Part I

The tunnel was hot. Not subway-hot, not even summer-in-New-York hot. This was a deep wet heat that came up through the concrete and made your shirt stick to your back before you even picked up a wrench.

Marcus Rivera wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and looked at the track gauge. It was out of alignment by three-eighths of an inch. In the summer heat, the steel expanded, and the tracks bowed like a tired spine. Someone would have to straighten them before the B train came through.

"Big Ray," Marcus said, "you feeling this?"

Big Ray was twenty feet ahead, bent over a ventilation fan that hadn't worked properly since the Carter administration. He turned, his face a map of forty years in underground tunnels—dust lines around his eyes, a gray beard that never quite got trimmed, a left lung that wheezed like a broken accordion.

"The sun's doing it," he said.

"It's the heat island effect. The city's getting warmer."

"Nah. It's the sun. I checked the news. They saying the sun is getting sick."

Marcus laughed. "The sun ain't sick, Ray. It's a ball of gas. It does what it does."

He went back to the track gauge. Three-eighths of an inch. He started loosening the bolts.

Part II

The news about the sun came and went the way news does in New York. First it was on every channel. Then it was on the morning shows. Then it was a sidebar on the weather report. Then it was nothing.

Marcus noticed the sky changing though. Dusk used to be orange. Now it was red. A deep copper red that made the buildings look like they were lit from inside. He mentioned it to Tanya on the phone.

"Everything's red in Brooklyn," she said. "Sophie says it's because of pollution. The school told her to write an essay about it."

"Let her write about the bodega cat. That's more interesting."

But he looked up sometimes. When he was on the surface, fixing a collapsed section of tunnel near Atlantic Avenue, he'd stand there with his coffee and watch the sky turn that impossible color and think: that ain't right.

The B train started running late. Then it stopped running altogether during certain hours. The MTA sent out a press release about "infrastructure challenges." The workers knew the truth: the tunnels were getting too hot to work in, and the tracks were warping faster than anyone could fix them.

Marcus fixed them anyway. Every day. Three-eighths of an inch. Five-eighths. Sometimes a full inch. He and Big Ray and the other night crew worked twelve-hour shifts straightening steel that would be bent again by morning.

One night, Big Ray found Marcus sitting on a bundle of railroad ties, eating a sandwich he'd brought from home.

"You ever think about this?" Big Ray asked. "I mean, really think about it. The sun is doing whatever the hell it's doing. The tunnels are melting. The tracks are bending. And we're here, fixing them, like nothing's wrong."

Marcus chewed his sandwich. "Tracks gotta be fixed."

"What if they don't matter? What if, like, none of this—" He waved his arm at the tunnel, the tracks, the fluorescent lights. "What if none of it matters anymore?"

Marcus swallowed. "Tracks gotta be fixed."

Big Ray nodded. He didn't argue. They both knew he was right, even if it didn't make any sense.

Part III

The incident happened on a Thursday in July. A section of tunnel near Flatbush had warped so badly that a freight train was stuck underground, three hundred passengers trapped in a metal box at a hundred and twenty degrees.

Marcus was part of the rescue crew. They worked for six hours, cutting through warped bulkheads, cooling the tunnel with emergency sprinklers, guiding passengers out through a narrow passage that smelled like burning rubber and panic.

Big Ray went in first. He always went in first. Forty years in the tunnels had given him a sense of direction that no compass could match. He knew which way was up just by the way the air moved.

They got everyone out. Three hundred and fourteen passengers, two conductors, and Big Ray, who came out coughing and black-faced but walking.

Except he wasn't walking right. His left leg dragged. His breathing was shallow and wet. Marcus helped him to a bench and called for an ambulance that wasn't coming because all the ambulances were busy with heat-related emergencies across the city.

At the hospital, the doctor said Big Ray had inhaled too much toxic gas. His remaining lung was damaged. He'd be lucky to live a month.

Marcus visited him that night. Big Ray was in a single room with a view of a brick wall. He was awake, propped up on pillows, staring at the ceiling.

"Ray," Marcus said.

"Marcus."

"I'm sorry about the tracks."

Big Ray smiled. It was a small tired smile. "Don't be sorry. Tracks gotta be fixed."

"I know."

"You keep fixing them, you hear? That's your job. That's what you do."

"I will."

Big Ray closed his eyes. "Even if the world ends, Marcus. Tracks gotta be fixed."

Part IV

Big Ray died three weeks later. Marcus went to the funeral. It was small—Big Ray's children lived in New Jersey and didn't come, and most of his friends were too old to travel. Marcus stood at the grave and said nothing. He wasn't much good at saying nothing, but he was trying.

After the funeral, he went home, made himself a plate of food he didn't eat, and went to the garage where his 1992 Chevy sat. The engine was shot. The transmission was shot. The whole car was shot. He had been trying to fix it for two years.

He picked up a wrench. He found a bolt that needed tightening. He started turning.

Sophie came over the next day. She was twelve, all elbows and knees and opinions, with her mother's mouth and his stubbornness.

"Daddy."

"Yeah, Soph."

"Can you help me with something?"

He was still working on the Chevy bolt. "What is it?"

She sat down on an oil drum he used as a stool. "At school, they had this lesson about disasters. How to prepare. What to do if the world ends. They made us sing a song. About hope."

Marcus kept turning the bolt. The rust resisted. He applied more pressure.

"What's the song?" he said.

"It's about how we stick together. And how the sun will be okay. And how we'll be okay if we help each other."

Marcus tightened the bolt. It held. He picked up another wrench.

"That's a nice song," he said.

"She's singing it in her room."

"Yeah?"

"She sings it every night. Before she goes to sleep."

Marcus picked up a socket set. The Chevy's engine block was pitted and scarred, but beneath the rust, the metal was still solid. It could be saved. It just needed time and patience and the right tool for each job.

"Tell her I said good job," he said.

Sophie stood up. She hugged him around the waist, quick and tight, and then she was gone, walking down the street toward home, her backpack bouncing on her shoulders.

Marcus went back to the Chevy. He picked up a wrench. He found a bolt. He started turning.

Outside, the sky was red. The sun burned behind the clouds. And in a garage in Brooklyn, a man fixed a car that might never run, because that was what you did. You fixed what needed fixing. Even if nobody was driving. Even if the road was ending.

OTMES_v2 Codes: TI: 68.0 | T2_Illusion M: [M1:6.0, M2:2.0, M3:2.5, M4:5.0, M5:1.0, M6:2.0, M7:2.5, M8:3.0, M9:3.0, M10:3.5] N: [N1:0.35, N2:0.65] K: [K1:0.80, K2:0.20] theta: 138.0 | Elegiac V:0.60 I:0.80 C:0.90 S:0.30 R:0.40 Style: New_York_Realism Theme: Daily_Epic / Ordinary_Dignity