The Bridge Chronicles Trilogy (24 page)
Read The Bridge Chronicles Trilogy Online
Authors: Gary Ballard
Tags: #noir, #speculative fiction, #hard boiled, #science fiction, #cybernetics, #scifi, #cyberpunk, #near future, #urban fantasy
*****
After long nights of furious work by the entire group, they had their proof of concept prepared. Their first prototype was a glowbug on steroids, as Janicki put it, a featureless box standing over six feet tall. While glowbugs were wired into an existing power source, this larger, more powerful version would generate power wirelessly to any electrical device within its sizeable radius. This cloud of energy gave the device its name, the cloud generator. Due to the mana engine’s asymmetrical power conversion ratio, they couldn’t pin down how long the cloud would operate on the tiny bit of startup energy. It might only last a few minutes, or it could go for years. Rolfsberg’s math was imprecise, and everyone else was too busy with their own work to double-check him thoroughly. Since the generator had no moving parts, as long as it could generate power, it would need no physical maintenance. If it worked, it could literally power an entire building without cost.
The experiment was certain to attract attention. In order to test the cloud, the group would have to disconnect the Engineering Center from the campus’s power grid. If the generator worked as planned, the Center’s power would be restored within seconds, but even that tiny interruption in power would be noticed. Since their work would most certainly be discovered whether it succeeded or failed, they had decided to make this night their public debut. Once the campus administration questioned them, they would reveal their research by releasing it into the GlobalNet as open source designs.
Carl and Lydia would sneak into the Center’s maintenance room and disconnect the back up generators first, then flip the switch on the whole complex. As the building went dark, Balfour would activate the cloud. Nervous anticipation made his stomach do flip-flops as he listened to Lydia’s reports. This was it, everything he’d worked for. He hadn’t eaten all day from the nervousness. His skin tingled with anticipation. His breathing seemed too rapid, too shallow. In the back of his mind, he could hear the voices urging him on, that subconscious creative inspiration whispering concepts and blueprints and ideas and visions into his head from the deepest recesses of his mind.
“We’re in place, Dr. Balfour,” Carl said after what seemed an eternity. “Disconnecting the backups now.”
“Be careful,” Rolfsberg hissed. Carl gissed. Crumbled inaudibly. He needed no instruction on the need for secrecy. Rolfsberg’s nervousness made him even more insufferable.
Balfour checked his instruments one more time from his seat. He marveled at the engine’s abilities; he could do everything from his chair without ever lifting a finger. “Dr. Wong, Dr. Janicki, are you ready?”
Wong hovered over the cloud generator. He had taken to levitating inside the lab as much as he could, but especially when Rolfsberg was around. Balfour thought he was showing off. The young scientist gave a hearty thumbs-up sign, a smile stretching from ear to ear. Janicki answered, “We are as good as we’re ever going to get, Mark.”
“Carl, disconnect the backups.”
“Backups down. Got a warning light blinking in here.”
“Let it go. Proceed to blackout.”
Lydia’s silken voice broke through the channel. “Shutting down now.”
The building seemed to convulse once, then sigh into silent darkness. Only the computers that ran off individual backup power supplies lit the lab. “Fire it up, boys.”
Wong and Janicki gestured at the cloud generator, each firing a tiny particle at the machine. Two globes of light about the size of marbles shot from their hands and struck the generator’s smooth outer surface, causing the outer skin to briefly glow a muted blue before the particles disappeared.
“Did it work?” Rolfsberg asked out of the black.
“I don’t see any lights,” Janicki snapped, stating the obvious.
A low hum began to sound from the inky darkness. An imperceptible ambient glow grew to sheathe it in white light, throbbing like a heartbeat in an eerie cascade. One of the robotic arms closest to the generator twitched, then snapped into life. Lights began to burn, flooding the room with a sudden, disconcerting light. The battery backups on the computers shut off with numerous audible clicks. As the hum of the generator grew strong, Balfour heard the building’s heating sigh to life. He displayed readouts of the power generation, confirming that it was working exactly as planned. But rather than level off, the power of the cloud continued to build, incrementing slowly at first, but as each second passed, its output doubled, trebled, and climbed on and on at an exponential rate.
“Lydia, Carl, how’s it look down there?”
“Power is steady and strong.”
“This output isn’t leveling off. It’s already passed our highest estimates and keeps going.”
“Is it stable?”
Janicki answered qki answeuickly. “There’s a distinct hum, but no other outward negative signs. The casing is cool to the touch.”
“Rolfsberg, can this casing contain that kind of buildup?”
Rolfsberg tapped at a console furiously. “The casing is well within safe limits. Can we tamp down the output?”
“Trying,” Balfour responded, maneuvering the equations as holograms in the air above him. “It’s not responding. It’s like it won’t stop building until it completes a specific cycle.”
“Did you program that in?”
“No, this is entirely unexpected. Rolfsberg, are you sure of your math?”
“My math is solid, goddamnit!”
“Obviously it isn’t!” Wong shouted back. “Dr. Balfour… something’s happening here.”
Balfour looked down from his equations. The generator had started glowing, a cold white light building on the top surface. “Shut it down, boys. Shut it down.”
Janicki and Wong gestured. Draining the feeder particles back out of the generator should gradually shut down the machine, at least in theory. The two particles flew from the machine, zipping into Wong and Janicki’s outstretched hands before disappearing. The light continued to grow brighter. “It’s not working.”
“Shit. Shit. Rolfsberg, get in there and help them drain it.”
“Into what?”
“I don’t know, something else!”
“I think it’s too late for that, boss,” Janicki sighed.
Balfour’s readout spat back a final message. “Power-up cycle complete.” His eyes snapped back to the miniature star growing on top of the generator. He cursed silently.
An icy shaft of brilliant light exploded upwards, slicing through the ceiling like a hot knife through butter. A whoosh of air followed the light up into the ceiling, through the five floors above and onwards until it reached the clouds of the chilly night sky. Balfour stood hesitantly and walked to the machine, staring up through the hole in the ceiling to watch the darkened clouds swirl around this massive pillar of silent light. His stomach sank. There would be no explaining away this experiment. It had worked though not as they’d expected. For the first time since their dangerous experiments had begun, he was genuinely afraid for their survival.
The light eclipsed all and he was swallowed in brilliant white unconsciousness.
*****
Balfour woke to sunlight streaming over his body from the hole in the ceiling. A moment’s confusion left him unsure of where he was, but the steady hum of the cloud generator jarred his memory with a focused shot of dread. The pillar of light still stood, reaching up towards the morning clouds. As he studied the sky further, he noticed that the light was muted like a pair of weak sunglasses stood between him and the blue sky above. He sat up, noticing that Janicki lay unmoving next to him. Wong still hovered in the air despite being unconscious, his arms hanging limply at his sides. Balfour noted with a curious detachment that the flight equation didn’t require conscious maintenance. A groan from behind shook him from his musings.
“What was that?” Rolfsberg shouted from a heap on the floor. The Norseman pushed a robotic arm that had fallen over him aside and struggled shakily to his feet. “Hello, is anyone there?”
“Here,” Balfour answered while checking Janicki’s pulse. Alive. He shook the unconscious scientist awake.
“What… who? Shit, we’re alive.” Janicki seemed surprised by this fact as he stared up wide-eyed at Balfour. “Do we have power?”
A quick glance around the room confirmed that the generator was indeed working. “I’m a bit more concerned about what that flash was, but yes, it’s working. Better than we’d anticipated, apparently.”
“I told Wong that his math was off,” Rolfsberg hissed. Janicki threw Balfour a knowing glance and a wry smile.
“Still an asshole,” Janicki whispered under his breath.
Balfour’s connection to Lydia and Carl was still active. “Lydia? Carl? Are you two ok? Answer me.” He heard the pair stirring back to consciousness.
“What happened?” Lydia said sleepily.
“We’re still trying to determine that. Do you have power down there?”
“Yes. The generator worked?”
“Affirmative. Unfortunately, we’ve got a bit of a side effect here. And we’ve slept for… I’m not sure how long, it’s daylight outside.” He glanced over at the clock, but it had malfunctioned, its digital display cycling through its series of numbers at breakneck speed. He tried to connect to the GlobalNet to update his own internal HUD clock, but no connection was found. “Just get back here and we’ll figure out what happened.”
“I guess we wait for security to come and escort us off campus,” Janicki joked. Despite the humor, they all or, theyexpected it. “I don’t think we make enough in a year combined to pay for that hole.” They sat in embarrassed silence waiting for the hammer to fall, each fidgeting with their own data from the generator’s operations. When Carl and Lydia finally burst through the double doors to the lab, Balfour jumped as if electrocuted. He sighed with relief to see his colleagues instead of a team of campus cops.
“You have to come see this,” Lydia shouted. “Come outside, quick!” She motioned at them with her hand then ran back out the doors, ignoring the hole in the ceiling completely. Balfour raised an eyebrow at Janicki and followed.
They ran down the hallway to the stairs, barely keeping up with Lydia as she retreated down to the ground floor. She blasted through a side door into the parking lot. Balfour stared around for a minute, seeing nothing out of place. The parking lot was mostly deserted despite the hour. He looked back up at the tower where his lab was located, scowling at the pillar of light poking out of the top. Then he noticed the dome, the polarizing effect of the energy field dulling the chill November sunlight. The temperature was a bit warmer and stuffier than he would have expected, perhaps a function of the dome’s translucence acting like the glass in a greenhouse. He followed the curvature of the dome across the horizon. It was enormous, possibly miles in diameter. No way could they hide their experiments with that overhead.
“The cloud appears to be visible,” he observed. “That was unexpected. Your calculations on the range were also incorrect, Rolfsberg.”
The Norseman started to protest but Lydia interrupted. “No, not the dome. Don’t you notice anything else? Anything missing?”
There was a silence in the air, a disconcerting stillness that distorted their voices with an eerie echo. Despite the proximity of the nearby buildings, he felt isolated on a clear open field, alone in a massive desert.
“No security. We ran into nobody on the way from the lab to here. No one in the parking lot. No early morning joggers. There’s nobody here.”
“No,” Janicki objected. “It’s just early.”
“Do you ever remember it feeling this empty? This quiet? Even this early? And how early is it, anyway? My watch isn’t working at all, but it looks like class time to me. There should at least be the joggers or the security. Look at the street.” She pointed to a security truck sitting in the road. At first it appeared to be idling but on closer examination, the truck had drifted unattended to a rest on the cub. The cab was empty with the engine running. Balfour reached in and put it in park, then shut off the engine.
“She’s right. What kind of security guard leaves his truck running in gear? We need to scout out, see how far the dome extends and if there’s anyone else left here. Take a car if you need to.”
“I think we just made a city disappear.”
*****
Chapter 18
November 7, 2028
Time Unknown
“Gone? Just gone?” Bridge had listened as patiently as he could to Balfour’s story, but the finality of an empty city, the sheer bleakness of having come all this way only to find Aristotle’s grandmother vanished crushed him with fatigue. He slumped further into his chair. “And you eggheads don’t have clue one where all these people went?”
“No, Mr. Bridge. We scoured the whole city in all directions. We didn’t find one corpse, not one molecule, nothing to show that any of the residents within the dome survived. These ghosts which you’ve already seen are the only evidence they ever existed. Most of the ghosts don’t even seem to know we’re here. They come at random times but never for very long.”
Janicki offered a theory with cool detachment. “I’ve considered the possibility that the cloud generator experienced a power surge. This surge might have disintegrated all non-plant organic matter underneath its area of effect. Plant life is unaffected but humans, pets… all gone.”
“And you guys,” Bridge replied.
“If we accept Dr. Janicki’s surge hypothesis, we can deduce that our mana engines rendered us immune to the effects,” Lydia explained.
“That is a logical deduction. After all, we can juggle fireballs and lightning without getting singed. The engine seems to lend us a remarkable resistance to electricity, heat, perhaps even other forms of more harmful radiation.”
Bridge scoffed. “Rolfsberg didn’t seem too immune to heat.”
Balfour peered down his nose at Bridge distastefully. “No need to be petulant. We’re still exploring the rules of our upgraded conditions.”
“Great. I’m dealing with wizards who don’t even know the extent of their magic. Five idiot savant Merlins.”
“Wizards? Magic? You sound like Carl with his dragon illusions. We aren’t magicians. There’s no such thing as magic. We’re scientists. All of our abilities can be explained by a more thorough understanding of the mana engine, something we’ve been trying to accomplish while we waited for you. Dr. Wong has been experimenting with his sports simulation. Dr. Carlisle has been examining the startling variety of dense particle combinations the engine can facilitate. Dr. Janicki and I have been attempting to better understand the cloud generator, and we think we can shut it down, though the results will be rather explosive.”
“Science, magic, same thing to a caveman.”
“There is another possibility.” The voice startled everyone. Wong had appeared in the doorway. His eyes were red and puffy, and he walked with his shoulders slumped as if they bore the weight of the world.
“Quon!” Lydia shouted and ran over to him. “Are you all right?” She clutched his face lovingly with both hands. He pulled her hands down softly, nodding his head. Though calm as a still sea, his expression betrayed a tumultuous spirit.
“You have a theory, Dr. Wong?” Balfour asked.
“The engines and the generators work off the principle of firing particles cross-dimensionally, right? What if the particular combination of particles we fired into the generator created a reaction that opened that dimensional tunnel too wide? The energies unleashed could have shifted the dimensional frequency of the organic material in the area of effect, except for those of us with mana engines whose bodies were already attuned to the engine’s dimensional energies. We’re anchored at the same frequency as the cloud generator, but those who weren’t at the time are constantly shifting back and forth across the dimensional barrier. When the ghosts appear, it’s just the echo of their consciousness coming close to the same phase as the cloud but never quite syncing up.”
Bridge tried to follow the Chinese scientist as best he could. “So you’re saying the people here could be saved? You could sync them back up with this cloud thingie?”
Wong stared at him with a puzzled expression. “Save them? Do you have any concept of how difficult it would be to try to guess the particular dimensional frequency of just one person and then sync that person in with the rest of us?” He laughed a hollow, soulless chuckle. “No, I guess you don’t. It would be like trying to catch one specific water molecule with a net the size of the Milky Way while that water is traveling at the speed of light. And even if we could reconstitute whatever energy state their consciousness is trapped in, their organic matter has likely been converted to that energy.”
“I’m sorry to say those people are gone, Mr. Bridge.” Balfour spoke with such detached certain finality that Bridge’s stomach burned.
It all began to swirl in his mind. Fatigue and despair weighed on him so heavy it felt as if a fully-loaded truck sat on his chest, restricting his breathing. They’re all dead. Or stuck between dimensions, whatever that meant. It was probably worse than being dead. Aristotle’s grandmother, the Naturalist recruiters, they were all gone, for all intents and purposes dead.
Despite all the talking and effort and wheeling and dealing Bridge had done to get to this point, to get to Boulder to perform some miraculous rescue, he hadn’t really cared. He hadn’t come to save Aristotle’s grandmother, no matter how much he had told his bodyguard. Bridge had . Bridgealways known that deep down. It was why he would never make Aristotle a promise. Not because he logically knew that the chances of her survival or of Bridge being able to do anything to find her were so remote as to be impossible, but because he hadn’t come here to help. He was here because he was angry. He was here because somehow these geeks had gotten into his head and compelled him to come here, had forced these choices on him. He was here because he was pissed off at being jerked around.
His anger, his fatigue, his sense of failure, and deep down his own self-loathing finally exploded. “GODDAMNIT!” Bridge snapped, lifting the desk next to him and tossing it aside. Papers and books flew everywhere. A console screen exploded in a shower of sparks. “I came here because my bodyguard’s grandmother lives around here somewhere… lived. And you fuckers are telling me that she’s dead, just like that? She’s just dead?”
“No, Mr. Bridge, you’re here because we called you here,” Balfour stated without emotion. “We are fully aware of what our experiments have wrought. The Legios Corporation and the US government will find every excuse to blame the deaths of these people directly on us. And before they are done with us, Chronosoft and any other corporation that funded our research will claim ownership of every bit of it. They will bury us in a deep dark hole and they will steal everything we created. They will turn all of it into another means of exploitation, or another weapon.”
“You sound like my buddy Stonewall,” Bridge chuckled wryly.
Lydia elaborated. “We talked it over before we activated the cloud generator, Bridge. Whether the experiment had succeeded or failed, we were going to need someone to represent us, someone who could help us negotiate, or help us hide if the corporations went after us. We would need someone like you. Dr. Balfour’s friend Freeman said you were the man we needed.”
“Once we realized what we’d done,” Janicki took up the story, “we knew we had to have you here quickly. But the cloud was interfering with all forms of communication in or out. So we sent Carl outside the dome and sealed it, making sure only he could open it from that side. He was to send the message and wait for you to come.”
“He got a little overzealous,” Bridge responded. “Not only did he get me, he’s hypnotized every jack head from five states over to flock here like you were handing out free Trip. And he attacked a National Guard post, which has probably caused fifteen kinds of holy hell out there.”
“We think they might have attacked him. This is his last message.” Balfour gestured and Carl’s distorted voice filled the room. Though Bridge could see no speakers in the room, it filled his ears as well as any sound system could.
He recognized the nasally, artificially augmented tones of the dragon Carl. “They’re everywhere! Tanks and soldiers. I’m hit bad. I don’t think I’m going to make it. I can’t believe it. I didn’t think it was possible. They’ve killed a technomancer.” The message ended with a booming explosion and a burst of static.
“Until you got here, we assumed thae assumet meant he was dead. Now that we know he might still be alive out there, we need to find him. We need to disappear, to destroy any trace of our work and set ourselves up somewhere else with new identities and new facilities. We need you to get us out of here.”
“What’s the plan then?”
“We don’t have a plan, Mr. Bridge. That’s why you’re here.”
*****
“I gotta freshen up,” Bridge muttered. His head was spinning, fatigue beginning to take its toll. “Where’s the can?”
The scientists all looked at each other in puzzlement. Janicki pointed out the double doors. “Down the hall.” Bridge strode out of the room shaking his head, barely noticing the others. His mind was racing from idea to idea, analyzing the events of the last days and formulating plans he couldn’t even consciously grasp through his weariness. He half-staggered down the hall to the bathroom, absentmindedly walking through the ladies’ room door before realizing where he was and turning around.
He stood before the mirror in the men’s room, the water swirling loudly in the sink. Reaching his hands into the cool water, he splashed his face. The shock of the near-freezing liquid took his breath away for a moment, but it crystallized his subconscious musings into concrete conscious thoughts. The scheme he was cooking up was big. It would require some long-range commitment on his part, but if it worked, he would personally benefit as much as the geeks. One cold, hard look in his own eyes, the mirror reflecting his desperate cunning and fatigued sparkle of insanity, then he self-consciously straightened his clothes. The last thing he needed was the grin, the cocksure slight uptick of the corner of his lips, the expression that said he had the situation under control.
When he returned to the lab, the four scientists were huddled around whispering in conspiratorial tones. They went deathly silent when they saw him. “You geeks ready to perform the biggest magic trick in the history of the universe?” Bridge said with that crazy confident smile.
Their stunned silence was answer enough. “Here’s how it’s going to go down. You’re dead, all of you, even your buddy Carl out there. In fact, you never existed. You cannot exist now or in the future. To even leave a hint that you were ever here during this clusterfuck is to sign your own death warrant, for realz.”
“How do we do that?” Lydia asked.
“Magic, baby. Magic.”
color="#“There’s no such thing as magic,” Balfour scowled.
“Flying fucking dragons, guys tossing around fireballs like baseballs, energy shields, football golems, need I go on? You guys are wizards if ever there was one. You show one-tenth of what I’ve seen to the knuckle-dragging rubes on the street, they’ll either think they’re in a movie, or you’re some kind of magic man.”
“But everything we’ve done is a side-effect of this dimensional-particle technology,” Balfour insisted. “We can’t quite explain all of it, but there has to be a rational, scientific explanation for it. Just because we’ve discovered how to use it doesn’t mean we’ve been able to understand it all. Marie Curie discovered radiation without understanding the dangers.”
Janicki snickered. “Until the radiation sickness killed her.”
“Yes, but that’s what I mean. Eventually, science found a logical explanation, and we can find one for all of this.”
“And until then, you guys are magicians. Wizards.” A name he’d heard on science-fiction TV during his childhood leapt to mind. “Technomages, technomancers. Wizards whose spells are created using technology. Does that sound more acceptable?”
Balfour shrugged. “It makes as much sense as wizards. One doesn’t weave spells from technology, one just applies theorems to practical…”
“Yeah, you? You don’t get to speak to the public. You could ruin a wet dream.”
Lydia interrupted. “Great, we call ourselves technomages or technomancers then. Are we going on television to reveal ourselves to the world?”
“No,” Bridge sighed. “I’m creating an event here, lady. Do you want the Chronosoft’s of the world finding you and picking your brain for every little trick you can think up?” She shook her head. “Then you have to distract them. People are going to want to know what happened here, and the less they know of what actually happened, the less chance you five have of being blamed for the deaths of thirty thousand people, got it?”
“But how does calling ourselves technomancers help us?”
“You guys know anything about history? Probably not, you’re more concerned with the Big Bang than with history, am I right? Anyway, you know about the Crusades right? Good.”
Bridge crossed his arms with casual confidence as he began to tell the story. “Well, the Christians, these Frenchies and Germans and whatever captured this town called Antioch from the Muslims. One of the priests with the army, guy named Peter Bartholomew, claimed to have a vision. This vision told him that a holy artifact was buried in some church in Antioch. He probably made the whole damn thing up to inspire the troops. After all, the Crusades hadn’t been the cakewalk most of the idiots thought it would be. So, he goes and digs up the floor of the Church and lo and behold, there’s this lance head buried undad burieerneath the Church. ‘A miracle!’ he says. ‘This is the Holy Lance that the Romans used to pierce Christ’s side on the cross,’ he says.”
