The city burned. Well, technically speaking, cities, since there seemed to be several versions all at once. It had started on Times Square. Everyone on the street suffered the same blinding headache at the exact same moment, and when they recovered the billboards had been replaced with the original New York Times building. Brand spanking 1904 new. Except that 1904 hadn’t had access to 2020 technology, and within seconds broken electrical wires and gas lines had exploded half the building.
It hadn’t stopped there, obviously. No one knew what had created the time rift, but every explosion warped it further. Theatre facades from the 1920s replaced gleaming modern glass and steel, only to burn. Modern street signs stood before the flaming remains of storefronts from the 1800s. Over it all towered the twisted and shattered skyscrapers of the last forty years.
After the buildings, the warp affected living things. First trees and other greenery shifted and broke, sparks from the blazing city setting them alight like living torches. Then people began to change. Some were suddenly mysteriously confused, insisting they were someone else and cowering in terror. Others simply disappeared, while men and women in costumes from long ago days blended in bewilderment with the screaming theater crowds. The worst cases no one talked about, the ones caught between as the rift continued to warp. The ones who didn’t survive, could never have survived.
Most fled, trampling each other in wild abandon like animals racing a forest fire. Here and there a trace of humanity survived: a man snatching a crying child from the path of a bus careening out of control, a woman supporting an elderly man who could barely hobble. For the most part, civilization fell to its basest instincts, the urge to survive at all costs.
It was vain. The city lay silent, its hodgepodge of time staring with bloodied and emptied eye sockets on a burning concrete wasteland.
The Word Worker 