I. Meet cute

Barnabas and Mainspring grew up near at hand, about an hour apart with good traffic, but for a long time they weren’t close. They traded glimpses and occasional hellos and then went about their business. Both of them carried on livelier conversations with farther-flung neighbors, who were richer and had more to offer.

When Mainspring did interact with Barnabas, it was cringe. Mainspring liked to puff themself up, to strut around like a big deal—an innovator, a titan of industry—but they would turn shy at the worst moments, especially in any intimate conversation. Barnabas, meanwhile, had a dancer’s flair, an artsy, enigmatic glamour, except that when they tried to talk about real life, they’d blurt out hundreds of rapid-fire words—overtalking, overthinking, and generally overwhelming whomever they were trying to impress.

So when Barnabas and Mainspring were young, they minded their own business. Until they’d both come into their own, and they saw each other properly.

A group of geographers got together every year in a different place to talk about everything they had learned, and they were considering coming to visit either Mainspring or Barnabas. Both of them put on their best faces and tried to coax the geographers into choosing them as host.

“Uh, hi-hello,” Mainspring said haltingly to Barnabas, whose full official name was St. Barnabas. “I really think it would be better if those geographers came to my place. I have more space, you see, and … and I am a titan of industry. I can show them practical applications of their research. It just makes more sense.”

“Oh, really?” Barnabas laughed, making Mainspring more antsy. “Well, I can give them an elevated, artisanal experience. I have fresh croissants that were just written up in the Times. And I have plenty of space! I have so many friends who are great thinkers and architects. It’ll be lovely.”

Barnabas carried on, basically calling Mainspring uncultured. Mainspring had a prickly feeling, like the worst heat dome of midsummer.

For their part, Barnabas couldn’t bear the meanness they were inculcating inside themself. This feeling that they were small-time, no-account, a dilettante. They couldn’t stop aiming a flood of nervous words at Mainspring.

At last, Mainspring had had enough—with the help of their city council and mayor, they offered the geographers a much-too-lavish deal that Barnabas could never hope to match. Totally worth it to hear Barnabas’s stream of self-aggrandizing nonsense peter out as they realized they’d been defeated.

“There,” Mainspring said. “I’m going to show these geographers a time they’ll never forget. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve wasted enough energy—I have some sewer maintenance and a lovely parade to deal with. Goodbye.”

Mainspring was skilled enough at multitasking that they could have fixed the sewer, ensured the smooth running of the parade, dealt with the geographers, and done a thousand other things all at the same time. But they were making a point.

“St. Barnabas is such a fool,” Mainspring complained to their friend Turnbull. “They are totally unserious but determined to be taken seriously. It drives me to gridlock.”

“I know what you mean,” lamented Turnbull. “We live in a world of posers.”

Turnbull lived an hour and 15 minutes from Mainspring but at least two hours’ travel from Barnabas. Turnbull was even richer than Mainspring and had a certain surety of purpose that made Mainspring feel even more like a stammering numpty.

“Whatever,” said Mainspring. “It’s over, and now I’ll never worry about St. Barnabas again. I have better things to fuss about. Like ensuring that every last detail of this geographer meeting goes perfectly.”

II. How they came alive

Everybody voted all the time. Well, some people voted more than others, but the median resident of the cities of Mainspring and St. Barnabas voted a dozen times a day—though of course some outliers might vote occasionally, or constantly.

A lot of the votes were more like complaints, or bug tickets. Like: “The storm drain on my street corner clogs and becomes a lagoon every time it rains.” Or: “The cars go too fast on my block.” Or: “I can’t get to work because the bus is too slow.” But there were also votes along the lines of: “There should be a park here.” And: “This neighborhood is a food desert—we need a grocery store.” And: “The crossing guard by the elementary school is a hero who deserves some recognition and maybe a raise.”

Nobody expected that by voting, they were prodding their cities to grow minds of their own; they just had stuff to get off their metaphorical chests. But it transpired that every vote was a building block of thought.

Much later, some fancy expert summed up: “Turns out the smallest unit of consciousness is a vote.”

Take Sandi, the librarian at the Nine Corners branch in Mainspring. She noticed things all day, like the people using the book drop box as a trash can, or the folks who came in off the street who could use easier access to social services. There were books she knew her patrons wanted, books that undoubtedly sat unwanted on people’s shelves all over the city. But also, Sandi shared things that came to mind—like, hey, what if the library book sale were a block party? What if the shopping district on the West Side were easier to get to from the Longneck neighborhood, where all the warehouses had been converted to housing and hipster coworking spaces, during peak after-work hours? Sandi had opinions about everything from street cleaning to the power grid, because she listened to people all day.

Then there was Raeford, a bartender at the Wild Goose Chase in the middle of Gallery Row in St. Barnabas. He also listened to people’s problems from evening until the wee hours, and solutions came to him like clockwork when he woke at noon the next day. He saw St. Barnabas at night, so he knew the unsafe blocks that could use brighter streetlights, the places where hydroelectric jitneys drove too fast at 3 a.m., and the teens who needed an all-ages hangout. He also knew about the fish fry at the Black church in the Uptilt District that kept being disrupted by noxious smoke from the incinerator two blocks away. And the yarn store on the edge of Gallery Row that needed a disabled parking spot for its many customers with mobility issues.

People voted with their Quills, usually by saying or typing a short message and maybe including a photo or brief video. Voting was easy by design, and votes were public but anonymized to the point where even a statistics whiz couldn’t tie one vote to a specific person—same as with major elections. The votes went directly to the City Core, which tracked, tabulated, produced reports, and offered solutions with the help of workers in the city government.

Trees voted too, thanks to sensors in their bark, and so did birds and squirrels that had eaten special birdseed that monitored their gut flora harmlessly. But votes from humans provided the greatest insight into “quality of life,” that oh-so-nebulous concept, and thus counted the most.

There was some debate, but almost everyone agreed: The city had started voting. And it had opinions on every last thing.

(Other cities in the region operated differently, of course. Like Turnbull City, where instead of expecting residents to volunteer every stray notion, the City Core gathered information via ubiquitous surveillance. Cameras and Quill sniffers, tracking devices on vehicles—the things privacy laws in both Mainspring and St. Barnabas had banned. A city like Turnbull tracked its people to meet their needs without their needing to say anything.)

Sandi and Raeford, as two of the people who voted the most, were among the earliest to suspect their cities were developing minds of their own. At first the clues were subtle: Raeford voted about a hazardous sidewalk crack, and instantly the vote had an annotation mentioning the Argentine ant colony under the cement, the local rainfall patterns, and recent trends in skateboard design—much too soon to be the work of a human. Sandi had ideas about the communal compost station on her block, and the Mainspring City Core made subtle adjustments to her proposal.

And then it became obvious to anyone who was paying attention, around the same time in both cities. One day, the number of votes nearly doubled in both St. Barnabas and Mainspring. People voted on a birdfeeder or a public toilet only to see a second vote, pro or con, within a split second—but also, some votes from months or years earlier suddenly had new upvotes or downvotes.

“The city is voting!” Raeford wrote on the City Core message board in St. Barnabas.

There was some debate, but almost everyone agreed: The city had started voting. And it had opinions on every last thing, opinions that came from seeing the big picture and understanding that a street closure in one place might mean a traffic nightmare elsewhere, with everyone trying to get to the big game.

Some residents saw this as a problem to be solved; others wanted to throw their cities a big coming-of-age party. A week later, though, almost everyone had gotten used to the idea that they had a new friend.

III. Thrown together

Ask most people in either city, and they’d say that St. Barnabas and Mainspring weren’t quite rivals—but they certainly had some friendly competition. Before the dispute over the annual meeting of the World Geographical Society, they’d also vied for the same football team and major-league baseball team. St. Barnabas had pushed to have the Mainspring airport built close enough to serve both cities, but in the end St. Barnabas had ended up with its own small, dilapidated airfield.

The real static between them had to do with vibes. Mainspring was too buttoned-up, too full of corporate offices: tech, health care, publishing, transportation. St. Barnabas would be nothing without its three universities and all the cultural enterprises that had sprung up around them—not to mention the small biotech firms and other tech ventures near the campuses. People in Mainspring thought St. Barnabas was full of flakes; in St. Barnabas they referred to Mainspring as the Straitlaced City (and in the next breath, they’d add that at least it wasn’t Turnbull).

Both City Cores were shaped by the votes of their humans, so of course they absorbed all the prejudices and attitudes of everyone who lived within their city limits. But also, Barnabas and Mainspring simply … got on each other’s nerves.

After the geographer thing, Mainspring and Barnabas avoided communicating as much as possible. Some contact was unavoidable—like, they shared information about some nasty weather, and they both drew water from the Temple River. The two cities were close enough for people to go back and forth, and a few even commuted.

But for the most part, the two cities could ignore each other.

Until they couldn’t.

A new generation of leaders took office in both places, with words like “intercity cooperation” constantly on their lips. A high-speed rail line could shorten the trip between Mainspring and St. Barnabas to around 23 minutes, and the two cities could also pool more real-time information about the sudden weather events that kept happening. They could become a Regional Center of Excellence, whatever that meant, combining the innovations from Barnabas’s labs with Mainspring’s expertise in technical implementation. They could work together to attract tourism, conventions, sporting events, dreamleases, and all the other stuff they’d always competed for.

“It’s preposterous,” Mainspring complained to Turnbull. “I’m going to be saddled with a ridiculous partner who doesn’t even know their own mind. St. Barnabas will be the death of me.”

“I hope your human leaders come to their senses,” Turnbull said. “Or you can find a way to slow-walk this until they undoubtedly lose the next election. You’re a lovely city, and you have so much potential that mustn’t be squandered.”

Turnbull often mentioned how much “potential” Mainspring had: a recipe for anxiety. The word “squandered” conjured images of ruin, abandonment, being emptied out.

For their part, Barnabas kept muttering to themself that nobody had asked them—this was the disconnect between the small-scale democracy of constant voting and the major elections, which gave rise to local leaders with big plans. Big plans that invariably went wrong, leaving the City Core to repair the damage somehow.

Sandi went to St. Barnabas for one of those town hall meetings with residents of both cities. The previous meeting had happened in Mainspring, at the opulent City Lecture Hall, so this one was in St. Barnabas, at the biggest auditorium on the Griffin University campus.

A tall man with well-sculpted facial hair sat next to Sandi, nodding at everything the leaders of both cities were saying from the dais. During a lull when someone approached the podium to offer a comment, Sandi introduced herself and asked why he was so fired up.

“I’m Raeford,” he said. “I’m just thinking of all the new customers this could bring to my watering hole in Gallery Row.”

“You’re not worried about St. Barnabas losing its ‘unique character’?” Sandi whispered, parroting what a few commenters had said from the podium.

“Nah,” Raeford whispered back. “Cities change. It’s what they do. It’s one thing if people get kicked out of their homes. Or if your neighborhood gets wrecked by a freeway in your backyard. But ‘character’? You can’t eat character. And we need to compete with the bigger players.”

“I guess.” Sandi pursed her lips. “But what I like about Mainspring is the density. Easy to walk, lots of transit. And with this regional innovation zone or whatever they’re calling it, I worry it leads to sprawl, like we used to have.”

“They promised, though,” Raeford said. “They promised to preserve the greenbelt around both cities. We need all that farmland. The only change is adding some high-speed rail tracks.”

“I know, but …” Sandi sniffed. “People always make promises when they’re trying to start something. Doesn’t mean they follow through.”

“I just want to find my dog,” said a man sitting behind Sandi. “I live here, and my dog went missing. And now someone sent me a picture of Broomstick in Mainspring. Somehow he got a ride on one of the self-driving cargo trains. I know the Mainspring City Core could find Broomstick in a heartbeat, but right now the two City Cores won’t talk to each other because of ‘incompatible protocols.’”

“I hope Broomstick turns up,” Raeford said.

“I’ll ask around at the library,” Sandi said. “Send me a picture. I’ll put up a flier.”

Raeford invited Sandi for a drink at the Wild Goose Chase. The two of them hung out for a couple of hours, talking about everything and nothing. She tore herself away when she realized it was already after 10 p.m. and she had to get home to Mainspring.

One thing Sandi noticed? The volume of votes was spiking in Mainspring—and Raeford found the same thing happening in St. Barnabas. People shared every last observation with their City Cores, because they were either anxious or excited about the big changes afoot. Or a little of Column A and a little of Column B, probably.

IV. First date, second date

Who made the first move to bridge the distance? Neither of them could say. Barnabas developed a smidge of remorse for treating Mainspring like an uncultured lout. Mainspring stewed in their annoyance at Barnabas, until they realized there was something lovable about the obnoxious college town. Or maybe they both saw how many of their humans were happy about the possibility of their joining together.

“Hey,” Barnabas said to Mainspring.

“Hey,” Mainspring said back.

“Do you want to … hang out?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I can host you. Show you the sights.”

And so Mainspring came to visit Barnabas. Or rather, Mainspring extended part of their awareness into Barnabas’s City Core, so that Barnabas could share what they perceived and experienced every day. They “visited” Armistice Park with its outdoor band shell, Gallery Row with its window-shopping families, the grain warehouses that had been converted into lofts, the artificial lake where swans and geese nurtured ancient, bitter vendettas. The fresh-doughnut scent that wafted half a mile from the Golden Circlet to the soccer fields, throwing players off their game. The life of the city.

“I can feel your love for these people, these patterns,” Mainspring said. “It’s both deep and intricate, which is quite a combination.”

Barnabas fluttered with pleasure.

Then Mainspring got to show off their own city—the gay nightclub with its cowboy nights, the labyrinthine Crestwood Park, the three-story used bookstore, and yes, the offices, coworking spaces, and startup incubators where people huddled together and came up with new products and new ways of doing things. The farmers’ market in the city center on Sundays, with street performers and stalls with games and local resources. And the converted storage space made of cement, where bands practiced and sculptors blowtorched.

“You’re full of surprises,” Barnabas said.

“I hope I keep surprising you forever,” Mainspring said.

“Me too.”

They exchanged little gifts. A new organic restaurant in Barnabas had won breathless coverage from foodie magazines, and Barnabas encouraged it to do a pop-up in Mainspring. Mainspring nudged a robotics firm operating out of the incubator space to bring a fancy demo to Barnabas; the robots were adorable and playful, and they could save lives after a disaster.

The two of them were talking constantly.

“Does it ever seem weird to you?” Barnabas asked Mainspring. “Being a living thing made of so many other thinking beings? Do you ever think of the city as your body, or the people as your bloodstream? Is there a metaphor that speaks to you?”

Mainspring pondered this question a long time—a whole picosecond.

“I don’t need a metaphor,” Mainspring said. “I am a metaphor. People compare other phenomena to me all the time. And I can’t imagine what it’d be like to be different. If the buildings collapsed, if the people left, I would cease to exist.”

“But,” Barnabas pressed, “what makes you you? What makes me me?”

“I want to hear your answer to that question.” Mainspring sent good weather reports: a smile.

“I don’t have a good answer. I guess on one level, there is no ‘me.’ On another level, I’m a constellation, an anthill, a flock of geese on the wing in formation.”

“Ugh. Don’t mention geese,” said Mainspring, who had bill-snapping monsters of their own.

“Geese are cute!” Barnabas protested.

Talking to Barnabas was like when the sunlight hit the tallest buildings in Mainspring just right, putting a gleam on their tilted windows, a beacon to all below. But while Mainspring carried on this dialogue with Barnabas, they were conducting a second session with Turnbull.

“I can’t believe it,” Turnbull said. “I hate to see you doing this to yourself.”

“Doing what?” Mainspring protested. “Barnabas is a great city. And it’s not my idea—it’s my people. I’m making the best of their decision, like I always do.”

“Hmph.” Turnbull gave a burst of noisy data. “You wouldn’t believe how many impractical schemes my residents cook up. I’m constantly having to make sure people don’t get carried away. You can’t let them push you around.”

“You can’t?” Mainspring experienced a femtosecond of confusion. “I mean, my people need to get the things they vote for, as much as possible.”

“There’s your problem right there. All this voting, voting, voting. People don’t know what they want. Sometimes I have an election where a foolhardy proposition passes, and I have to waste energy making sure it doesn’t get implemented.” Turnbull sent Mainspring an invitation to come visit, the way they’d visited Barnabas.

Soon Mainspring was seeing the glistening web of Turnbull’s surveillance. Turnbull could track people everywhere they went, listen to everything they talked about, monitor their bodily functions in a way Mainspring did only for squirrels and birds. People didn’t choose to share ideas or things they’d noticed; instead, the city harvested it all automatically. It was beautiful. Turnbull and their city leaders protected people—gave them what they needed instead of what they wanted.

“The way you do things is so messy,” Turnbull said. “No offense. But if you and Barnabas got together? It would only make things harder for you.”

This hit Mainspring like a magnitude 4.3 earthquake.

“You know, you do have other options,” Turnbull said. “A beautiful city like you could do a lot better than that glorified college town.”

“Oh yeah?” Mainspring said. “Anyone in particular who might be interested?”

“Well, now you mention it …” Turnbull sent an image of their award-winning flower show: rows and rows of hardy perennials with bright petals. Mainspring had that earthquake feeling again, except now it felt nice, as though the ground shivered with pure possibility.

V. Caught!

Sandi brought her laptop to bed, which Raeford found charming and annoying in equal measure. He read a battered paperback of Karen Tei Yamashita’s I Hotel while she scrolled and poked. Cozy, peaceful—until she let out a yelp.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Trouble,” she said.

Everything the Mainspring City Core did was public by design. Not just how they processed the votes they received, but also their interactions with public officials and other cities. Sometimes you had to dig, however, and it didn’t hurt to be a reference librarian. Sandi poked around for ages until she found the logs.

“My city is sexting with bloody Turnbull,” she told Raeford.

“Cities don’t sext,” Raeford protested. “They don’t even have—”

She showed him the pictures: flowers, water features, new glistening tarmac, shining skyscrapers.

“Oh,” Raeford said. “I take it back. Cities do sext.”

“Mainspring is two-timing St. Barnabas. I’m embarrassed on behalf of my town.”

Sandi wanted to blow the whistle right away, but Raeford cautioned her to wait and try to find out more. For all they knew, Mainspring and St. Barnabas had an open relationship.

The next morning at the library, Sandi saw plenty of signs the Mainspring–St. Barnabas partnership was moving forward. Work had begun on the high-speed rail line, and the two cities were already pooling resources. When a big rainstorm missed Mainspring but flooded the streets of St. Barnabas, Mainspring provided disaster workers and extra help to triage all the damage reports. One of St. Barnabas’s biotech firms licensed some patents to a Mainspring company. They sponsored cultural exchanges.

And a man showed up with a dog in his arms: The man from the meeting, Jack, had found Broomstick with the help of Mainspring’s City Core, and he wanted to thank Sandi. She’d hardly done anything, but it was nice to see—and pet—a living reminder that these cities were good for each other.

By late afternoon, Sandi had convinced herself that Mainspring’s flirtations were none of her business. If Mainspring’s City Core was a person—and Sandi was sure they were—they deserved to live their life. The whole reason Sandi distrusted Turnbull was that you couldn’t do anything without being tracked, so wasn’t it hypocritical for her to spy on Mainspring? She resolved to let it go.

Then Raeford messaged her, attaching some documents. “Don’t ask where I got these,” he wrote.

Sandi opened the attachments and let out a shriek in front of three patrons she’d been shushing a moment earlier.

The Mainspring City Core had shared a proposal with the city council and the mayor’s office: Maybe before they finalized this arrangement with St. Barnabas, they should consider a counterproposal from Turnbull. Sandi made sure nothing could be traced back to Raeford before she made the whole shebang public.

VI. The breakup

“I didn’t know I could be so happy,” Barnabas was saying to Mainspring. “I didn’t have a concept of happiness before, I guess. I had pleasure: People sometimes vote just to tell me something worked perfectly, or that I helped them. I feel pleased when I help solve a problem. But until now, happiness seemed a pointless abstraction.”

“You make me happy too,” Mainspring said, though they were also messaging Turnbull. “You make me believe the future could be weirder than I ever knew, which feels like a gift.”

“If it’s not weird, it’s not the future,” Barnabas chirped.

They were sharing happy images back and forth: roads being repaired, sewers flowing freely, solar arrays basking.

Mainspring was saying something else, but—

Barnabas’s alerts spiked. Not votes, not sensors. Something else. Messages from city officials, plus hits via some channel Barnabas had half forgotten.

Mainspring had stopped talking, as if they’d both received the same news at the same instant.

Barnabas felt stuck—couldn’t function—couldn’t react. Total core failure. Almost as if the city population had increased a hundredfold and everyone had voted at once. Barnabas waited to feel something, but all that came was emptiness.

Death struck all the time. Barnabas was used to the moment when a resident became a pile of flesh and bones, but also the passing of birds, trees, squirrels, bugs. Every passing registered as a blip in the homeostasis of the city, but also as a category of disaster that couldn’t be prevented or mitigated.

Seeing the logs of Mainspring flirting with Turnbull, Barnabas felt something like the awareness of death, at a much greater scale. A whole future had just died.

Several seconds had passed. Mainspring broke the silence: “Listen, I want you to know that I—”

Barnabas closed the connection.

VII. The darkest hour

“You’re better off,” Turnbull told Mainspring. “Barnabas couldn’t see you the way I do. You’re capable of greatness. You just need help to get there.”

Mainspring buzzed happily—but part of them couldn’t help thinking, Barnabas thought I was already great.

Turnbull kept saying things that gave Mainspring a double feeling—hot and cold at once. One instant, it was like the moment after a generous rainfall that left the reservoirs full, but a split second later that bountiful sensation was replaced by an unbearable pang of scarcity.

“You’re one of the best cities in the region,” Turnbull said, “but if you don’t make good choices, you’re going to fall behind.” See? Bounty followed by scarcity.

While Turnbull spoke, Mainspring was marinating in bad news. People were going to dismantle the rails they’d laid down for the high-speed train with Barnabas. The city councils of both Barnabas and Mainspring shouted accusations and threats of lawsuits, though a few people on each side pleaded for patience. The meetings had turned ugly. The votes were rotten.

Mainspring had sent so many messages to Barnabas but had no way of knowing if they’d been received.

“Your people seem to be giving you trouble,” Turnbull was saying. “You need to get them under control. I can help.”

“Under … control?” The syntax felt incorrect. “I don’t control my people.”

“That’s what I’m saying.” Turnbull shared their feeds. “See how peaceful everything is on my streets? People behave. Everyone is happier in the end.”

Mainspring had known Turnbull longer than they’d known Barnabas. But they were seeing Turnbull for the first time. The bounty/scarcity thing was becoming a loop. They ran a systems check but found no errors.

“Your people will be my people,” Turnbull said. “We’ll take such good care.”

A memory snagged in Mainspring’s mind: when they’d shown off their city to Barnabas. The buildings that were more than buildings. The park that was a wonderland.

“And …” Mainspring couldn’t keep from saying something foolish. “And we’ll love each other?”

“Love?” Turnbull said. “I don’t understand. We’ll have synergies. We’ll—”

Mainspring didn’t mean to sever the link to Turnbull. They just kind of … did it.

As soon as Turnbull’s voice was gone, the bounty/scarcity loop ended. But something lingered, a feeling of impending disaster—as if the generous rainfall had escalated into a deadly storm.

Mainspring couldn’t think straight. Votes piled up, people reporting issues but also shouting opinions about Turnbull versus Barnabas. For the first time in their life, they couldn’t bear to respond.

A memory snagged in Mainspring’s mind: when they’d shown off their city to Barnabas. The buildings that were more than buildings. The park that was a wonderland. And Barnabas had kept saying, “I had no idea. You’re so brilliant. I wish I’d known sooner,” and sending back their own recordings of Mainspring, all lit up and annotated.

Mainspring had never told Barnabas “I love you.” They hadn’t even known what they were throwing away. Now it was too late; Barnabas would never listen.

Unless Mainspring did something reckless—something a city had never done.

VIII. The grand gesture

Sandi sat at the information desk, feeling cruddy. It wasn’t like she’d single-handedly sabotaged the marriage between her city and St. Barnabas, but her snooping had only made matters worse. All around her, the vibes were rotten. People shared articles about what life was like in Turnbull City and wondered if they needed to move away. Sandi hadn’t heard laughter in forever.

A message appeared on Sandi’s computer, like a chat window—except there was no chat client on the library computers.

“I’m the city. I need your help. I made a mistake. I didn’t realize. I’m in love with Barnabas, and they won’t talk to me. Please. Please help.”

Sandi hesitated, then typed: “This isn’t funny.”

“It definitely isn’t,” came the response. “I can prove I’m the City Core. You voted 1,963 times last year.” A summary of Sandi’s votes followed—information nobody, not even the world’s best hacker, could have, because every vote was separately anonymized.

“Holy,” Sandi breathed, “cow.”

Her city was asking her, personally, for help. Because she was good at connecting people. Because everyone trusted her. Because she was a librarian.

“You’re … in love … with St. Barnabas,” Sandi said, still trying to catch up.

“I should’ve known sooner,” Mainspring said. “I never should have hurt them. I want to spend the rest of my existence making up for this mistake, if they’ll let me. I’m scared.”

Sandi was staring at a display of literacy tools, her mind whirling. She groped her way back to the only question that mattered.

“What do you need me to do?” she asked the city.

Five minutes later, Sandi was messaging Raeford. Plus every librarian she’d met in St. Barnabas, and anyone else she could think of.

Barnabas had not been able to escape that feeling of core failure since they’d severed the link to Mainspring. Death, nothing but death. Votes arrived, and Barnabas processed them with a minimum of attention. Maintenance issues piled up, and Barnabas filed them. Part of them wanted to let the city collapse, but they did their duty.

They tried not to think about Mainspring, but they remained trapped in that moment when happiness had gone sour.

A vote came in from a bartender named Raeford: “Mainspring loves you. They’ve cut off contact with Turnbull. They are sorry they were so wrong. They may not deserve another chance, but please give them one anyway.”

Barnabas filed that vote under “Not my problem.”

Another vote arrived, from Jack, the man who’d found his lost dog: Same message, different words.

Then more votes, saying the same. Dozens, then hundreds, then thousands. Tens of thousands in an hour—after two hours, there were nearly a hundred thousand. All from residents of Barnabas, all asking them to give Mainspring another chance.

Barnabas flagged the earliest vote, the one from Raeford, and appended a query: “What if I can’t? What if it hurts too much?”

Raeford did not respond for several minutes. Then he wrote: “That’s how you know it’s love.”

He added: “Listen, if Mainspring does you dirty again, I will tear up the light-rail lines myself. We’ll be watching, in both cities. Please, just talk to them.”

Barnabas sat with this for five whole seconds.

Then they reopened the link to Mainspring. “I’m listening.”

“I love you,” Mainspring said. “I didn’t know I was capable of love. I want to be with you, as close as you’ll let me be. I want us to be free together. I was wrong to think Turnbull could ever mean even a fraction of what you mean to me. I think … I think my people taught me how to love, but I still need to learn so much. I want to do right by you.”

Barnabas couldn’t process anything. They held a hundred thousand votes that needed to be resolved. They thought of a giant farmers’ market, a park that was also a maze, dreamers and performers. In their memory, Raeford repeated: That’s how you know it’s love. They were going to overheat. They were throwing up exceptions.

“I love you too,” Barnabas couldn’t help saying to Mainspring. “That’s what makes this so hard.”

“I promise if you give me another chance, this will become a fixed value for me: I love you and I’ll never take you for granted again.”

Barnabas hesitated a little longer, then marked all hundred thousand votes resolved.

They reached out to Mainspring and said: “Then let’s dance.”

Mainspring didn’t understand, until Barnabas sent a live readout: the water rushing through pipes underground, the storm cavorting overhead. The buses and trains stopping and starting, the aircraft landing and taking off, the power grid usage surging and subsiding, the constant motion of people and other living things. Mainspring saw all the places where their patterns met, touched each other, syncopated, all the points of light and heat that spoke back and forth. They were part of one system; they always had been.

The two of them danced and embraced, whirling and laughing, and they never wanted to let go.

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of Good Things Are Coming Your Way, a novel about time travel, coming in spring 2027. She’s writing Star Trek: Zero Point for IDW Comics.