The Science of Transient Cartography - Part Three
By Nico Martinez Nocito
When a city is drowned and then rebuilt in the sandy, built-up remnants of its old majesty, tradition dictates that it is only right to affix new to the beginning of its old name.
Evidently, my pa’s generation decided that two news cancelled out, a venerable double negative of urban nomenclature. And without those three-letter redundancies, only a single word remained:
York.
York, I soon find, is a city lost in the swells and ebbs of its own identity.
I step off the Blue close behind Professor Andrande, the man who found my doodled maps online and offered me an interview for a job I couldn’t pass up. We didn’t speak much on the Blue; he was buried in a book he flipped through on his screen, and I was lost in the vibrant, streaky hues that became a blur outside my window.
Now, I’m distracted by the city I’ve stumbled into.
I’ve never entered a city before, or, for that matter, any settlement of larger than a few hundred people. Appalachia became a safe haven when the waters refused to stop rising, a new home for all the people in the northeast too stubborn or too sane to flee west further away from the rising ocean. When the water halted and began to retreat again, most people stayed put. My pa stayed put. When I was born, I stayed put.
I didn’t expect a city to look like this.
Half-finished buildings crowd together, narrow gaps for the Blues left between almost entirely solid blocks of wood and concrete. Construction cranes and yellow tape dot the horizon, and only the ocean, fluttering in the distance, appears pristine.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” says Andrande.
When I glance at him, he chuckles. “Don’t worry, that was a joke.”
I manage to laugh, but it’s a close thing.
“Why are you here?” Andrande asks at last. “You weren’t the first artist I reached out to. I didn’t think you’d be the last.”
Nico Martinez Nocito (they/them) writes speculative poetry and fiction, often with a queer and feminist bent. Their work can be found in Strange Horizons, Grimm Retold, and in Flame Tree Press’s anthology Morgana Le Fay, among others. Learn more about them and their writing on Instagram @nicowritesbooks.
Copyright © 2025 Nico Martinez Nocito