Class Fives: Origins

by Jon H. Thompson

  “No idea,” he said.

  “Great,” John muttered, his face screwing up sourly as he stepped toward his car.

  From above them there came a sudden, sharp noise, like an impact of metal on metal. Both men froze, their attention being jerked upwards, scanning for the source of the sound. A loud, sharp scream of something metallic shot across the air, and both men’s attention fixed on the top of the looming, half-built structure that was already blanketing them with its shadow.

  They both saw it at the same instant. The crane, resting atop the already constructed skeleton of steel that would be the supporting frame of the building, was moving, beginning to lean.

  “Holy shit,” John whispered, as he saw the massive, metal arm beginning to sag toward him.

  Instinctively he could see it was impressively long, intended to be able to reach over any edge of the building and lift heavy loads to the floor under construction, no matter how high it rose. And it was leaning, its supports twisting. It was collapsing, right into the parking lot.

  John watched it tip, heard the screaming metal of twisting supports roar into the late afternoon air, saw the distance between it and himself diminishing.

  It fell slowly over until its support was flat against the roof. There was an explosive bang as the place where the support was anchored to the steel of the building snapped off, and now the long arm of the crane fell freely.

  The tip struck first, driving into the vehicles parked at the distant end of the lot with an unearthly metallic crunch, and the rest of the arm crumpled in a long line, flattening everything in its path as it roared down hard into the lot.

  John managed to throw himself backwards, and jumped an instant before it crushed the car beside which he was standing.

  John landed hard, his back slamming against the pickup truck that was parked next to his own car, stunning him momentarily. He slid down to the pavement, gasping for breath.

  It took a few seconds for him to clear his confused thoughts and then his eyes shot upwards, toward where the half-constructed building loomed. He could see the crane that even now rested atop it, looking perfectly ordinary. But it was up there and it was going to give way in…

  He snapped up his arm and shot a look at his watch. Eight minutes, maybe?

  Instantly his mind fixed on Roger. Where were we eight minutes ago? Still inside the medical facility, he realized.

  He struggled to his feet, pumping his lungs deeply to recapture his breath, and stumbled toward the street.

  In a minute he had dashed across the wide boulevard, drawing a number of angry honks from the cars forced to jam on their brakes to avoid this crazy man darting through traffic, and was rushing toward the sliding doors of the medical facility.

  Plunging into the lobby, he turned into the wide corridor and toward the elevator he and Roger had ridden down in together.

  He stabbed at the button, hard, willing the small box to arrive quickly.

  There was a soft ding and a moment later the door slid open with a quiet rumble, revealing a shocked-looking Roger.

  “Rog!” John snapped, “You got to come with me. Right now!”

  Roger’s eyes shot to where John stood outside the elevator.

  “How did you – “, he began, confused, raising an arm to point next to where he was standing.

  “Never mind!” John barked, shooting out an arm as if to take Roger’s and pull him from the elevator, “We got big trouble.”

  Roger seemed to focus on him, then after a moment’s pause, nodded sharply.

  “Lead the way,” he said.

  John turned and dashed off toward the lobby, Roger falling into step beside him.

  “What happened?” Roger said, as they fell into a jog beside one another. “You were standing next to me in the elevator, and then you were just gone.”

  “I jumped,” John responded. “We were in the parking lot, so that’s where I landed.”

  “But,” Roger protested, “How did you – “

  “I land where I take off from. Everything else back to the instant I land gets wiped out.”

  “I don’t understand,” Roger replied.

  “Me either,” John snapped, “But right now we have to get to the top of that building,” shooting out an arm at the looming construction on the opposite corner.

  Roger’s eyes swept up it. It must be twenty stories tall, ending in a jutting scaffolding at its top.

  “How come?” he shot back.

  “Because that crane is going to fall on our cars in about six minutes,” John snapped, pointing at where the end of the spidery steel network was visible, jutting over the edge of the construction site at the top of the structure.

  “You saw that?” Roger responded, a bit of amazement in his voice.

  “Saw it, felt it, got knocked on my ass by it,” John replied.

  They had reached the corner and paused only long enough for John to step carefully into the street, raising his arms to ward down the flowing traffic. Horns honked angrily but the vehicles moving in both directions ground reluctantly to a halt, allowing John and Roger to step into and finally across the wide, multi-lane street.

  Reaching the other side, they broke into a jog again and rushed toward where a chain-link fence blocked an opening that would, one day, become the front entrance to the completed building. The site was currently deserted, the work crews apparently having already left for the day.

  “I got this,” Roger said, stepping over, shooting his fingers into the fence and easily ripping it apart creating a wide tear in the thin, strong metal mesh.

  He stepped through it and moved swiftly into the bare, open space within.

  John ducked through the opening behind him.

  “There’s got to be a working elevator someplace, so the construction guys can get up to the top,” he said.

  “The core!” Roger snapped, turning through a wide, half-finished archway into a massive inner chamber of mostly naked steel beams jutting upwards to the bare underside of the ceiling high above.

  In the center of the space was a narrow column in which a wire cage sat, connected to cables running up through an opening in the ceiling.

  Roger jogged to the cage and slowed to step carefully inside it, John at his heels. He turned and blocked the opening.

  “No,” he said, “Get out of here. Get away from the building.”

  John glared at him.

  “I want to help,” he snapped.

  “You already did,” Roger said. “How much time?”

  John glanced at his watch.

  “Four minutes, give or take.”

  Roger nodded and placed his hand on the long lever inside the cage next to the opening.

  “Go,” he said.

  John hesitated, then stepped back from the elevator. Roger gently pressed the lever. The elevator jostled and began to rise. John watched it slip out of sight through the opening in the ceiling.

  For a moment John considered just making another jump, now that he was here, and going up himself instead of Roger, and with some extra time to isolate the problem. But he knew he didn’t have the abilities it would take to do anything in the time available to him. Roger did. And besides, jumping again this soon would make him sick as a dog.

  He took a slow step backwards, then turned and jogged toward the opening back onto the street.

  Roger directed his gaze up, through the wire mesh that was the top of the elevator cage, and pushed the lever further. The elevator sped up only slightly, but continued swiftly upwards. As it drew close to the very top of the shaft he eased the lever back upright, slowing the cage, and the moment it came level with the crude concrete of the top flooring, he stepped out, stopping to sweep the space with his gaze.

  The space was open, except for an evenly spaced forest of vertical steel beams that jabbed up twenty feet into the open sky. The base of the crane, a wide, flat metal platform, was bolted to the concrete, exactly where more steel beams ran beneath it, supporting
its intense weight. The open metal scaffolding rose up an additional score of feet to the small, enclosed cab where the controls must be, just beneath where the long, webbed steel beam that was the arm extended off over the edge of the roof horizontally.

  What’s going to happen, he thought frantically? What’s going to go wrong?

  He stepped toward it, casting his gaze at the base of the crane platform. Something is going to give way, but what? A snapped bolt? A weakness in a piece of steel?

  He heard the first muffled popping noise beneath him and the sound of something heavy impacting on the floor below, causing the entire structure to tremble slightly.

  It’s collapsing, he realized. Maybe a beam was improperly riveted into place and couldn’t stand the stress, or the concrete of the flooring wasn’t thick enough to bear the additional weight, but whatever it was, it was happening now.

  Then came the first grinding of metal upon metal, and he caught sight of a sliver of daylight beneath one corner of the crane platform.

  It’s failing, right now, he told himself. It’s tipping over.

  A single idea shot through his thoughts and he moved quickly toward where the end of the crane platform was beginning to slowly rise.

  He reached it, raised a foot, placed it on the thick slab of steel and pressed gently down.

  But instead of settling, the corner where his foot was resting began to bend, the tilt of the platform increasing.

  The crane itself was too heavy, surrendering to gravity, beginning to go over the side of the building.

  Roger shot out his arms and drove his fists, hard, through the thick steel wall of the base before him, up to the elbow. He opened his fingers and groped a moment until they encountered something solid within the base structure, and grasped at it tightly.

  Leaning back, he could feel the base stop its slow tipping and begin to settle. But a sudden, sharp screaming squeal of abused steel told him the crane was too heavy, its spindly steel arm beginning to bend in response to its slow topple.

  Roger shot his gaze to the concrete beneath him.

  What the Hell, he thought, raised his foot and drove it down as hard as he could. Beneath him the concrete shattered like a thin skin of ice on a still pond and dropped to the floor below.

  An instant later, the crane platform began to topple into the suddenly open space beneath that side.

  Roger held on, raised up on his toes and dropped his full weight suddenly. It was enough.

  The rest of the flooring gave way, and the entire base of the crane was dropping straight down.

  It slammed into the flooring of the next story, the impact bursting aside not just the concrete but the steel beams as well.

  Roger shot his gaze up to see that the long crane arm was now leaning heavily against the far edge of the building, and as the base was plummeting down into the structure, was being bent straight upwards, like a straw sinking into a glass of milk.

  Guess that worked, Roger managed to think before the explosion of debris filled the space around him, all of it following the collapse of the crane down through the height of the building, where it impacted with the foundation slab in a vast burst of dust, powdered concrete and twisted, screaming metal, carrying Roger with it.

  Outside, John staggered backwards, stunned to see the thick, sudden billow of smoke and debris shoot out of the unfinished entrance opening and across the street, blanketing the slowly moving traffic, as the ground trembled deeply.

  “Wow,” he breathed, then choked on the swirling cloud of dust.

  He stumbled away, coughing, struggling to clear his lungs, and had to lean on the hood of a nearby car to try and catch his breath.

  In a minute he turned back, settling on the hood and blinking to clear his eyes, trying to catch sight of the structure.

  Then he heard a distant, muffled, intermittent squealing sound of bending metal, and quiet thunks of something dropping heavily. And it seemed to be moving, along the length of the building now shrouded in a thin cover of drifting dust.

  Roger, he thought, feeling a sting of panic. Was he all right? He had to have knocked out the floor of that top level and pulled the crane into it with him. So where the Hell is he?

  At last he managed to capture his breath, and pushed himself off the hood of the car, straightening.

  “Roger??” he called out. “Dude, you in there?”

  He scanned the entire length of the wall but it looked inert, solid, and now useless.

  “Over here!”

  John’s gaze snapped toward the rear of the building. Roger was just stepping around the corner, already trying to brush the dust from his torn jacket and comb it away from where it had collected in his hair.

  John stood, stunned, as Roger approached him.

  “Did it go down inside?” Roger said, reaching him and turning to look up at the building.

  “I think so,” John said, gaping at the other man.

  Roger seemed to consider this, then nodded.

  “Good. I don’t need them raising my car insurance,” he replied casually.

  After a moment he turned to glance at where John was staring at him, his eyes glowing with stunned amazement.

  “What?” Roger said, cautiously.

  “That,” John said, “Was fucking unbelievable.”

  Roger looked momentarily puzzled, then shrugged.

  “Not that big a deal,” he said.

  “Says you,” John responded, and directed his own gaze at the building.

  They stared at it silently for a moment.

  “Pretty damn cool, though,” John said. “We saved all those cars…”

  “We saved our own cars,” Roger injected.

  “True. And anybody who would have been hurt. So that’s something, isn’t it?”

  Roger seemed to consider this, then nodded slowly.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It is something.”

  John slowly turned back to him. A moment later, Roger returned the look. Then the smiles were beginning to grow on their lips.

  “You can’t tell me,” John said, “You don’t get off on it, just a little.”

  Roger seemed to hesitate, then pulled his gaze away and back to the building.

  “Maybe a little,” he said quietly.

  They regarded the structure a long moment, before John spoke again.

  “No tights, though,” he said, “Ever.”

  “No way,” Roger responded.

  Montgomery leaned back in the chair, seeking a more comfortable position in which to complete the call.

  “Go on,” he said, perhaps a bit irritably, feeling another sharp twinge in his shoulder. Aging was so annoying, he thought, the body betraying its owner slowly, distracting him with its increasing failure, the little twinges, aches and pains that it kept poking at him with. But, he considered, he wouldn’t have to put up with that much longer.

  The voice on the other end of the line was thickly accented and had been raised to cut through the loud mechanical whining in the background.

  “It’s going into place now,” the voice said. “We will have it secured and connected no later than this evening. Six hours from now. Do you want to run a power test as soon as it’s completed?”

  Montgomery took a moment to consider this.

  A full power-up test was a good idea, particularly as it would give them time to make any repairs or corrections before the slim window of opportunity arrived.

  “Yes,” he said firmly into the receiver, “Call me when you are one hour away from making the last connection and we can begin a communications check.”

  “Very good, sir,” the voice responded. It seemed to hesitate, then continued. “It would be easier if you could temporarily transfer control here, sir. We wouldn’t have to keep disturbing you.”

  “No,” Montgomery said, sharply. “You’re not disturbing me. But control remains here. Is that understood?”

  “Understood, sir,” the voice said quickly.

  “Anythin
g else to report?”

  “The rest of the security team has arrived. I’m setting up the perimeter now. We have sensors out a mile in all directions, the radar is up and running, and the heavy weapons teams are on station. If anything comes within ten miles of this place, we’ll know it.”

  “Good,” Montgomery responded, “And the construction crews? Have they left the site?”

  “All except the electrical teams. And they will be finished this evening.”

  “Excellent,” Montgomery almost purred. “Be sure to give them a good send-off.”

  “Everything has been arranged, sir.”

  “Then I will speak to you again in a few hours. And thank you for the update.”

  Montgomery lurched forward to drop the handset into the cradle and leaned on the desk, letting his eyes drift to the computer screen.

  Is this how a general feels on the eve of a battle, he wondered? Or an actor just before the rising of a curtain? Or the condemned man as the clock ticks toward the fatal hour. This sense of an approaching and inescapable inevitability.

  He could see his memory, like a long, shadowy path stretching out behind him, fading into the blackness, and he felt the full weight of it dragging on him. So much time, he mused. So much imprisonment. But coming to an end now. Step by certain step, echoing toward him.

  The computer emitted a soft beep and a window popped onto the screen, a black background with a single blinking cursor.

  “W? This is S,” jerkily etched itself in the small box.

  Montgomery was momentarily taken aback, not expecting to hear from Svag for another few days. He lifted his fingers to the keyboard and typed.

  “Hello, S. I’m here.”

  There was a pause, and again that annoying sense of approaching bad news reared itself, as it did these days with every new communication. Had something gone wrong?

  “Chill the champagne,” came the response. “4.8”

  Montgomery froze, staring at the screen, his heart making a tiny stutter in his chest.

  So fast, he thought. It’s picking up speed. The increased mass of the insanely bloated nucleus must be grabbing at the passing neutrons with greater force than Svag predicted. It was beginning to bind, somehow. Just as Dr. Jenkins had predicted. At last, firm empirical evidence that it would definitely work. The probability of success just slammed into the roof of certainty.