There I was in nothingness. Or at least in the 21st-century urban version of nothing: patches of forest thick enough to get lost in, tall prairie grass grazing my thighs, dirt paths without a destination. But on the horizon, a short distance north of where I stood, was the jarring juxtaposition of gleaming downtown Chicago—skyscrapers and condos and commuters.
These were, of course, all facts I learned after my chance first journey to Rezkoville. Crossing the threshold of the Roosevelt underpass had sent me through a wormhole into some futuristic dystopia—the kind fictionalized in Veronica Roth’s Divergent series. In the popular YA books (and their attendant films), Chicago’s built environment has been slowly reclaimed by nature. Swamp and prairie land lap at crumbling high-rises, the hulking tombstones memorializing civilization’s end.
“I’m just a guy,” I answered sheepishly. “Just wandering.”
