The Bridge Chronicles Trilogy

by Gary Ballard

  Lydia nodded. “I concur. That’s the only possible explanation.”

  “Unless Bridge here is lying to us.”

  “Yeah, fuck you, buddy. You think I’m lying then give me a goddamn car and I’ll drive my ass right back to L.A. where I belong. I didn’t come all this way to get insulted, attacked by ghosts and jerked around by the geek gaggle.”

  “Ghosts?” Lydia asked with sudden, panicked interest. “You’ve seen the ghosts?”

  “Seen ‘em? Shit, they almost got me killed. I ran one over with a truck. Well, ran through her anyway.”

  “I want to apologize, Mr. Bridge,” Lydia began.

  “Just Bridge.” Bridge gave her a smile that was full of charm. She scoffed like he’d just tried to pick up the last lesbian at the man haters bar.

  “Bridge then. It wasn’t my call to bring you in on this. But now that you are, we all need to go back to the Engineering Center and sort this out with Balfour. He’ll be able to explain more when we get there.”

  “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s all fly there now!”

  Janicki coughed. “We’ll have to settle for the car.”

  “Yes, we’ll have to take the car! Our buddy Wong doesn’t feel like sharing his flight equations. Isn’t that right, Wong?” Rolfsberg yelled angrily at Wong’s back, spittle flying from his mouth. Wong floated ten feet or so off the ground, his back to the group, ignoring the abuse completely. “Didn’t you hear me, Donger? I said you should share your flight equations so we can all fly like you and Carl!” Wong continued to ignore the insults, which only served to infuriate Rolfsberg more. “I’m talking to you!”

  Lydia put a calming hand on Rolfsberg’s shoulder, but he shrugged it off angrily. “No, I’m tired of this shit. You! Ding Dong! We’re all going to the Engineering Center to work this out. Stop playing with your dolls and move your ass.”

  “They’re not dolls,” Wong said silently over his shoulder. “It’s a complex physics simulation.”

  “It’s junk science, you twerp! We have important work to do, and despite your painful immaturity, we could actually use your help. And it’s effing poor form to hold out on the rest of us. I’d like to fly. Wouldn’t you like to fly, Lydia? Janicki? Aren’t you goddamn tired of trotting around like a grad student while he gets to fly like a bird?”

  “You couldn’t handle my calculations,” Wong said icily. He’d turned to face the group now, and a cold fire seemed to be building behind his eyes.

  “What? You little shit. I could run rings around your math in my sleep. I spit differential equations and piss matrices. I don’t have to listen to this drivel from my intellectual inferiors. Why don’t you come down here and say that to my face?”

  “Why don’t you come up here and make me?” Wong retorted with a puckish grin.

  Rolfsberg’s face was fire engine red by this point. Lydia’s snickering didn’t help, only serving to enrage him further. He looked down at his flesh fist, which was squeezed so tightly the knuckles had turned white. Bridge began to feel crackling in the air, a building buzz of power consolidating in a single point of electrical energy. Rolfsberg’s fist began to shake and glow. Bridge unconsciously began to back away, aware at a cellular level that something bad was about to happen.

  “That’s it!” Rolfsberg screamed, throwing his fist out at Wong. A blinding blue arc of lightning flew from his outstretched hand to strike Wong dead center with explosive force.

  *****

  Chapter 16

  November 7, 2028

  Time Unknown

  Bridge dove for the cover of the car, losing sight of Wong for a second. Spots flashed on his vision, the afterimage of the lightning bolt still seared on his eyeballs. Lydia and Janicki had retreated with him, and they all peeked cautiously over the hood. A ball of lightning still sputtered in the air where Wong had stood, tossing off rivulets of electricity before dissipating completely.

  Wong floated there unharmed. Anger was etched across his face, his teeth clenched and his fists balled. He looked every bit like a child throwing a tantrum in mid-air. “I’ve put up with just about enough of your shit, Rolfsberg!” he screamed. “I told you I was running a simulation, told you to leave me alone. But you can’t do that, can you? You have to feel like you’re in charge! Well, you’re not in charge of me!” He tossed off two fireballs directly at Rolfsberg.

  The Norseman barely had time to raise a shield of his own, and the force of the blasts hitting his shield drove him back a few feet, buckling his knees. The area around Rolfsberg was charred, the grass singed, tiny embers glowing in the night like fireflies. Before Rolfsberg could prepare another attack, Wong sent his metal minions into action. Twenty-two players and even the ref charged at Rolfsberg with clanging ferocity, surrounding his bubble shield. Those who couldn’t reach it on foot climbed on the backs of the front ranks, creating a gigantic steel pile-on, until Rolfsberg was completely enveloped in metal. At first, they pounded on the shield, fists flying with awkward stop-motion violence, but with a few flicks of Wong’s fingers, they merged into a metallic cocoon that encased the Norseman completely. The metallic shell then began to contract with a sickening grinding sound.

  Bridge felt the ground rumble underneath his feet. Small at first, it built until he could see the car shaking with the tremors. The ground imploded at the feet of the metal cocoon, a sinkhole about ten feet across forming, before exploding outward and upward in a shower of dirt. The cocoon flew a hundred feet into the air before crashing into the dorm behind Bridge. Rolfsberg knelt gasping at the bottom of the sinkhole. His lab coat was soaked in sweat and caked with dirt. His arms were outstretched at his side, and he brought them crashing together in front of him in an exaggerated clap. Lightning arced from two of the lighting fixtures on either side of Wong, trapping him in a circuit of boiling electricity.

  Wong paid no notice to the lightning storm enveloping him, his fingers dancing. Bridge was unsure what was happening at first, but it quickly became obvious that the light from the electricity was dimming, draining into Wong’s hands, forming a ball of lightning that grew with every effort Roed toon lfsberg thrust into the attack. Wong was stealing Rolfsberg’s power.

  Sickening realization struck Rolfsberg and he redoubled his efforts, pouring more power into his attack. It did no good. Wong had the upper hand. Fear wrote an ending across Rolfsberg’s expression and he screamed, throwing his arms in front of his face to ward off the final attack. It was in vain.

  Wong redirected all the power back at Rolfsberg, throwing back a mixture of Rolfsberg’s lightning and Wong’s fireballs. Caught full by the blast, Rolfsberg’s shield was too weak to save him. Bridge caught a glimpse of Rolfsberg’s body being disintegrated, a Hiroshima shadow being wiped clean by a fiery wind, and then he was gone. Where Rolfsberg had crouched, there was only a blackened circle of earth and the melted remnants of the dead man’s cybernetic left arm.

  Wong panted, his body covered in sweat with tears streaming down his face. The full realization of what he’d done was writ large in his eyes.

  *****

  The battle had lasted less than two minutes. Once Bridge was sure it was safe, he stood along with Lydia and Janicki, all too stunned by what had happened to speak. Finally, Lydia whispered, “Quon, what have you done?” Her raspy voice sounded deafening in the silence.

  Wong stood shaking, his hands quivering, sparks dancing off both his metal and flesh fingers. His eyes were completely vacant, staring at the charred remains of his former rival, his mind a million miles away struggling to come to grips with his actions. Bridge had seen that look before. It was the haunted look of innocence being snuffed out, the tell-tale sign of someone who had never killed before realizing that they’d taken another human life. Bridge had seen it all too often in the riots, once the fever of the mob mentality had worn off and the full weight of sin had come crashing into focus. Everyone reacted differently. Some got colder, accepting murder all too easily, and those were the ones Bridge
feared. Wong, however, was not one of those as evidenced by his tears. Somewhere in the boy’s fragile psyche, a torrent of emotions was building, and Bridge really didn’t want to be there when those emotions broke to the surface. Whoever was around when that happened would be lucky if Wong only hurt himself.

  Wong fell to his knees. Lydia walked towards him slowly, repeating like a mantra, “Quon, what have you done?” She completely ignored the blackened resting-place of her former colleague. Janicki followed her, but his interest lay in the remains. He ignored Wong completely, picking up the melted cyberarm and examining the dust.

  “That’s amazing!” he exclaimed. “It’s completely ashed, even the dirt and bones are gone. The temperatures, the energy required to do that is insane!” He seemed to be speaking to Bridge who ignored him in disgust. Thn disgusese people were crazy. Bridge stared down at the sinkhole, at the coldly calculating scientist picking at the ashes and somewhere in the back of his head a seed of an idea began to germinate. Not even consciously aware of what he was thinking, he let it sit in the back of his mind growing of its own volition. “One would need to heat bone for five minutes straight at over 900 Celsius to ash bone like this and he did it in seconds! Do you know what this means?”

  Bridge scowled. “That you are a sick fucker?”

  Janicki waved a hand dismissively. “Bah, Rolfsberg was a cock. If it wasn’t Wong he pissed off, it would have been one of us eventually. Besides, Wong is right, his math was weak. He couldn’t even break down Wong’s force field. The most interesting thing he managed to come up with was the mana engine’s casing, and I would have gotten around to that eventually. I’d better take this.” He indicated the cyberarm. “Wouldn’t want someone finding the engine when we leave.”

  “You geeks going somewhere?”

  “Yes, Mr. Bri… Bridge,” he replied. “That’s why you’re here. We’ve painted ourselves into a very tight corner and we need someone with your particular skillset to provide us with an exit strategy.”

  Bridge was about to reply angrily when he heard Wong stammer to life. “He kept pushing me,” the kid mumbled. “He wouldn’t stop, you saw him. He attacked me first. He attacked first. I need to sit down.” Lydia had reached him by now and was guiding him to an awkward tumble back onto his bottom. His legs didn’t seem able to support his weight anymore. “You saw it, right, Lydia? You saw him attack me?” Lydia nodded sadly. “He just wouldn’t leave me alone, had to keep egging me on. I couldn’t let him hurt me, could I?” A frightened look came into his eyes. “You won’t tell Balfour, will you?”

  “I’m going to have to tell him, Quon,” Lydia replied in a matronly tone. “We’re all in this together, and he needs to know what happened so he can decide what to do about it.”

  “You don’t think he’ll take my engine away, do you? He can’t give it to me then just take it away when I make one little mistake.”

  “You killed Rolfsberg, Quon. That’s not a little mistake.”

  Bridge cut in angrily. “Look around you, lady. There’s not one goddamn body left in this place. Did you kill them all like Rolfsberg?” Wong flinched at the mention of his dead colleague’s name. “There’s supposed to be what… 20, 30,000 people in this part of Boulder? Where are they? Are those ghosts I saw REALLY ghosts?”

  “They’re… gone,” was all she said. “We really must be getting to the Center. Balfour will explain it all.” She stood and offered a hand down to Wong. “Quon, are you going to come with us?”

  “Can I just stay here for a little while, Lydia? I have to… I have to think. I… I need to be alone, ok?”

  She didn’t seem pleased, but she relented with a sigh. “Ok, Quon, we won’t force you. We aren’t like… him. But if we call you, you need to come, ok?” He nodded meekly, wiping the long streaks of tears from his face. “Shall we go, Bridge?”

  “I think we’d better.” Bridge was all too ready to find out what the fuck was going on with these geeks. Lydia collected Janicki and his melted trophy and led them to the car.

  *****

  Chapter 17

  November 7, 2028

  Time Unknown

  The three got in the car and drove north, leaving Wong alone with his thoughts. Bridge took one last look back at the kid who had resumed floating over the field. Wong had retrieved the metal cocoon from the hole it had made in the dorm building and was busy recreating his players with a glazed expression. Bridge turned his attention back to the pair in the front seat.

  “So how were you guys planning to leave? There’s like an army of Legios Corp cops surrounding the town, and just as many National Guard on top of that. Not to mention the horde of journos that swarmed on this fucking place like locusts the minute that news chopper went down. Did your buddy Carl do that?”

  Lydia exchanged worried glances with Janicki. “We’re not sure. Communication with Carl has been somewhat sporadic. The only time it really worked well was when he was near the dome. What did he do to the news chopper?”

  Lydia glanced back over her shoulder from the driver’s seat to watch Bridge make a poofing motion with his fingers. “Poof. Gone. Big flaming dragon knocked it out of the sky. Well, I assume that’s what he did. They saw a flaming dragon and they weren’t heard from again. Legios refused to talk about it. They actually don’t have clue fucking one what to do by the way. They’ve flipped between quarantining the area like some kind of outbreak and suggesting it’s some kind of a terrorist invasion.”

  Janicki began asking questions intently. “We can’t see out much past the perimeter, but you said the National Guard was out. Why haven’t they just driven a battalion of tanks up to the dome and blasted it?”

  Bridge returned his gaze with an expression of irritated confusion. “Do you really not know the effect you’re having out there? No, I guess not. Nothing works around the dome. No electricity, no cell, no GlobalNet, nothing. It’s the Stone Age. Our driver refused to get within three miles of this place because he said his car would just stop working. National Guard was using abandoned cars to build a cordon. No tanks, no Gunheds.”

  “Does the power drain out gradually or does everything just blink out? Are there explosive effects when you pierce this dead zone?”

  “Well, the jack in my head didn’t explode so I’m guessing shit just stops working. But I didn’t get to experiment what with being more concerned about not getting my ass shot off.”

  The car had looped around past what appeared to be a basketball arena and an astronomical observatory. Lydia pulled the car to a stop at a stop sign, checking both directions for non-existent traffic. Bridge couldn’t resist needling her. “Why are you stopping? There’s no traffic.”

  She smacked herself in the head and scoffed. “Duh. I know, I know. Force of habit. This intersection is usually crawling with bikes and kids, even this late. Early. Whatever.” She steered the car into a right turn, aiming it northward a little distance before coming to another stop sign. She ignored this one, turning the car right again. Bridge made a note of the street name, Regent Drive. He was lost without his GlobalNet maps. Knowing the street name would at least give him some bearing if he needed it. They continued on around Regent as it curved northward. Across an open field, Bridge got his first glimpse of the Engineering Center.

  Even without the transformation these geeks had effected on the city, the complex would have been impressive. Made of the same brick exteriors as the rest of the buildings he’d seen, the Engineering Center was a striking series of constructs with severely angled roofs arranged in stepped tiers reaching towards the night sky. The roofs all seemed to either oppose or compliment the tallest structure, a tower over five stories high in the center of the complex. It was this feature that Bridge noticed the most.

  At first, he wasn’t sure what was wrong with the tower. Bridge’s eyes seemed to slide off the building, as if he couldn’t focus his vision correctly. As they got closer, he figured out why. The tower wasn’t just big, it was moving. Not moving e
xactly, it was growing. The once-flat walls that comprised the structure had what appeared to be shiny, fungus-like outgrowths that drooped down to the surrounding buildings like stalactites. Bridge was reminded of the towers of South American ant colonies he’d seen on some nature vid. The growth was glacial. Only constant observation made it noticeable, and the movement made the tower appear to vibrate ever so slightly.

  From the top of the tower sprouted a pillar of light, so subtle that only as Bridge drew within a few hundred yards did he notice it. His eyes followed the pillar up as far as he could see until he realized that the light was a column of energy sustaining the dome. “I think I’m too tired to be amazed, so I’ll just ask. What are you geeks doing here? What the fuck is that?”

  “That’s where it all began, Bridge. That’s the power source sustaining the dome and every other electrical device underneath it. That,” Janicki pointed with undited withsguised pride, “is the future of human energy.”

  *****

  The geeks led Bridge into the Engineering Center at one of the entrances not affected by the fungus covering the tower. Through the mostly deserted parking lots and empty bike stands, into a confusing series of hallways, past classrooms, offices and labs decorated with the usual geek décor and college campus fliers, they led Bridge deeper into the complex. Up a flight of stairs, the group entered a covered walkway suspended over the street. On the other side of the walkway, the fungus grew on the interior walls, covering the hallway in shiny coal black gunk, like dark polished marble that shimmered in the cold fluorescent light. “What the fuck is that stuff?” Bridge asked, poking a finger towards it before retracting his hand in fear. “Is it safe?”

  Janicki urged him onward. “It’s safe. Go ahead, touch it.” Bridge did so. It felt like a mixture of cold tar and liquorice and it oozed underneath his touch. “It’s an amazing new strain of nanotech construction material. Balfour came up with it one long crunch session. Of course, the uni wouldn’t allow us to test it on campus, but well, they’re gone now so we did. Program in your specs, stand back for a few days and it constructs things for you. It’s safe enough to be around while it does all the work, no need for costly labor and as strong as current construction materials at half the cost once we perfect the goop formula. All it needs is a power source, a rather big power source.”