognize as a city was going to look like.

...

Well, she was right. 

It happened exactly the way Charlotte said it would.

There was no single moment where the city announced itself.