by Gary Ballard
Early morning daylight bathed the road. The buildings to either side were lit, the power having returned once the cloud generator was switched off. Bridge took a chance and tried to establish his wireless GlobalNet connection,t connec which worked flawlessly. He checked the date and time. It was early morning, a day and a few hours after he’d entered the dome. “It’s only been a day,” he told the technomancers.
“Time to jam the lines,” Janicki said and closed his eyes, concentrating on a spell. “Done.” To disguise their movements, they would need to disrupt the restored communications between Legios and the National Guard. Janicki’s spell would activate every switch it could find, sending reams of complete gibberish over phone lines, cell towers, and the GlobalNet. With that much static, Bridge’s call to Stonewall would go completely unnoticed. He had to make sure Stonewall and Aristotle arrived at the Naturalist compound ahead of him to prepare Bud for company.
The four lanes of Canyon Boulevard were packed with cars moving westward. A few vehicles were left abandoned in the road. As soon as an obstacle presented itself, one of the front line cars in the parade would transform with a screech of metal and the tinkle of exploding glass. The auto golem would smash, toss and kick the road clear for the rest of the convoy. Once the last vehicle passed, the golem’s work done, it would fold in on itself, ending life as a ball of fuel-soaked steel, glass and rubber. Bridge imagined the same thing happening at all the other spots around the city, the automatons blindly following their programming to the end.
The procession continued at around 20 miles an hour, receding as golems sprouted to deal with the obstructions. The buildings began to thin as they reached the outskirts of town and nervousness flourished in Bridge’s belly with each side street passed. Houses were replaced by trees and their army of cars seemed to get dangerously thin on the ground as they neared the cordon. Only two rows of vehicles were ahead of him as he spotted the first checkpoint. They had gone slightly less than a mile.
The checkpoint was a makeshift barrier manned by the National Guard with four cars pushed together to block the road. The soldiers seemed to be scrambling around in disarray, surprised that their communications gear was not only working, but was being overwhelmed by thousands of random messages. “Get your heads down,” Bridge commanded the technomancers. “Whatever happens, do not poke your heads above the windowsill until I tell you its safe.”
One of the soldiers had spotted the procession of cars coming towards his position and was frantically pointing it out to the rest of his team. Bridge counted at least ten soldiers, and they snapped into action with mechanical precision, ducking into cover behind the barrier while one stood holding up an arm to command the vehicles to stop. The cars continued to come and he repeated the command, his lips moving furiously with vain shouts. The cars continued. He raised his rifle and his team followed suit. Onward the procession rolled.
In the split second before he was prepared to fire, the point soldier realized that the cars were unmanned, that there was no driver to shoot. As time compressed into a slideshow of impressions, Bridge could see the confusion burst across the soldier’s face before quickly melting into horrified surprise. The front row of cars began to twist and shriek in tandem, transforming on the roll into a ten-foot tall wall of robot. Bridge could hear the thundering footsteps of the metal men, interspersed with the staccato pops of automatic weapons fire. Bullets bounced off the golems, the golor lodged in shattered windshields and burst tires. Shouts and screams erupted from the line as the golems made contact, tossing aside cars as easily as men.
They had discussed trying to keep the golems from using lethal force, but given the time frame, Wong couldn’t guarantee they would do the job at all with such parameters. In the end, Bridge had ended the discussion. “You may not want to kill those soldiers, and I don’t blame you. But think about it like this. You’re already on the hook for about 30,000 deaths. 10, 20, 30 more ain’t gonna make any difference.” The mood darkened, but the point was well made. Whatever guilt they might feel over the deaths of these soldiers couldn’t be worse than their original mistake.
Bridge clenched his teeth. Though the golems were doing their job, the road wasn’t completely clear. Soldiers ran towards the shelter of the trees to either side of the highway, but the golems had only managed to toss three of the four cars away. The now front line of the procession was transforming to help clear the way. Bridge’s line of cars was going to have to swerve to get around the last obstruction, and soldiers still sheltered behind the final car. An explosion rocked the scene as one of the soldiers fired a shoulder rocket into the face of a golem menacing him, showering the road with sparkling bits of steel shrapnel, some of which struck Bridge’s windshield. Spider-web cracks appeared all along the surface. Bridge was going to pass the last car in the roadblock to the right. As the car passed the barrier, the rocket-firing soldier’s nerve broke, and he half-turned to run for the shelter of the trees.
Bridge had no chance to miss him. The soldier struck Bridge’s side of the car, the mirror catching him on the hip and spinning him around hard like a broken marionette. He slammed across the hood of the last car, his head slamming into the windshield with a sickening crack. Past the barrier at last, Bridge snapped his neck around to catch a glimpse of the damage he’d done. The soldier lay limp across the car’s hood until the golems managed to lever the car off the road. The rag doll soldier’s broken body slumped sickly to the pavement and lay still. Bridge gritted his teeth and drove on, trying hard to shut out the sounds of the golems shrinking into inert spheres.
*****
The final component of Bridge’s escape plan was the most important and most perilous, as Bridge had to rely on Wong to pull it off. Since he was the only one besides Carl who could fly, he would be able to reach the dragon-man faster than anyone else. The two of them could escape as the bird flies, avoiding any checkpoints. But they would also need to create the biggest diversion, pulling off a pantomime act that would distract the corporations, governments and media from the real escape while also setting up the mythology Bridge had hastily crafted.
Carl had been seen multiple times as the dragon. If the last message the technomancers had received from him was accurate, he would eventualould evely be caught and killed if he hadn’t already been. Bridge knew the mentality of the Legios management. They would want to capture the dragon and dissect it, and the federal government wouldn’t be far behind them. If they managed that feat, they would have their hands on a mana engine. They’d figure out how to recreate the technology somehow. Bridge had to give them Carl, or at least the illusion that they had taken care of Carl, but without letting them actually have him or his technology. That particular sleight of hand was going to be tricky, but like all magic, it had to be done in plain sight.
As soon as the dome dropped, Wong sent a message to Carl. The technomancers could communicate with each other on a GlobalNet sublevel that possessed the same impenetrable electronic invisibility that the mana engine gave to their physical forms. The message outlined the plan and set up a rendezvous point. Wong would meet Carl and the two of them would head towards the nearest checkpoint, staying out of sight. Once there, they would send the empty dragon skin illusion on an errand of mayhem, attacking the nearest opposition it could find as loudly as possible. In the end, the dragon would lose and be destroyed, at which point the two technomancers were to fly to a rendezvous with the rest of the group before driving on to the Naturalist compound.
Of course, merely sending the dragon out to die wouldn’t establish the technomancer’s reputation. Bridge assumed the Legios Corporation or the feds would do their best to keep the dragon under wraps until they could devise a plausible cover story. Bridge needed his version of the story to get out, needed the world to see the magic, to establish the technomancer brand. Wong would send a nanobot camera to take up a position behind the checkpoint and film the whole thing. A little creative editing and extensive viral distribution w
ould reveal the technomancers to the world, thanks to the dogged freelance journalism of Sanderson Fielding.
Fielding didn’t exist, of course. Once clear, Bridge would put Angela on the task of creating him from thin air, crafting an imaginary persona that could populate the video without the worry that an actual journo would get shut down by the corporations. Once in the wild, the video would spread the brand far and wide.
Bridge watched the video hours later at the Naturalist compound. It was impressive. The raw footage was spectacular, and the work Angela’s guys did with the final product was genius. As soon as the dome dropped, the Legios Rangers and the Guard moved towards Boulder with whatever vehicles they could find handy. The columns of car golems slowed them down briefly, but once armed vehicles moved up into the town, the columns of Legios’ Gunheds and Guard APC’s made short work of the metal army. The road ahead of the Guard was littered with smoldering heaps of metal, makeshift arms blown off torsos, craters in the pavement smoking, dust and dirt and smoke obscuring the road.
The camera panned up quickly, as if startled. The sound of shrieking modems pierced the air. The fiery form of Carl’s dragon swooped out of the sun, a shimmering silhouette with a massive wingspan diving into battle. The dragon dodged a line of tracer bullets fired from the machine gun mounted on the back of an APC, gracefully twisting right before opening its mouth to unleash a gout of flame that crackled with tiny rivulets of lightning. The APC exploded in a shower of burning bodies and shrapnel. The camera mimicked its bearer going prone. Carl’s digitally-enhancedally-enh voice boomed out over the landscape.
“This city is ours!” it screamed, the sound of a thousand nails on a chalkboard. “You intrude on the domain of the technomancers at your peril!” Another fireball torched a swath of road before igniting a Gunhed, sending its occupants scattering in screaming panic. The dragon landed on a Guard APC, wrapping its talons around the jeep before lifting it into the air with awe-inspiring strength. Having reached its desired height, the dragon tossed the APC. The camera tracked the vehicle’s flight path directly overhead, following it to its landing point on top of another Gunhed.
Several more minutes of wanton destruction followed before the Guard brought up the heavy gear, a pair of massive tanks. The dragon laughed at the tanks, spitting fire at the nearest. Though absolutely engulfed in flames, the tank continued rolling towards its target. The camera shook dizzyingly as both tanks fired in tandem. The first missed. The second caught the dragon full in the chest, exploding a hole directly through the beast in a shower of sparkling embers. The dragon recoiled in pain, its scream echoing through the hills. A third cannon shot shook the air, and the dragon lost a wing, its graceful flight turning into a sickening, twisting death spiral. The ground shook again as the dragon slammed into it full force. The snow instantly melted around it, clumps of flaming dirt flying into the air.
The crater it left behind was swathed in smoke and steam, and the camera zoomed in awkwardly for a glimpse. For long moments, the area was still as the tanks rolled forward. Finally, a flickering claw reached up to grab the lip of the crater. The beast staggered up, its chest bleeding fire and ash. The tanks fired again, blasting its arm off and throwing it back against the far side of the crater. It stood one final time, its jaw slack as it spoke its final words.
“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.”
With that final statement, the exact phrase Bridge had heard before echoing throughout the GlobalNet, the dragon evaporated into a fine ash that blew away on the wind.
*****
Epilogue
January 4, 2029
1:22 a.m.
Their escape plan had worked, better than Bridge could have hoped. All five of the technomancers had made it out of Boulder without being pursued. Bridge’s group switched cars a few times on the way to the Naturalist compound, sending each abandoned car away on autopilot from where they’d abandoned it. Bud was extremely put out by the surprise guests, even more so when he learned that Bridge had not found his missing recruiters, and the unwanted guests had been responsible for the recruiters’ deaths. Bridge managed to talk him down from shooting the whole lot, but it was close.
Once tempers had calmed, Bridge laid out the entire scenario. He explained who the technomancers were, what they had done and what Bridge planned to do with them. Rather than try to lie his way through it, he told Bud the whole truth. Though every additional person that knew the skinny endangered the whole conspiracy, Bridge figured he could need Bud’s help in the future. Any little lie would jeopardize that future relationship.
As the plan was laid out, the elderly naturalist stared at Bridge with bemused shock before flashing a begrudged smile. “You are the craziest sumbitch I think I’ve ever run into in all my years,” he admitted. “But goddamn, if it works…”
Bridge sat back with a smug smile plastered across his mug, much too satisfied with his own cleverness. Bud leaned over the table and laid a firm hand on Bridge’s wrist, like a massive anchor tying Bridge’s inflated ego to the earth. “You’re going to get a lot of people killed, you know. This thing… it’s going to get people killed. You better make sure it’s worth it.”
Bridge nodded grimly. “It’s worth it.”
Later that evening, he had an even more important conversation. Bridge led Aristotle out into the crisp night air after dinner, making nervous small talk while avoiding looking at his bodyguard. Aristotle let Bridge chatter on for as long as he wanted, oblivious to the silent tears in the larger man’s eyes. Having finally worked up the courage, Bridge stopped along the isolated trail and put a hand on Aristotle’s arm. Everything important that he needed to say was already reflected in the big man’s coal black eyes. “You know she’s dead, right?” Aristotle nodded. “There wasn’t nothing you or me could have done about that. You know that, right?” Again, a nod.
Bridge laid out the whole story, sparing no details. The culpability of the technomancers, the reasons Bridge had brought them safely out of Boulder, the visitation with Lalasa, Bridge repeated the entire story to his stoic bodyguard. Aristotle’s value to Bridge might not have been as vital as Bud’s, but Bridge needed his friend to understand, to come with him. Bridge couldn’t even admit to himself why. The unspoken need galled Bridge, and he tried to make excuses to himself that he dismissed as soon as he thought them. Whether from guilt or affection, all Bridge would admit for sure was that he needed Aristotle. “You can’t retaliate against them, brother,” Bridge finished, emphasizing the obvious. “I need them.”
Aristotle wiped his eyes. “I realize exactly what this means,” he stated without emotion. “I will not harm a hair on their head. You have my word.” They stood apart in tense silence for long minutes. “I need… can you go back? I would prefer to be alone with this for a bit. I need to process.”
Bridge nodded and headed up the trail back towards the compound. Ar compounistotle’s steely voice stopped him. “One day, there’s going to be a reckoning for the things you’ve done here, you know that?”
Bridge didn’t turn, concealing the hollowed stare that broadcast his guilt in mile-high glowing letters. “Don’t I know it, brother.” He walked back to the compound with a soldier’s eyes following his every step.
*****
The next few months were hellishly busy. Bridge had gone back to LA, sending each of the technomancers to separate locations scattered around the country. His instructions were clear. They were to meet in the flesh only if absolutely necessary. They could live anywhere they chose so long as it was away from other people. The five founders would be known as the Council of Five. The Council would meet regularly using a nest of hidden GlobalNet sub-channels created by the mana engine. They would continue their personal experiments separately, but any spells they created would be freely shared amongst the Council. Within a month Carl, Lydia and Won
g had set up a hidden virtual city online, accessible only to the Council and of course, Bridge, the Council’s silent partner.
The video of the dragon battle had been seeded liberally by Michael Freeman’s wonder program. It made international news, replayed over and over by local, national and global news networks. The imaginary journo Sanderson Fielding was an overnight media sensation. The corporate owned networks searched high and low for an interview with the reclusive reporter, as much for the ratings as to target him for elimination. Bridge continued sending dispatches from the phantom journalist, spinning a fantastical narrative of a rogue freelancer pursued into hiding by a corporate conspiracy. Fielding’s investigations into the technomancers helped create the cult itself, as hackers, cyberpunks, geeks and young scientists around the world sought to transform themselves into powerful wizards.
The Order of the Technomancers became a real entity, a myth given form. Bridge was the secret brain behind the power, setting up the organization’s structure as a franchise system. He divided the world into five regions, each made up of isolated cells of mages completely unaware of the existence of other franchises, and certainly unaware of Bridge’s participation. Each of the Council was in charge of one region’s cells. They were allowed to recruit a small number of neophytes, who upon passing the showy initiation rites would be implanted with mana engines. The law of the technomancers stated that there could only be 100 mages in existence at any time. Since the new technomancers only knew of their recruiter, the Council and a few others, and only met with the Council online by petition, the lie held. Bridge envisioned a lot more than 100 technomancers, of course. But that belief, that faith that they were one of a special few gave the technomancers a confidence and some much-needed arrogance. They were discouraged from working in teams for extended periods of time. It became quite clear early on that the power of the engine inflated egos dangerously, and there were incidents. The battle between Rolfsbetween berg and Wong was small compared to some of the blowups in those first few months. The technomancers were encouraged to roam free and roam alone, selling glowbugs to whoever could pay. The Council got a percentage, and Bridge got a cut of that. The engine’s GlobalNet sub-network allowed them to move money around at will, and Bridge began amassing a large war chest.