THE ATLAS OF UNBUILT STREETS

The map arrived in a tube that had no return address, only my childhood nickname written in a hand I knew belonged to a dead man.

I was the youngest cartographer at the Municipal Office of Necessary Roads, a building where nobody was allowed to draw a curve without requesting authorization in triplicate. My father had been a surveyor before he vanished during the demolition of Gannet Row. His last message had been a single sentence: Watch for streets that aren't there yet.

Inside the tube lay a stitched paper atlas. Each page showed a city almost like ours, except the neighborhoods that had been bulldozed still breathed between the blocks, and narrow lanes curved around a hospital that had never received its funding. At the center, a red street had been penciled over every familiar road. It was called THE SPINE.

A note under the binding read: IT WILL BE BUILT WHEN ENOUGH PEOPLE FORGET WHAT STOOD HERE.