Bridgeworld

by Travis McBee

  The Study Hall was a unique place that Will found relaxing. It was a gargantuan room, easily the largest in the school, filled with tables and chairs that outnumbered the four hundred students who attended the school. There were no shelves to hold books like a library, in fact Will hadn’t even seen a book since he had been at Bridgeworld. The reason was simple, everything that had ever been published, either terrestrial or not, could be accessed on their Micros. Will had been astounded at first to find Earth books while scrolling through the list of titles available to him and had been reading novels by his favorite author, Steven King, every chance he got. That day he was immersed in a particularly enticing selection when Corey brought him back to reality.

  Beep! Corey glanced down at his Micro, smiled, and looked up at his friends.

  “Hey guys! Are you bored?” He inquired.

  Jon looked up nodded and looked back down at his Micro. Abby murmured that she was as well and Will looked up from his book trying to listen to the echoing voice of Corey’s question that was bouncing in his head like all sounds do for a few seconds.

  “Heck yeah I am,” He replied sourly after figuring out what Corey had said.

  “Well want to go ticking?” He asked

  Abby looked at him with a reproachful look on her face while Jon’s face broke into a small smirk of contemplation.

  “We don’t have a pod,” Jon stated after a second’s thought.

  “My brother does and he wants to go but none of his friends do,”

  “What is ticking?” Will asked interrupting the exchange.

  “It’s short for Lunaticing,” Corey answered, “You know making someone go lunatic, or crazy? Basically you go down to Earth, mess with the people who live out by themselves and watch them freak out,”

  “Like the people who claim to be abducted by aliens?” Will asked thinking about how you would mess with the Terries.

  “Ha-ha no,” Jon broke in, “Those people are usually just crazy. Although I heard of a group of people using a shuttle and dressing up in strange costumes and abducting a farmer. That’s probably where that kind of story started,”

  Will suddenly formed a mischievous plan in his mind and smiled as the details began to work themselves out.

  “Can we tick someone I know?” He asked Corey

  Corey thought for a second, “Probably. It’s up to my bro though, he has a few things he likes to do but I’m sure we’d have extra time,”

  “Alright I’m in,” He told Corey before turning to his other two friends, “Yall coming?”

  “Sure thing,” Jon replied happily

  Abby glanced between her friends before shrugging her shoulders.

  “I guess so,” She said halfheartedly.

  * * *

  They met Corey’s brother, Adrian, in the hanger a few minutes later, since he was a senior he was allowed to have his own pod in the hanger. He was a pleasant guy, very similar in appearance to Corey except for the shadow of a goatee on his chin.

  Adrian led them to one of the smaller spacecraft that resembled a saucer. It was about twenty feet across, and had a small door in the side that they all wormed their way through and into the cabin which was barely big enough for the five to squeeze into. The cabin was surprisingly simplistic with only a few buttons and a single joystick to adorn the instrument panel. Will was proud to say that he could recognize every button and its function from the hours he spent inside the simulator during his flight class.

  The flight to Earth was brief and only mildly exciting. The most exciting part for Will was watching the stars transform themselves into lines of light as Adrian hummed the pod up to warp speed. Thirty minutes later Adrian reversed the process and Earth sprang out of nowhere to greet Will. Looking at the blue planet, Will suddenly felt a pang of homesickness he had not felt in his months of living at Bridgeworld. The empty feeling made him suddenly wish he had not come along for the ticking.

  “Where to first?” Jon asked

  “England, we’re going to Gend a field,” Adrian replied with a smirk.

  “Gend?” Will asked confused, “What’s Gend?”

  “The pod runs on a gravity drive,” Adrian explained, “When you get to close to plants it forces them to lay down. So we go around and make crazy patterns in the fields and the Terries freak out.”

  Will laughed aloud, “So that’s what crop circles are?”

  “If that’s what you call them, sure thing.” Adrian replied before nosing the pod towards the Earth.

  * * *

  George groaned and pulled himself out of bed as he slapped the alarm clock silent that sat on his nightstand.

  “Bloody Mondays,” he complained as he rubbed his eyes.

  He ambled into the kitchen of his small house and started a pot of water for some tea on the small stove. As he waited for the whistle to blow he grabbed the remote and flicked on the small television that sat on top of the refrigerator.

  “Good morning London!” the cheery voice of the morning anchor shouted out.

  “I don’t very well live in London now do I?” George replied grumpily, “I live in bloomin Edgerton. Don’t even know why I watch the telly, nothing around here will ever be on the news,”

  “Apparently we had some visitors last night didn’t we Nick?” The cheerful woman on the news said talking to her fellow anchor.

  “That’s right Emma,” Nick replied in the too happy voice all anchors used, “Residents of the small town of Edgerton woke up to a rather large smile today, apparently UFO’s made a crop circle of a giant smiley face behind the C of E Primary School last night…”

  George’s jaw dropped in shock as he heard news that had very much something to do with where he lived. He ran to the back door of his small house and yanked it open. He stood on the open doorway in his housecoat staring across the field towards the C of E Primary School that sat on the other side.

  News vans lined the parking lot of the small school with their antennas stretching towards the sky. Hordes of people were standing around pointing into the field that sat sunken below the school and the small hill upon which George’s house sat.

  The field was full of barley which had only grown to the height of two feet or so during the young year, but clearly engraved in the field was a large circle with eyes and a large grin smiling at the rising sun.

  George stumbled back into his kitchen in time to see an aerial view of the smiley face grinning at him from the television. He could even see his own house and was terrified moments later when he saw a small dot emerge from his house. Great I was on television in me housecoat, splendid. Outside he could hear the whop whop of the helicopter that was broadcasting the images.

  He stared at the screen for several moments before shaking his head, “Well Edgerton can make the news…” He mumbled as the little whistle began to shrill that the hot water was ready.

  * * *

  Zachary Rain was having the worst night of his vacation. He had booked the transatlantic cruise for his honeymoon over a year ago. At the time his fiance had been ecstatic about the cruise and it had seemed like a great move on his part. However five days into the voyage his wife had become desperately sea sick and had taken to yelling at him whenever he was in the cabin with her.

  To avoid his nagging wife Zachary had spent the entire night at the bar in the ship’s casino. He had knocked back drink after drink for several hours without considering what he was doing and he was now regretting his decision.

  He stood on the top deck of the ship leaning over the rail and heaving the contents of his stomach into the black sea below. The stomach had been empty for almost twenty minutes now but he was still dry heaving a thin stream of yellow bile into the ocean every couple of minutes.

  “I’m never drinking ever again,” He promised himself between retches.

  He glanced up at the horizon which was utterly black except for the countless dots of stars. A small section of stars caught his eye as he waited for the next wave of vomiting.
Three stars seemed to be spinning around each other as if they were attached to a hula-hoop. Zachary shook his head to clear his sight and looked again. The stars were still dancing around each other, and what’s more they appeared to be growing in size.

  “I am never drinking again,” He vowed once more trying to rub the image from his eyes.

  The stars kept spinning and spinning and growing larger and larger. Zachary backed up across the deck in fear and confusion. He didn’t watch where he was going and in his drunken state his balance was as precarious as that of a toddler. He tripped over the leg of a bench and fell onto his back with a painful thud.

  “Ouch,” he blurted out of habit but his eyes were following the circling stars that were settling over his fallen body.

  The lights weren’t stars at all, they were lights on a tiny flying saucer that now hovered over the deck. The flying saucer got lower and lower until it was close enough for Zachary to reach out and touch.

  He turned over onto his stomach and began to crawl out from under the UFO. When he managed to get to his feet and run away. He looked over his shoulder at the flying saucer and saw that it had begun to follow him. It’s smooth black surface glinted manically at him and the lights blinked a sinister rhythm as it followed him across the deck.

  “Ahh!”

  Zachery felt his feet step on thin air and realized that he had managed to run right into the pool. The thin air was replaced by a swish of salt water as he fell all the way to the bottom before pushing himself back towards the surface. He coughed and hiccuped water after he fought his way through the layer of water meeting air and lunged towards the side of the pool. He drug himself out of the sobering deck hazard and stood by the edge. The night air blew around him in cold whispers and he felt himself already begin to shiver. He stared around at the sky that was still full of stars, stars which all remained stationary with no signs of UFO’s.

  “I am never drinking again,” He promised himself for the third time

  He walked back down to his cabin dripping water along the way. When he pushed his way through the door the sounds of his snoring wife greeted him. He stripped from his soaked clothes and slipped into bed next to his new wife and passed out shortly after. When he awoke the next morning he had no memory of the night before, either his drunken plunge or the UFO, and his conscious was clear when he went back to the bar that night.

  * * *

  Jessica Hawk loved talking on her phone. When she dated Will she would keep him awake late into the night talking about the juicy gossip that was going around school. Unfortunately for her, her new boyfriend was not quite as accommodating for such frivolous conversation and would frequently tell her to, “Just shut up!” before sharp click on her phone would announce that he had hung up. So Jessica turned to her bratty girlfriends who all hero worshiped the ground she walked on.

  The Sunday night in question she was busy lamenting her distress at Daniel’s lack of manners to her best friend, Cindy Mayberry.

  “I mean he’s just not a gentleman Cindy!” She complained into the phone for the third time that night, “I know he has a car and that’s like super cool, but it’s a complete piece of junk. It smokes and stuff and I always get out smelling like car. Plus he never opens the door for me like Will would.”

  She took a breath and a blabbering reply cascaded out of the earpiece.

  “I know I know,” Jessica said after Cindy had stopped talking, “But I had to dump him you know that! Besides he went away to that boarding school in Europe or something like that.”

  Cindy began to talk to her idol again but her voice was interrupted by a sharp bleep. Jessica glanced at her phone and saw that she had gotten a text message. The text that sat snugly under the picture of the envelope mysteriously read “Unknown”. She depressed the key on the phone to open the text and read quickly.

  “Look out your window,”

  Jessica frowned at the phone for a second before rising to her feet and padding across the pink utopia that was her bedroom.

  Her room was equipped with a pair of windows that peered into the backyard that was pitch black. She squinted through the clear glass and fought her eyesight through her reflection that shone back at her as clearly as if the window had been a mirror.

  As she first squinted out she didn’t see anything except the deep darkness of midnight.

  “Hello? Jessica?” Cindy called out to her through the phone.

  Jessica opened her mouth to respond when flashing lights began to illuminate her room in hypnotic bursts.

  “What the..” she trailed off as something descended in front of her window

  It was a large circular something that looked like the UFO’s she saw on the rare occasions when she had watched a science-fiction movie. It was gleaming black with small windows along the dome in the center that peered out at her. She could see the vague shapes of heads outlined in the glass but it was too dark to see who, or what, they were.

  She dropped her phone to the ground as her hand went limp and her mouth drooped slightly as shock riddled her body. From the phone Cindy began to call out again but Jessica didn’t hear her.

  The UFO hovered facing her for a few seconds, seconds that felt like hours to Jessica, before it began to ascended further into the sky. When the bottom of it passed her window she saw that a rope was dangling out a small opening in the bottom of the flying saucer. She looked down at what it was tied to and screamed.

  Her ex-boyfriend, Will, was tied to the end of the rope and he thrashed about trying to free himself as he was drug higher and higher into the air. Jessica looked into his face and saw fear etched into every line of his handsome features. Will looked her dead and the eye and then vanished as the flying saucer flew higher into the air.

  Jessica stood staring at the place where her ex had been hanging just moments before. The only movement or sound she made was the shallow rapid breaths that flitted in and out of her nose at an incredible pace.

  Her phone broke her from her stillness a minute later with the soft chirruping beep that announced a text message. She bent down and picked it up from the floor where she had dropped it. Cindy had already hung up after receiving no response and no noise came through the speaker as she looked at the screen. A small envelope stood unopened on the blue background and under it where the simple words “Unknown” she clicked the small button that opened the message.

  She stared at the message for five full seconds before dropping the phone back to the floor and taking a huge gulp of air.

  “DADDY!” she screamed at the top of her lungs and ran out of her room slinging the door open so hard the handle left a round hole in her wall as it slammed into it.

  On the floor the phone continued to show it’s simple message from the unknown sender. For another minute before winking away as if it had never existed.

  “You’re next”

  * * *

  Dennis zipped up his pants and turned away from the cactus he had been relieving himself on and started to walk back to the small trailer he called home. The air was bitterly cold as it swept across the barren sands of the Arizona desert that he lived in and he afforded himself a soft shiver.

  He was a short, stout man, better suited for frigid mountain slopes than the harsh desert heat that had baked his skin a deep brown. He had moved to the small trailer parked off of Route 15 about five miles outside of Dikon, Arizona two years previous. Before his move he had lived happily in the shadowy hills of Maine. His peaceful life had taken an abrupt turn a dark night about three years previous.

  He had been driving back to his small house that was tucked away safely between a small creek and a steep hill after one heck of a party. He hadn’t bothered drinking that night (he never bothered drinking to be honest, just wasn’t for him), but the next day he had wished that he had been so that disbelief could have been allowed an avenue to seep into his memory.

  The road had been completely black as country roads so often are, so he had been driving sl
owly with his lights stuck into the bright position to illuminate as much of the road as possible. At first those lights had been the only ones in the forest he was driving through since the stars were obscured from winking at the Earth by a thick blanket of clouds, but stars did show up as he drove home.

  He saw them first on the horizon over a hill he was about to crest and whistled at the sudden intensity of the stars. The clouds must be clearing up he had though. As he approached the summit of the hill he figured out they were not stars after all.

  At the top of the hill a small flying saucer hovered thirty feet over the ground. It was a dreamy black metal that shone like dark water in the headlights of Dennis’s truck. Small lights flittered around the rim of the ship and Dennis saw that those lights were what he had mistaken for stars.

  His truck had creaked to a stop and he sat staring at the UFO unsure of what to do. Both of the vehicles remained motionless for several minutes before brilliant light flourished along every surface of the flying saucer and it accelerated towards the beat up truck.

  Dennis snatched his truck into reverse and smashed the accelerator to the floor. The truck spun smoke into the air as he flew down the deserted road in reverse. After a hundred feet he jerked the wheel around and stood on the brake swinging the truck around in a one-eighty. He jerked the truck into drive and sent more smoke into the air as the truck jettisoned down the dark road.

  The flying saucer had followed him for over an hour until he had almost made his way into a small town. As he passed the welcome sign the light behind him disappeared and the saucer vanished into the chilly night air.