The Golden City

That’s the thing about this city. No matter how hard Riza tries, she can never make it in time for her deliveries. It’s always one thing or another. A truck of donuts overturning (she might’ve snagged a few) or the subway being hijacked by a supervillain (thankfully it was empty) or even a horde of robotic mice accidentally releasing into the streets (she has Lili now at least). Honestly, can’t she ever catch a break? 

“New day, new start,” she says into the mirror, tucking a crisp hat over her hair. 

Riza gives herself one last glance over. The collared shirt hangs loose on her frame, a logo over her heart. Large white letters on the back spell MINNIE’S NOODLES (“20% off if you bring a friend!”). The leather joggers are the only thing saving her descent into total dorkiness. 

Could be worse, she thinks as she swipes her sleek smartglasses and bag.

The hallway elevator whips her up in no time. The shared garage is where she parks her beloved bike and a grin stretches across her face at the sight of it. The obsidian body balances on clear wheels, so thin Riza swears they cut lines into the streets, like tracing a knife through butter. She hops onto the seat and it turns on after a quick scan. The darkened streaks decorating the sides flicker into blue flames and a low purr fills the air.

 “Access granted,” a lovely accented voice says. 

“Thanks Ollie,” Riza replies affectionately. 

She slides on her smartglasses and her vision sharpens, stats appearing on the side: weather, temperature, date, location. She blinks to bring up the GPS. 

“Destination: Minnie’s Noodles, shortest route please,” she says clearly. 

In front of her, a glowing line shudders into existence and a minimap unfolds on the top right. A clear helmet winks over her head, invisible if not for the odd shimmer here and there. The garage door whirrs up smoothly, revealing open blue sky. Riza tucks her bag in front of her, brings her feet up, and speeds out in a neat blur.

The city was monikered the Golden City though it was mostly dull gray and hyper neon. Everyone believed different reasons why. Was it for the glow burnishing the high-rises whenever the sun burned? Was it for the coppers flowing every minute of every day between bejeweled fingers? Or was it for the bridges arcing high above in layers upon layers, an odd play of words on the famous original? In times like this, her bike spinning through mid-air and the city spread out before her, Riza thinks she believes the third the most. 

A gentle force corrects her path and she lands gently. Her face is alight with a wild light as her hair streams behind her like the adrenaline in her blood. This was why Riza always chose the top garage- simply speeding into the street was too boring. Riza turns down an outstretched ramp and swerves her way into the road. 

Riza’s bike eats up the virtual line quickly, dodging pedestrians and cars. She can barely hear the usual rumble of languages over her thundering heartbeat. Navigating the streets requires finesse and if Riza wasn’t ticketed from her last delivery, she would’ve just skipped her bike from car roof to car roof. Alas, she is ten minutes late when she veers in front of the shop and runs through the doors.

“Do you want me to fire you?” Minnie yells from the register. The regulars smirk at Riza. This was a common occurrence.

Riza huffs and peels off her smartglasses, the helmet vanishing. She widens her eyes and trembles her lip, a hand going up to clutch her shirt. “But I was almost trampled trying to get here!” she cries. “My bike was even shattered. I feel like I’m growing weaker by the minute.” Riza’s eyes well and she whirls to ask the amused man to her right, “Grandpa La, would you mistreat a faithful employee like this?” She sniffles for emphasis.

Minnie interrupts her. “Girl, your bike is right outside. Save it for the customers. Because we all know you’ll be late again,” she adds, dark eyes flashing wickedly. 

Riza scowls and drops the act unabashedly. “Then can I get a raise instead?” she asks hopefully. 

Minnie waves her away wordlessly. 

Everyone laughs and Grandpa La winks at her in encouragement. Riza sticks her tongue out at Minnie as she saunters to the delivery station. A few boxes of oily noodles and crispy sesame buns oozing paste await her. “Hi Jun, hi Yila!” she yells into the kitchen doorway. A splattered hand sticks out awkwardly and wiggles.

“Tell you what,” Minnie begins, brows arched, as Riza emerges from the back. Riza perks up. “I’ll give you a raise if you’re on time to all your deliveries today-” 

The patrons boo and a woman yells, “Give her more chances!” Riza silently thanks Ahney as Minnie rolls her eyes good-naturedly.

“Fine. Three attempts. But only if you’re on good behavior. No more tickets.” Minnie searches Riza’s face, who immediately averts her eyes elsewhere. The butterfly pin fluttering delicate wings in Minnie’s cascading hair. The globed jades like sugared grapes swinging over an ugly collared shirt. Riza wonders if Minnie’s eyes have pierced through to her deepest darkest secrets yet. 

Whatever she finds, please don’t let it be the time I stole a bun, she prays. 

Minnie raises an eyebrow but turns back to the register. “Off you go. Be back soon for the next round. And don’t you dare ruin our reputation further!” 

Everyone cheers and yells encouragement, a few even placing bets on her success. Riza grins and salutes them all before rushing out and speeding away before she even inputs the addresses.

Riza whizzes towards the nearest bridge. The bridges are made of metallic metal and catch the light, gleaming red-gold in the day and soft silver at night. They’re everywhere, linking to higher streets and stretching between skyscrapers. The streets are levelled like crosswalks in a factory and the bridges are the stairs. At the very top, a ceiling of sky is soft against the harshness of the Golden City.

Minnie’s shop is on the lowest street so Riza fights her ever-growing impatience as she navigates up, up, up. Why would someone this rich even order takeout? she thinks but pays it no mind as she sprints into the apartment lobby and drops the food off. “The raise is more worth it than a day of tips,” she repeats to herself under her breath as she pushes off to her second address.

She should be used to it by now, but countless hours roaming the lower streets turns the upper ones unfamiliar and foreign. Luxury stores, not family-owned shops, line the streets and sell gemstones and robots and gold-flaked puddings, not antiques and scooters and mochi. Riza misses the smell of a dozen different foods twining into each other and the easy laughter. At least the cars have better manners, if not the drivers, who shake their fists as she weaves between them.

Riza lets loose a sigh of relief as she turns back down the bridges towards the city library. It’s an imposing structure currently mimicking an ancient Roman library (last month was Riza’s favorite, an alien-inspired jelly bubble). The stone lions that line the front, no matter what form the library takes, yawn and flick their tails. Riza eyes them defiantly. Easily a few hundred steps line the way to the doors and Riza’s legs ache just looking at them. 

Thankfully, the customer is already waiting for Riza at the bottom. The student mutters a thanks as she takes her cartons. 

“Good luck on your exams!” Riza calls, the girl’s smartglasses leaking whispers of some important lecture. The girl doesn’t respond and Riza feels a twinge of regret watching her gallop back up the stairs. If she had gone to uni, would she be frantically typing gloved fingers into thin air? Would she have a pencil stuck through her hair, the lead smearing onto her ear? Riza shakes her head and hops back onto her bike.

Riza checks the timer in the corner of her vision- twelve, now thirteen minutes. She’s making good time! Bolstered even as Minnie pings her about a new round of orders, Riza takes off for her last customer.

Except. For some reason, Riza can’t find them. The address was strangely enough a street corner but Riza even circled the adjacent roads and still saw no one wanting to claim their food. “Where are you?” she mutters angrily, each minute wasted dissolving her manners. She parks herself near the original street corner and slumps over the bike, chin over her intertwined hands.  If I don’t find them in two minutes, she thinks, I’m just gonna eat their noodles myself. Minnie can suck it. 

All of a sudden, Riza feels a twitch against her neck and breaks into a giggle. She’s ridiculously ticklish and goes to brush whatever it is away until she hears a squeak. Riza twists her neck sharply. “Lili?” she says, surprised. “What are you doing here?”

Lili stares at her, large eyes whirring softly and tiny claws pinpricked through Riza’s collar. About the size of Riza’s palm, the mouse must have hid in Riza’s pant pockets then clawed her way up. Just like when Riza arrived home after another day of late deliveries and found a robotic stowaway. Now, Lili squeaks again and touches a cold nose to Riza’s cheek.

Riza laughs. “I can’t understand you, silly. What’re you trying to tell me?” She follows Lili’s line of vision across the street. “But there’s only buildings there.” 

Another metallic squeak.

“Okay okay, trust the x-ray vision or whatever it is you have.” 

Riza locks the bike and darts across the road. She’s surprised to find a narrow strip of alley between the shops, so thin that it’s practically invisible. Riza squints and thinks she catches a glint of gold. “Use your super-mouse abilities to find help if something bad happens,” she tells Lili.

Gathering her nerve, Riza steps into the darkness. She twists sideways and moves swiftly, shoulders just narrow enough to fit. Strange… Why would someone be here? The spark of light grows brighter and larger but Riza can’t tell what it is until she steps out between the buildings into a pool of warm light. She gasps.

It’s a forgotten corner of the city. 

Most of the higher streets drop away into thin air. But this small area juts a good dozen feet out. It’s unremarkable, just bare ground, if not for the bridge arcing from where the bland concrete ends. And even more interesting is the dark figure perched on the railing, head tilted up at the watery sun.

Riza carefully places Lili in her pockets before she cups a hand around her mouth and yells, “Hey! Did you order food from Minnie’s Noodles?” Too late does she worry if the figure happened to be a murderer or some other shady person.

The figure startles, almost sliding off into the void. Riza yelps and sprints over. “Sorry, sorry!” she pants as she reaches the bridge. Minnie’s already bonkers over a parking ticket, never mind if I accidentally kill someone!

“It’s fine.” Long dark hair twines with the wind as the figure turns to Riza. “You must be the deliverer. I must’ve lost track of time.”

Riza gapes for a second. The woman on the bridge has clear green eyes set in a worn face. An air of melancholy and age hangs around her, yet she feels young, no older than forty. And most of all… 

“Have I seen you somewhere?”

The woman looks confused for a second then laughs. “You probably have. How about you come here and hand me my food first? I’m getting rather hungry.”

After a moment of hesitation, Riza sets foot on the bridge. It lusters more bronze than gold and rings slightly as Riza makes her way to the woman. She’s only a few feet away when she suddenly yells in alarm and skitters backwards. Eyes wide, Riza asks, “Wh-why are you sitting there?”

Right at the halfway point, the bridge jags off into emptiness. A fall from this height wouldn’t just kill someone but shatter them like a hammer through a stained glass window. The woman sits only a few inches away from the torn end of the railing and Riza calms her heart before approaching again.

“You aren’t scared?” the woman asks.

Riza smirks sideways at her and confidently walks to the edge. For some reason, Riza wants to impress her, this woman who had the audacity to find this place and keep it secret. “Of course not,” she says airily. She stops right before the bridge ends and peers into the emptiness. “Wow, some view.”

The woman leans over to see as well. A misty gray sky wisping with fog stares back at them, making it impossible to see beyond. “You do realize there’s no protection barrier, right?” the woman says in a low voice.

Riza startles. “What?’  She gazes in panic at the drop, only a few millimeters away, and totters backwards.

All the bridges had an invisible force wrapped around them so even if you wanted to jump off, you couldn’t. Riza had seen many a car, and even a few people, softly bounced back seconds before a patrol car came squealing around.

“Then that means…” Riza swallows.

“That’s right. You almost fell to your death.”

“But… I don’t understand. Why?”

“I’m assuming you mean why this is here. Or maybe why I’m here.” The woman smiles and holds out her hand. “First, my order. Then I’ll answer that. You’re the first one to find this place after all.”

Riza shakily hands over the boxes, creased from all the jostling, but the woman doesn’t care, crowing as she opens the tops. “This is delicious,” she says around a mouthful of rice.

Riza gives a half-smile. “Wait ‘till you taste the buns.” She lets the woman eat her fill before launching questions at her.

“Okay, okay,” the woman says, slurping up the last noodle. She scratches her ear, smearing grease on her cheek. “I really need to order more from Minnie’s.” Catching Riza’s look, the woman clears her throat. “Anyways, let’s start with the bridges. Why do you think there’s a barrier?”

“To protect people?” Riza says lamely. 

“But from what?”

“From… crashes. Accidents. Stupid dares. And… “ Riza swallows, letting the unspoken word hang in between them. What’s the point of this? she thinks furiously.

The woman eyes Riza but doesn’t press her. “That’s right. Now why do you think we have this social hierarchy? What makes the lower streets ‘lesser’ than the higher ones?”

“Well, there’s less sunlight down there. And there’s more space up there. And… all the rich and powerful live at the top?” Now that Riza thinks about it, there was no clear reason why. You just grow up knowing.

The woman nods. “Let me tell you a story, about when our world was out of space and we were out of time. That was the moment when everyone realized we could live in the sky, above the smog and clouds. So we built islands, and bridges to get to those islands and even more islands, and even more bridges. Except… it wasn’t a happy life.

“It’s a long story and my main point is that back then, our technology wasn’t as advanced. Meaning that the bridges didn’t have any protection barriers. Meaning that if you lived on the lower streets, you could step out from your house and see a body on your lawn. Back then, humans fell from the skies like rain.”

The woman stops when she sees Riza’s white face. “I’m sorry, I went overboard. I was repeating what I read in the old journals and I should’ve considered they were grossly exaggerated-”

“No, it’s fine.” Riza says quietly. “It just… reminded me of something else. Go on.” 

“Stop me anytime, alright?” Seeing Riza’s nod, the woman continued.

“Soon the barriers were put up and everything seemed picture perfect. And as you’ve likely guessed, this is the last free place in the city.” The woman smiles sadly and both of them turn to stare at the void. “This bridge used to connect to the old library. But one day the island mysteriously fell, and with it, all the old records. I came across a few when I was wandering around below and well…” 

Her voice trails off and Riza senses she’s not going to say anymore. Silent descends upon them and Riza’s head churns with questions and shock.

“I’ve kept you long enough. You should get back,” the woman says.

Riza smiles wryly. She definitely wouldn’t be getting that raise today. “Will- will I see you again? And I never got your name. I’m Riza, by the way!”

“Riza,” the woman repeats. She grins and her cloud of sadness dissipates for the first time. “Come find me here again Riza. And I believe you already know my name.” The woman clicks something in her pocket. “Stay strong. You’re doing well.” With that, the woman falls backwards off the bridge.

Riza yells and rushes to the railing. She just catches a glimpse of wings, painted dark against the sky, before they slip into the clouds. “You’re— she’s—” Riza breathes. “That villain… “

Riza stands lost in thought for a moment before she remembers. 

“Minnie!” 

She hurriedly rushes off the bridge and is about to step into the alley when she glances back. “Thank you,” she says quietly. “It wasn’t a happy story…”  But the truth rarely is. 

As Riza leaves, she thinks determinedly, Tomorrow’s a new day and a new start. I will get that raise Minnie, just watch me! 

Behind her, the setting sun paints the half-bridge red, the red of passion, of power, and the Golden City.