The World Without Bulbs

The stench of coal gas and damp horse manure was the first thing to sting her nostrils.

Amalia opened her eyes upon a heap of wet burlap sacks crammed into a narrow archway. There was no hum of electrical transformers. No traffic signals pulsing at the corner. The entire metropolis breathed with the heavy thrum of brass pulleys, clockwork gears, and the steady drip of condensation lines tracing red-brick Victorian facades.

She looked down at her hands: she wore raw wool fingerless gloves and a heavy broadcloth gown with horn buttons that gripped her ribs like an orthopedic corset.

—Universe Two —she noted dryly to herself—. Or Three. I've lost track of how many inventors failed before someone stumbled onto tungsten filament.

She stepped into the lane as evening fog rolled in off the river docks. Along the cobbled pavement strode a lean youth hauling a long brass pole over his shoulder.

He wore a brown corduroy coat with frayed leather elbow patches and a flat cap pulled low over his brow. Every ten paces, he raised the pole, caught the iron stopcock of a wrought-iron lamp, and struck the flint with a metallic snap. A blue tongue of flame flared, instantly blossoming into a trapped golden moth behind the beveled glass.

Óliver.

He bore the same straight nose with the bridge slightly crooked from a sixth-grade bicycle spill, the same dark freckle on his left earlobe, and that habit of tilting his chin whenever calculating whether he had enough pocket change for rolling tobacco.

Amalia stationed herself beneath Lamp Fourteen, arms crossed tight to mask the tremor in her fingers.

—Good evening, officer of the watch —she called out.

Óliver lowered the lighter's pole with the grace of a rope-walker. He turned toward her, blinked twice through the cloud of his warm breath, and offered an easy, distant half-smile.

—Good evening, miss. You shouldn't linger on this corner; the textile mill boilers blow their steam purge at six, and the soot ruins clean petticoats.

—I'm not worried about the soot, Óliver. I'm worried your hands are always freezing.

The boy halted dead. He scanned her up and down with a mixture of surprise and provincial caution.

—Do we know each other from the boilermakers' hall? I don't recall seeing you at the bridge tavern.

—We know each other from a subway platform where rain flew straight into the sky —Amalia replied, swallowing the bitter knot in her throat—. Though you didn't remember leaving the front-door keys in the mailbox there, either.

Óliver reached a gloved hand into his coat pocket, drawing out a roasted chestnut wrapped in newsprint. He cracked the shell in two with his thumbs and offered her the steaming half.

—I don't know what a subway is, miss. But if you're hungry, the chestnut is sweet.

Amalia took the chestnut. The heat of the shell bit into her fingertips as the gas fog swallowed the lane, reminding her of the multiverse's unforgiving rule: every leap wipes the slate clean.