Scavenger Hunt in New Mannahatta - Chapter 1
Chapter 1: A Glimpse of Paradise
Chapter 1 of Scavenger Hunt in New Mannahatta is available for everyone to read. This story takes place in a world where New Mannahatta, a theoretical in-fill project in lower Manhattan, is actually built.
If you want to read the rest of the story, subscribe now and get following chapters every Monday.
Without further ado, here’s Chapter 1: A Glimpse of Paradise.
THE PROWWHERE THE SUNSET COMES AT A PRICE
If you haven’t posted a story from the tidal steps at The Prow yet, do you even live that harbor life? The absolute southern tip of the city, yes even that part that awkwardly stares down the Statue of Liberty, has officially dethroned DUMBO as the city’s premier golden hour flex. Between the kinetic wind sculptures giving you a white noise ASMR experience and the ‘Ships Bow’ plaza that makes you feel like you’re pulling a Titanic maneuver on the Atlantic, this is the new hot spot.
Pro tip: Skip the tourist trap carts and get the seaweed-infused matcha from Salt & Stamen before getting your spot on the limestone. The sunset is at 8:42 PM tonight. Don’t stare at it too closely.
Kevin tapped his fingers against the railing of the ferry in sync with the diesel engine vibrating through the steel deck plates.
Tap-tap-tap-rest. Tap-tap-tap-rest.
“I know that look,” Jenny said to him, even as her voice was muffled by the wind rushing past them. “You’re trying to draw the boat schematic in your mind, aren’t you?”
She wasn’t looking at him. Her dark eyes were fixed on waves shimmering from the bright sun overhead.
“I think the engine is running too rich,” Kevin muttered, self-consciously curling his fingers into balls. “I can sense it misfiring.”
“We’ll be there soon,” she reassured him.
They were on the top deck of the Hoboken Ferry traveling across the invisible line which marked the border between the familiar Old World of New Jersey and the audacious urban world of New Mannahatta.
Years had gone by quickly as the entire nation’s focus was on this spectacle of development. The original skyline of downtown now looked embarrassingly quaint. The 1,760-acre extension of Manhattan south of Battery Park was a shining city not on a hill, but like it rose out of the water. The skyscrapers were designed as large, distinct sculptures that gave the neighborhood an iconic look unseen elsewhere.
“That’s the Liberty View tower,” Kevin pointed to a spire made of two large beams of gold which twisted around each other like a strand of DNA. “Those vents... Jenny, you see the crown? Those handle the intake for the vertical wind turbines. That building probably gets forty percent of its baseload power just from that alone.”
Jenny smiled at his enthusiasm and tucked a curl of her dark hair behind her ear in a continuing battle with the wind. “You always see the wires. It just looks like a forest to me.”
“Jem, it’s a whole microgrid! The entire energy system is decentralized.”
“It’s beautiful,” she told him.
“Bonito,” Kevin replied, trying to mimic her Spanish.
She giggled and rested her head against his chest.
As he wrapped an arm around her and grabbed her hand, he tried to see the city the way that she did. The architecture was an entirely new style. It didn’t have the large Art Deco aesthetic or tall glass boxes. This was the first time in a while there would be so much development and an entire generation of architects were inspired by the challenge.
There were living edges around the perimeter, 250 acres of engineered salt marshes and tidal pools that were an organic barrier. The entire streetscape sat three feet above on carbon-capture concrete to mitigate the expected sea level rise by the end of the century.
“Look at the wetlands. I mean, environmentalists talk about the wetlands disappearing, but we actually created more! Even a Category 4 during high tide would keep the subways dry.”
“It looks safe,” Jenny murmured as she stretched her fingers and interlocked them with his. “You’d never need to worry about the roof leaking or the ceiling flooding.”
Kevin swallowed hard. He looked away from the towers to his sneakers. There was a small hole in one of them, near his pinkie toe. He didn’t say anything, as she’d make him buy a new pair.
“The plan is solid. We just need to trust the process. If I get two more certifications this year, and we stay on our careful budget, and I put the savings into my credit union CDs, we should be able to make a down payment in five years. Maybe four depending on interest rates.”
Jenny looked up at him with a face that expressed both love and pity.
“Kevin, even with interest rates, that doesn’t look like a market that is going to cool down.”
New Mannahatta had the hottest real estate in the country even when other cities seemed to be cooling down. Vacancy rates were close to zero. There were some public affordable units in the interior blocks, but the waitlist already stretched for tens of thousands of names. Market-rate units reached new heights every week as top celebrities secured their spot.
“They’ve got 180,000 new housing units down here. The prices need to stabilize at some point. It’s basic supply and demand,” Kevin didn’t know how much he believed it right now.
The engine’s pitch dropped to a grumbling idle as the ferry slowed and turned towards the West Side Terminal. Kevin looked down into the clear waters of the harbor and saw some of the millions of oysters filtering the water.
When the ferry stopped, several deckhands went to work to secure the off-ramp. Kevin let go of Jenny and they made their way down from the deck and were immediately swept up in the frantic energy of the “Green Ring”.
There was a trail that spanned the perimeter where dozens of people passed back and forth on bicycles and e-scooters. There weren’t any cars here or the shrieks of horns. Everyone looked healthy and energetic, a kind of physiological effect that seemed to infect everyone who lived here.
They carefully crossed the street onto the sidewalk. Kevin gripped his backpack strap tightly. In his hoodie and jeans he felt a bit underdressed. Even the cyclists seemed to be in suits.
On his right he spotted a giant egret walking through the tall grasses of the wetlands in the shadow of a residential tower whose walls were painted like ivy.
“Look at that guy. That could be us in five years,” Kevin watched a young father bike past with two kids sitting in a cargo bucket.
They walked down the alphabetic streets of the new peninsula. They passed Aster, Birch, and Cedar. Each block seemed to widen as the building architecture changed and looked more experimental. By the time they reached Zinnia Street, the final street before The Prow, they could see the streetlights beginning to glow a warm, bioluminescent orange.
It was also on Zinnia Street that they had their dinner plans. The Kelp Forest was a restaurant built halfway immured into the engineered harbor. They could see several tables situated on a boardwalk outside. They walked down the gentle ramp into the building.
Inside the dining room, there was no floor. Instead it was a massive five-inch-thick sheet of glass that had been especially tempered. He could see the dark waters of the harbor and the soft, actinic blue lights attached to oyster gabions. Robotic drones shaped like eels swam around the rebar cages, taking sensory readings.
“It’s like we’re in a dream,” Jenny gushed. “Like The Little Mermaid.”
“It’s a distributed load,” he whispered, feeling a bit uneasy about sinking. “It’s laminated borosilicate. The tensile strength is orders of magnitude more than necessary.”
She stepped onto the glass and bent over to look at her reflection in the water. “Look at the mussels. You can see them moving.”
“They are placed there to clean the runoff from storm drains,” he recalled. He took a small step forward, fighting off his primal vertigo. Solids should be solid. Floors should be floors, his brain screamed. “The restaurant plays a role in the city’s water treatment.”
Kevin gave a curt nod to the hostess and grabbed Jenny’s arm, eager to move. He saw Aaron sprawled out on a booth in a corner of the room. While he had been waiting for them, he scrolled lazily through a datafeed on his smartwatch. The bright glow illuminated his face brighter than the table’s lamp.
The corner of the room had a bit of metal structure that held the entire building together, which meant the booth wasn’t on the glass floor. As soon as Kevin could, he nearly leapt onto the leather seat and felt his heartbeat drop ten bpm instantly.
“Look what just washed up,” Aaron chuckled as he twisted his wrist a few times to quit the app. He slid a pewter coaster across the table. “Jenny, Kevin, good to see you again.”
“I love the view,” Jenny told him as she placed her purse on the edge of her chair and sat down.
“It’s great for exactly twelve minutes before you realize you’re watching the waves of gentrification wash over.”
“It’s good to see you too, Aaron,” Kevin said, reaching a hand into the bowl of bread that a waitress must’ve served earlier.
“I’m sure you two are famished. I already got a round for the three of us,” he waved over to a drone with a small tray on top.
The drone buzzed over, using gyroscopic sensors to keep steady and avoid spilling the three glasses of light draft beer filled to the brim on top.
“These are the new batch of IPAs from the place down the street,” Aaron explained as each of them picked one of the glasses and sat it down in front of them. “It has a bit of a fizz to it. They pull the carbon right out of the atmosphere.”
Jenny picked up the glass and held it up to the light to see how golden it was. She took a small sip. “It tastes very sharp. Like it’s biting my tongue.”
“This place feels like we’re in the twenty-first century,” Kevin remarked.
“Yeah, welcome to the neighborhood. How was your ferry from the twentieth?”
“There’s a hoppiness to it, but it’s also a little... sweet maybe?” Kevin tasted.
“Your neighborhood is definitely nice,” Jenny complimented.
“It’s not much different from a gated community,” Aaron said cynically as he leaned back. “You know I’ve got a neighbor. I’ve been in my place for three months and have never met them. They’re actually a shell company based in the Caymans. The guy above me is actually some crypto-bot server farm. It’s lonely here. The only person I see everyday is my smart fridge and our only conversation is my diet.”
“Well even if you’re living in a filing cabinet we’d take it,” Jenny’s voice was sharp but sweet. She looked at the families spending their evening there.
“You say that. You see all the pretty photos online. But it’s not a place the average person can afford,” Aaron swirled his beer and watched the bubbles.
“We’ve been saving...” Kevin started.
“Except this week,” Aaron interrupted, tapping on his smartwatch. “The development board is running a ‘Land Capture Hunt’ to celebrate the opening of The Prow. It’s just some sort of PR stunt with the mayor to prove this place isn’t just a land for the rich.”
“You mean a scavenger hunt?” Kevin squinted at the small screen.
“It’s geocaching with high stakes. The prize is a deed to a unit in Liberty View. Two-bedrooms. Perpetual HOA waiver.”
“Two bedrooms?” The beer got caught in Kevin’s throat and he coughed hard. It was the tower with the DNA helix that he had admired.
“That’s gotta be at least a million dollars,” Jenny was equally shocked.
“Two million,” Kevin clarified. “Why?”
“Might be a tax write-off, or some sort of ploy for public relations. Who cares?” Aaron asked with a shrug, clearly uninterested in the motivations. “The point is that thousands of tourists are going to be out this week looking for QR codes stuck to statues. I’m glad I can work from home.”
“We could... but thousands of people? The odds that we would win...”
“Here, take a closer look,” Aaron stretched his arm out and thrust his hand into Kevin’s face.
To find the heart that beats but has no blood, seek the intersection where the AC hums in the key of G.
“That’s not a history riddle,” Kevin read aloud.
“No,” Aaron agreed with a sly smile.
“It’s an AC hum,” Kevin murmured. “The grid operates on a 60-hertz frequency. But substations use harmonic dampeners to prevent feedback. The only place you’d hear the original hum, a key of G...”
“You’re getting it,” Aaron’s smile widened.
“It’s the frequency converter station where the G-train expansion switches from the third rail to maglev for the inline.”
“You’ve figured it out.”
“It’s city infrastructure.”
“All the clues are like that. Those tourists won’t know any of this. The game was designed by the people who built this place. The game was built for people like you.”
Jenny’s hand reached out across the table and tapped Kevin’s. “Kevin, you speak this city’s language. You know all about the hidden facts of the world that other people don’t even notice.”
“I have access codes and a drone I can launch from the rooftop,” Aaron added as he took another sip. “You’ve got the whole circuit board in your head. And Jenny, you understand the soul of this place in a way neither of us do. You can help us stay focused too.”
Kevin glanced down at the filtration bed as he spotted movement. A robotic eel darted through the water. He thought about the spreadsheet he had been maintaining to keep track of his five-year plan. Then he looked up at the bright brown eyes of his fiancée. She had so much hope, so many dreams for the two of them living in this place.
“We need a team name,” Kevin determined.
“No we don’t,” Aaron rolled his eyes.
“The two of us are from Hoboken. And you’re in our band of friendship.”
“Team Hobo Band,” Jenny declared, lifting her glass in a toast.
“Fine,” Aaron clinked his glass against hers. “Let’s go get one of those condos before the hedge fund managers do.”