The banners were the first thing I heard when I woke up. Their constant movement seeming to be almost the heartbeat of the giant city, the steady rhythm of their movement playing proof of the cities life in it's own odd way. Even now, I have never once felt the wind that makes them move in the way they do, but still it gives me shivers when I hear them. They move endlessly, pounding against the sides of the buildings, as if they alone were working tirelessly to knock the buildings to pieces beat by beat, waiting for the moment when one finally crumbled and took all the rest down with them.

I woke up that day sore, and achy, and bone-tired to my core. My neck had it worst, but the gash in my arm and the pounding in the back of my head were both close seconds. I shifted slowly, carefully, straightening out from my horrid sleeping position, not knowing how much I slept but knowing very well that it sure didn't feel like enough.

I heard noises coming from the direction of the road I'd come from, and I turned slightly to find that the crowds I had previously ran from had followed me to the formerly-empty part of the city. I stared at them for a moment, surprised at their presence. Then it came back to me.

I leaned away from them as much as I could without hurting too badly, shielding my eyes and ears from the crowds I was all-too-quickly remembering from the night before.

I had no way of knowing what time it was. There was no sky, no clocks I could see, no sun or moon to use as a judge. The city looked exactly as it did when I fell asleep, for the lights outside the alleyway, as well as the crowds, had grown to nearly match the ones I had ran here to escape from. They covered the walls, the same multi-colored lights swirling in every direction as far as I could make myself see, with only scattered bits of empty, but still rather clean, darkened alleyways that no one seemed to look into at the slightest.

I hid behind my covered eyes for a fair while, calming myself, fighting to keep from crying again. I listened to the footsteps of the crowds outside the building, the banners above my head, the frantic piecing and puzzling of my mind as I tried to decide what to believe and what I couldn't believe just yet.

I was here. Where was here? When was here? Was it really... I couldn't remember the date. The year. The year? Was that the year? No. No it wasn't. That's not... it has to be? It can't be. Where am I? Tall buildings... New York? Does New York have that? No, that's stupid. I've seen New York. In movies, at least. This is... another country? The words in the... in the sky were English. Britain? Who else speaks English? Canada? I can't remember, I can't remember...

Different direction, okay, okay, how do I get home. I have... my bag? No. I dropped it. I can't... how did I get here? Was I kidnapped? Did I... no, I was, it was, I...

I felt the ice again. I couldn't keep sitting there thinking. I'd crush myself.

I slowly lowered my hand from my eyes, taking in the light outside the alley bit by bit, still dazed from what had happened, still unsure what entirely was going on, still shivering from the traces of ice I couldn't fight back. I was thirsty, and hungry, and still unnecessarily tired. Entirely lost, and still slightly spinning.

For a few minutes, I watched the people that passed by the alleyway, tried to listen to their words. A river of noise, I wondered how the people within the crowd could hear anything at all. I couldn't make out a thing they were saying, save for a few caught words, so I slowly began inching myself closer, never really rising up off the ground, moving in kind of a sideways crawl. Maybe their words would tell me something, something that will make it makes sense.

Soon I could pick out words. Sentences. And I recognized them, some of them. Some spoke in English, but a lot of them didn't. At the time I'd assumed they were speaking some different language, but I've since learned that they were really speaking several different languages. It isn't uncommon for people of this time to be fluent in many different languages, the average being somewhere between five and six. I'm surprised how people never really did notice I only knew the one language.

As I watched them, picking up words here and there, I also noticed that not only was the crowd slightly less dense than it was the night before, but that none of the people in the crowd really dressed at all the same. They wore clothes of drastically different colors and styles, some wore all black, some wore dozens of colors, some wore chaotic-looking outfits that seemed both unnecessary and somehow entirely unique every time, some wore plainer clothes that looked more familiar, but still not quite there.

There were people wearing helmets and masks, crazy hats and shoes, people with torn clothes, people with plain shirts, people in odd dresses and scarves, people wearing necklaces and bracelets and glasses and a dozen other accessories I still can't name though I wear many of them now. There was even someone that seemed to be wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, who looked more or less like someone I'd expect to see walking down the street of my own time. I remember also seeing someone who looked as though they were covered in spots of some sort of dried paint.

There were people in suits, people who were dressed as though they belonged on a movie set, people who looked like moving piles of sentient cloth and people who looked almost entirely normal. With every person who walked past my alley came an entirely unique look, never exactly the same, there was no common style, no visible trends or fashion. Just chaos and colors. And so many people.

It unnerved me. The wave of people walking by reminded me of the lights on the walls. Too bright. Too much. I edged back away from the crowds and the light, but I was already shaking again from the memories of the night before.

No one ran in that crowd. Well, now that I think about it, I haven't seen anyone running in any of the crowds I've been in since then either. They walked quickly, but they all walked. A fluid river that never dammed, never got blocked or slowed or tangled up and knotted. Everyone was clustered so tightly together, how did anyone know where they were going? How did they all manage to fight through the crowds to get where they needed to be? What if someone stopped? What if someone decided they needed to go the other way? What if there was an emergency, and they needed to be somewhere quicker? There was no way that many people would move by to let them pass, and they had nowhere else to move to anyway.

What if someone got hurt? What if they asked people to help them, but no one could stop before the crowd pushed them away? I'd always feared that somehow I'd get crushed in that crowd, and no one would know. I'd just get trampled to death, forgotten on the ground as people kicked and stomped me to dust while never having any idea.

I couldn't swim, I think. In that river of people, I knew I'd drown. But what could I do? Sit in the alleyway and starve? Wither away, alone and afraid? I missed my mama. My home. I just wanted to go home. I wanted it to stop. And it wasn't stopping, sitting there wasn't making it stop. I had to find my way out of there, I had to jump in the river and follow it along, hope it led me to somewhere I could get home from. Or maybe I'll wake up. That seemed more likely, at the time.

I wanted to sit in that alley forever. Just the thought of rejoining that crowd sent chills through me. I couldn't do it.

But I had to. I had to if I wanted to get home. To get out of that alleyway. To get out of... wherever I was. I'd seen the words in the sky, but really, who would ever believe words like those if there were even the slightest possibility they weren't true? I only knew I had to leave. Get out of there. Even if it meant joining that crowd.

So I forced myself up. Leaning against the smooth building wall for support, I slowly rose to my feet, and faced the crowd at the end of the darkness. I felt the back of my head with my hand, and found no blood. My other arm though was looking exactly like the kind of thing that would draw attention from at least someone in a crowd, which was the last thing I'd ever wanted, yesterday and today. I looked around for something to cover it with, but the alley was entirely empty save for some solid-looking blocks of what I still assume were just construction materials.

I just had to do it. Walk into that crowd, hope they don't notice my bleeding arm, hope they somehow thought it was dried paint like that one guy, hope they don't notice that I wasn't from around there, hope they don't notice that I didn't belong. Looking back, I'm kind of surprised they didn't. I haven't seen anyone else injured in this place, not even any hospitals, so I feel as though I would have stood out a fair bit more than I did. But I guess it doesn't matter. Nothing really would have changed.

I stepped up to maybe twenty feet away from the edge of the alley. Any farther and I was certain someone would glance over and see me, a disheveled, scraggly outlier standing alone in the dark. I shivered again at the sight of the crowd, and almost started tearing up a bit, but forced them away. I knew, I knew I couldn't be weak. I couldn't start crying and backing away from... whatever was in front of me.

I had to be strong. Brave. Confident. This was a survival situation, wasn't it? I was far from home, in a place I knew nothing about. I had to be strong, I had to survive this.

I had to get home.

That was my one goal. I didn't know where I was, whether it was really the year 3059 or if I was just somewhere really, really far from home, I just knew I had to get back.

From the very beginning, I hated this world. I knew I couldn't stay here. My only option was to leave, to get home no matter what. But I was scared too.

This is a nightmare world. I knew that the moment I looked up towards the sky and saw everything but stars. That was the one thing I was able to accept.

Or maybe it wasn't. Because I also accepted that I was weak. That much I had always known about myself, even before I blinked. Someone like me was never going to survive in this world. I was just weak.

Back then, I thought my home was still out there. I thought it'd all be okay, if I just kept moving long enough to find my way out. I thought it'd get better. I thought all my efforts would be worth it. I thought if I just left that alleyway, if I just forced myself to pretend to be someone I wasn't, just forced myself to pretend to be strong and unfazed, that it'd all get better. I believed that, then.

I should have known, but I didn't. So I decided to try and hide my weakness, under a different name, a different person. Someone I'd always known was stronger than me, that would have been able to get out of here. How could I have ever thought I could be like her? I never could have done it. But I tried, of course. I always had to try.

I remember edging out of that alleyway, the shiver that went through me as I looked out at the dizzying, moving streets. Bridges crisscrossed far above me now, blocking out the sky even further, with rays of unnatural lights beaming out from behind them. I remember thinking it was a large wooden roof, and that maybe I was in a large building, or a bubble like in those futuristic sci-fi movies.

My knees were covered in dry blood and this strange construction-dust, as well as my arm where I had cut it, and my eyes were still blurry from either sleep or tears. I rubbed them, and pulled my shirt sleeve down over my arm as far as it could go. Didn't really do that much, of course.

I took a breath, and edged back forward towards the crowd, back towards the light I ran from, back towards the people I feared, back towards the center of hell.

But this time I wasn't going to be scared. I was going to be brave this time. Even if it was scary, even if it was slow, I was going to do it. For my mom, for my brother, for my family. I would join that crowd, and pretend I belonged. Fake it till you make it, I guess.

I didn't know how names worked in this world. I didn't know anything. What did people consider to be names in this world? What names were liked or disliked? Which names were common, which were rare? There was so much to be associated with a name. That's why I had to be careful.

I decided to go with something short, what I had always imagined to be futuristic, and I could say were simply initials or the shortened version of another name if it turned out to be weird. I had almost thought of going by a different name, a made up one, but the one that was there already fit well enough. I guess it really was meant for this world.

It was the name of someone brave. Someone who was confident, who could act like they belonged in this world, not my own, and who would never let anything in this world hurt them.

Someone serious. And smart. Proud, but calm. The kind of person I thought would have a better chance at getting out. Who was I, to really think that? To really think my little acts were going to save me? There was never any point to it. I was never anything more than a disappointment to the name.

But still, I walked out of that alleyway. Still, I was determined to try.

I remember seeing the lights get brighter and brighter as I edged my way out of the darkness.

I wanted to run. I wanted to go back to that alleyway and hide and never come out again. I probably should have too.

But I didn't. I decided I was going to be strong. I was going to face this world, and find a way back to my time.

For that day and for too many after, my name was Io.

And I was going to pretend that I could go home.

io. ee-oh.