By Rob Tyler
Rob Tyler writes short fiction about family, love and loss. His stories have appeared in Lake Affect and Refrigerator magazines, and have aired on Steve Huff’s Fiction in Short on Rochester’s WXXI radio. A writer and editor for almost 30 years, Rob is currently a marketing and technical writer for a software company. He lives in Pittsford, NY, with his wife, Pat Pauly, an art quilter. They have two college-age daughters and a cat rescued from Attica prison. Rob has built himself a rustic little writing shack in the corner of his yard, and he often admires it from the comfort of his living room.
We often hear that hindsight is 20/20. In “Start Anywhere,” Rob mixes monsters and Midtown Plaza in a tale of Rochester’s future that brings foresight to the forefront.
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The night Godzilla blew through town, Jake fought claustrophobia with a hundred other people in a bomb shelter beneath the featureless gray tower that loomed over downtown Rochester. The ventilation was bad, and the only light came from a string of bare bulbs hanging from the vaulted concrete ceiling.
He sat on a rusted iron bench next to the cute blonde he’d seen coming and going from 18b.
“You know,” he said, “this wasn’t always an apartment building.”
She glanced at him and looked away.
“And where we are right now,” he said, “this used to be a parking garage.”
She looked down and pursed her lips.
“This room was designed to withstand a 20-megaton airburst directly overhead,” he said.
She turned to him. “Godzilla could crush this building like papier-mâché and bury us alive under a mountain of rubble,” she said. “We’d suffocate in two hours.”
She had pale skin and big hazel eyes. He liked her shape.
“What do you do for a living?” he asked.
“I work for the city,” she said. “You know all those abandoned bikes you see locked to public racks and street signs and railings?”
“The ones with the seats and tires stolen or spokes bashed in?”
“Yeah. My job is to cut them off.”
The all-clear sounded. Someone opened the lead-lined blast door and they filed up a dank, narrow stairway to the laundry room, between rows of washers and dryers, past a wall of power meters, and up another set of stairs into the lobby.
“What do you do?” she asked.
“I’m a retro analyst.”
“So you weren’t just bullshitting me down there?”
Jake chuckled and shook his head. “I like the way you talk,” he said, and held the door for her as they left the building.
“This,” he said, with a dramatic sweep of his arm, “was the site of the first urban indoor shopping mall in the USA.”
They stood at the top of a flight of broad granite steps, which led down to a couple acres of scrubby grass strewn with uprooted shrubbery. An overturned swing set quietly rusted, its spindly steel legs pointing to the sky.
“Uh huh. You almost had me.” She turned and walked away.
Jake wasn’t ready to give up. They walked, not quite together, up Clinton Avenue as the sun slowly set behind the shattered city skyline. People with dazed expressions milled about in the street. Other than rumbles in the distance, the city was strangely quiet. A warm breeze carried the sweet smell of benzene from the river.
He said, “You’ve heard of the Foresight Project?”
“Yeah, so?” She pulled a nic-stic from her bag and popped it between her lips. The LED in the tip glowed orange.
“That’s me,” he said.
She stopped and turned to him. “Really.” Her eyes narrowed. “You?”
“Well, I’m part of it. It’s what I do.”
Across the street, a toilet exploded on the sidewalk. Four stories up, a small Asian man in a T-shirt and plaid boxers shoveled debris through a crescent-shaped hole in the wall.
“They made Godzilla movies a hundred years ago,” Jake said. “Incredible likeness—same fiery breath, same screechy cry.”
He got a rush of pleasure from the furrows that appeared across her forehead.
“Same for King Kong,” he added.
“Who?”
“The big ape that came through last year.”
She took a slow drag on her stic. “What does it all mean?”
“Someone precogged them.”
She switched off her stic and dropped it in her bag. “I don’t know if I should believe anything you say.”
“They made other movies, too. And books. Sold as fiction, but a lot of it has happened. A lot more is going to happen.” He studied the low-hanging clouds scudding across the darkening sky. “Ever heard of Rodan?”
“No. Why?”
“Bad movie. Terrible acting. And the special effects …” He pinched his nostrils.
She looked at him, really looked at him for the first time, and she smiled.
They crossed Main and kept going, wending their way through wreckage in the street. When they reached the canal that ringed the city center, he told her that it originally had been built for cars, and flooded decades later when traffic dropped off. “Cheaper than bulldozing,” he said.
They took the public wormhole to the other side. There was a pizza joint on the corner, and they headed for it.
“What else did they precog?” she asked.
“Oh boy,” he said, “I don’t know where to start.”
“Start anywhere,” she said. “You like soychovies on your pizza?”
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