Passerina turned to Scottie, who simply shook his head and stepped over to one of the boulders. She looked around to see the other boulders quickly being claimed. A few of the boulders were large enough for two people, but she wasn’t interested in sitting naked beside one of these guys for an hour. She spotted a large, partially fallen tree that was propped up at an angle by several other trees. It was about thirty yards from the main group, but that actually made it more appealing to her.
She made her way over to the tree, checking the ground before each step, and then she climbed up the sloped trunk until she was about ten feet above the ground. She settled awkwardly onto her butt and crossed her legs facing the downhill part of the trunk. By pushing against her knees, she was able to sit upright.
Before closing her eyes, she glanced back at the group. Striker’s eyes were open, and he gave her a discrete thumbs up, apparently indicating that he approved of the meditation spot she had chosen. She closed her eyes. Striker had been looking directly at her, not at the other trainees. Had he been looking out for her? Giving her special attention? She found this idea infuriating, because it meant he thought she was fragile.
She would have to show him just how fragile she was.
Surprisingly, her meditation session actually went pretty well. After about ten minutes of shifting her bare butt to get comfortable on the tree bark, she was finally able to relax. By the time Striker told them to open their eyes, she had managed to achieve a completely focused state of mind. Since she had no idea what kind of human or nonhuman threats she’d be protecting scientists from, she hadn’t bothered to follow Striker’s suggestion of visualizing battle.
Striker called the trainees to gather near him again. Passerina descended from her tree and returned to the group, feeling more at ease than before. Maybe there was something to this meditation business.
“Jasper Howson,” Striker said to one of the trainees. “Tell us what you experienced during the last hour.”
Jasper, who had pale skin and thick, powerful-looking arms, shook his head and said, “I’ve learned to clear my mind using chi breathing techniques. Works fine for me. I cleared all the crap out of my head and then did what you suggested—focused on becoming my opponent and myself at the same time. Kind of hard to imagine an animal for an opponent, though.” He shrugged. “That’s all I got.”
Striker nodded. He then had each of the others take a turn. Most of them more or less repeated some version of what Jasper had said.
Finally it was Passerina’s turn. She inhaled deeply and said, “I’ve never meditated before. Never had the chance to learn. I have to admit, it was good. There was something about doing it out here, and doing it like this.” She tilted her head down, looking at her naked body. “I felt like I was part of this place, in a way I’ve never experienced before, like I was as much a part of it as the trees, or the ticks and chiggers you guys keep going on about. I was able to mentally say fuck you to everything in this place that can hurt me. I can see why you made us do this, considering we’ll be bridging to strange worlds with nothing but our bare hands. It’ll help us to feel connected to those new environments, and less intimidated by them.”
“Damn right,” said one of the other trainees.
Striker gazed at her for a moment and then nodded. “You pretty much nailed it, sister. But all of you listen up. Like Fowler said, you’ll have nothing with you when you arrive in your destination world. You already know how to fight with your bare hands. That’s why you were recruited. And there will definitely be times when you need that skill. But we’re going to help you learn to avoid fighting with your bare hands. Look around you. This forest is filled with objects you could make into deadly weapons. Two weeks from now, you’ll be able to make a weapon out of just about anything. You’ll know how to start a fire without matches and find or build a shelter suitable to any environment. And most importantly you’ll know how to keep yourself and the clients in your care as far from conflict as possible, by staying out of sight or at least out of reach. Your job is not to kick ass and take names. It’s to bring our clients back alive and unharmed.”
He looked at the trainees, making eye contact with each one of them, one at a time. Then he turned and started walking back toward SafeTrek. “Watch where you step,” he called over his shoulder. “And don’t let your skin touch anything unless you know exactly what it is.”
9
Bridge-back
Dinner was served at 6:00 PM, and at 6:30, Armando Doyle approached the table of bridgers and trainees and waited for them to quiet down. Passerina had noticed that the other employees in the cafeteria were starting to glance at the clock more frequently, some of them dumping their trays before they were finished and hurrying off to whatever job needed their attention. An unmistakable sense of anxiety had worked its way into the room.
Doyle began speaking. “You folks are about to witness a remarkable event that few have ever seen. At precisely 7:00 PM, our seventh bridging excursion will end, and our team of two scientists and two bridgers will return. With any luck, and thanks to the skill of our bridgers, the team will be in good health. They will then undergo three days of what we call patho-cleansing and chemo-cleansing, during which our med techs will eliminate any infection or contamination they may have.” He gestured to Striker. “Mr. Crossland—”
“The trainees now call me by my bridger name,” Striker interjected.
Doyle’s smile suggested he may have thought the bridger names were a bit humorous. “Yes, yes, of course. Striker, would you mind telling our newcomers what patho-cleansing and chemo-cleansing is like?”
“It sucks. But it’s better than the alternative.”
Doyle hesitated, as if he had expected a lengthier description. “Okay, well, it is important, and we certainly wouldn’t be allowed to operate without the procedure in place.” He paused for a moment, thinking. “Perhaps I should back up. There are certain things about the bridging process I can tell you, and there are certain things I cannot yet divulge. Allow me to attempt to summarize what I can tell you at this time. I’ll be brief, but keep in mind that all of this will make far more sense to you in the coming weeks.”
He pulled a chair over from a nearby table, sat down, and reflexively adjusted his bowtie. “The concept of infinite universes is no longer merely theoretical.” He paused to let this sink in. “It’s real, beyond any doubt. And our bridging device allows us to travel to any one of an unlimited number of different universes. But it’s important to understand that when you bridge you end up in exactly the same physical location where you started, and at exactly the same time, only in an alternate universe. In other words, if you were to bridge from this location at 7:00 AM tomorrow, you would arrive at 7:00 AM tomorrow in the same location, in south-central Missouri. So bridging has nothing to do with time travel. Time travel is impossible. Likewise, bridging has nothing to do with teleportation or space travel. You cannot bridge to a different planet. Is this making sense so far?”
Passerina nodded along with all the others.
“But here’s the key concept that makes things a bit difficult to follow,” Doyle said. “The bridging device allows us to choose how far back in time the destination version of Earth diverged from our own version. For example, if we were to set the device to bridge to a universe that diverged from ours only a week ago, then that alternate world would be almost identical to our own. It would have been separated from our timeline for only one week.”
He looked around the table from one fighter to the next, and his eyes stopped on Passerina. “Ms. Fowler—or should I be calling you by a new bridger name?”
She almost shook her head, but then she made a split-second decision to finalize something she’d been mulling over for the last few hours. “Infinity,” she said. “My bridger name is Infinity.” She glanced at Striker, and he nodded in approval. Passerina had gotten the idea from SafeTrek’s logo, and the name just felt right, given that her future was now wide open, f
ull of infinite possibilities.
“Very well,” said Doyle. “Infinity, what were you doing at this time a week ago?”
“I was training at the gym. I would train every night until it closed at nine.”
“Imagine if you will, then, that we were to go to the bridging chamber now and set the device to bridge you to a world that diverged from ours a week ago. You get into the bridging chamber, and we bridge you out. You would appear in the exact same place—inside the bridging chamber—on another version of Earth. And you might find the other version of yourself somewhere in the facility, training to be a bridger.” He raised a finger to emphasize the importance of his next point. “However, it is possible your other self would not be there. Because that Earth has been on a separate timeline for the past week. During that week, your other self may have gotten delayed and wasn’t able to be at the Scrapyard when Striker and I came to recruit trainees. Or, perhaps, after being recruited, your other self got hit by a bus while crossing the street. Do you all see what I’m saying?”
Again, Passerina nodded along with the others, although the concept was turning out to be stranger than she had imagined it would be.
Doyle continued. “Now imagine we set the device to take us to a world that diverged from ours ten years ago. That world might still be similar to ours, but not as similar as a world that diverged only one week ago, or one year ago. With a ten-year divergence, the SafeTrek facility probably wouldn’t even be in the same place on the destination world. My other self may have chosen a different location for the building. Or perhaps the scientists there wouldn’t even have stumbled upon the breakthroughs that made bridging possible in the first place. On the other hand, with a divergence of only one year, the facility would definitely be in this location, since we were already breaking ground for construction at that point. Now imagine, if you will, that we were to set the device to take us to a world that diverged from our own ten thousand years ago, or even a hundred thousand years.” He paused, watching as they processed this.
Most of the fighters remained silent, but Passerina heard Scottie mutter, “Holy crap.”
Doyle rose from his chair. “At this time, we’ll all be going to the viewing room adjacent to the bridging chamber, where you’ll watch our team return from a thirty-six hour excursion to a version of Earth that diverged from our own 900,000 years in the past.”
Passerina felt goosebumps forming on the back of her neck.
Doyle led them out of the cafeteria, through the hall, across the expansive lobby, and into another hall. They passed by two doors that looked like hatches that you would find in a submarine. Finally, they filed into a small room with no chairs or other furniture. The walls were white except for one, which was dominated by a large, clear window. On the other side of the window was a much larger room.
“Make sure you have a clear view of the bridging chamber,” Doyle said. “You don’t want to miss this.”
Passerina and Scottie were shorter than most of the other trainees, so they made their way closer to the window. The room on the other side was completely white and featureless, except for a submarine-type hatch on the left wall.
Doyle gazed through the viewing window. “The floor and walls of the bridging chamber are coated with three inches of PVC rubber nitrile foam, similar to the grappling mats you’ve probably used. This is for the safety of our clients and bridgers. As you’ll see in a few moments, when they bridge back, they will appear in the vertical and horizontal center of the room and then drop to the floor.”
A female voice spoke through a speaker in the ceiling. “Three minutes until bridge-back.”
Doyle clapped his hands once. “My goodness gracious, such an exciting time! My stomach is positively full of butterflies. Now, as I have said, this particular bridge-back will mark the conclusion of our seventh excursion since the facility became operational. The two scientists, both of them from Clemson University, are interested in the possible divergent paths of recent evolutionary history, hence their request for a world with a 900,000-year divergence. That may sound like a long time for an alternate world to be on a different timeline, but it’s actually relatively brief in evolutionary terms.”
Striker spoke up. “We have no way of actually seeing or experiencing an alternate world until the moment we bridge there. So, as you can imagine, each excursion involves considerable risk, especially when the destination world has a distant divergence point. A lot can happen in a million years. The entire region could be under water, for all we know.”
“Which is why we chose this location, in central Missouri,” Doyle added. “Throughout Earth’s history, this area has been covered by inland seas fewer times than most other places in North America.”
Striker nodded. “But there are other possible risks posed by events that may have happened since the divergence point. An unforeseen volcano might have spewed toxic gas over the entire planet. A virus might have evolved and wiped out most of the animals. A major ice age might have occurred, making subzero temperatures typical for Missouri’s climate. The list goes on and on. And that’s why we do what’s called a bio-probe before bridging humans to the destination world.”
“For whatever that’s worth,” Tempest said, frowning.
“One minute until bridge-back,” the speaker voice said.
“A bio-probe,” Striker continued, “involves bridging a few lab animals to the destination world. The animals bridge back thirty-six hours later. If they’re alive and well, we proceed with the assumption that the world is safe for humans.” He glanced at Tempest. “The information we get from the bio-probe is rough, but it’s better than nothing.”
Scottie raised his hand. “These lab animals—I assume they get hazard pay?”
Striker turned to Doyle. “We call that one Tequila, on account of his lack of inhibition when it comes to talking.”
“Thirty seconds until bridge-back.”
Doyle looked like he was about to say something to Scottie, but then he turned toward the viewing window. “Pay close attention to the behavior of the bridgers as they return,” he said. “At this point, they have a few excursions under their belts, and their efficiency and professionalism are traits you’ll want to emulate.”
“Ten seconds until bridge-back.”
Passerina suddenly became aware of a thrumming sound, almost like an engine, that had been in the background but was now getting louder.
Her heart was pounding. Within a few weeks, she would be the one returning to the bridging chamber from an excursion, if she could make it through her training.
“Five seconds.”
“So very exciting!” Doyle exclaimed.
As Passerina watched, the viewing window bulged visibly outward from the bridging chamber and then returned to its original shape. A split second later, four shapes appeared in the center of the chamber and dropped several feet to the floor.
She stared, not sure what she was even looking at. One of the shapes was a naked figure, curled into a fetal position. It was a man, and he was shivering and retching at the same time. She shifted her gaze to the other three shapes and felt her gut clench.
“God in heaven!” Doyle exclaimed.
Two of the shapes weren’t even recognizable as humans. They were nothing more than piles of glistening goo and white fragments of bone.
“Med techs!” Striker shouted. “Get the damn med techs in there!”
The last shape was even more disturbing. It was a jumble of recognizable human body parts. The head and torso were battered and bloody. The arms and legs, all severed, were charred black, and smoke or steam was rising from several places. The legs were more or less intact, but both the arms appeared to have been chewed to the bone. Puddles of dark mush were forming on the floor, flowing like soup over and between body parts. Passerina somehow knew that this stuff had to be human flesh that had been eaten and partially digested before bridging back.
Grip pressed his hands against the window. “Where ar
e the damn med techs?”
Finally, the hatch on the left side of the chamber popped open, and four people in white bio-suits—presumably the med techs—rushed in. They stopped and stood there for a moment, apparently confused by the sight before them, and then they went straight for the naked man, ignoring the gruesome piles of human remains.
“Turn on the comm system!” Doyle commanded. Abruptly, the noise from inside the chamber became audible over the speaker.
“Sir, are you injured anywhere?” one of the med techs asked the naked man.
The guy, still trembling, had managed to get to his hands and knees. He coughed and then spit on the floor. “They took the others,” he said, his voice shaking. “They took them, and they… they almost caught me. I was hiding. All night, hiding. And all day.”
“Are you injured, sir?”
“I don’t know… I don’t think so.”
“Okay, we’re going to help you up. Can you stand?”
The guy nodded, and two of the med techs lifted him to his feet, putting his arms around their shoulders.
“Okay, we’re going to walk you to the airlock and then into the medical lab.”
They began moving toward the hatch.
“Oh, God,” the man said. “What are those? Is that… it’s them, isn’t it? It’s Brian. And Tomcat and Ram. It is, isn’t it? Jesus Christ!”
They passed through the opening. The other two techs remained in the chamber and kneeled beside the heaps on the floor to examine them more closely.
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