Bridgeworld

by Travis McBee

  “Oh you bet I will,” Will replied clapping the young boy on the shoulder.

  Mitchell smiled even wider at the gesture and kind word before stepping back to let his father say his farewells.

  “Love you Abbz. Be safe,” He said hugging his daughter, “And Will, seriously you come back sometime. You don’t even have to be invited just come with Abby whenever or if ever she comes home.” He added with a laugh.

  “Oh I will. I had a lot of fun thank you for having me,” Will said

  “Anytime, anytime,” The large man chuckled, “You need to get on your shuttle though it looks about ready to take off.”

  Will waved goodbye and jogged towards the shuttle which did indeed look seconds away from liftoff. Abby was right behind him as he walked through the door and plopped down on the front seat that was right behind the pilot.

  “Well that went well,” Abby said sitting next to him.

  “Yeah, I don’t think your mom likes me though.”

  “Oh she doesn’t like anyone at first, don’t worry about it.” Abby said and gave his hand a squeeze.

  * * *

  Will dozed off without sleeping on the return voyage home and stared blankly out of the window without truly seeing what his eyes were watching. Next to him Abby succeeded in drifting into full sleep and her heavy breathing soothed Will’s tired mind even as it sat in neutral.

  Beep beep, beep beep.

  What is that? Will thought to himself as the noise brought his mind back from the void it had been resting in.

  “Oh dang it,” A strange voice decreed filtering back to him.

  He looked up to see the pilot prodding an instrument with his finger furiously. The instrument in question was a large screen that appeared to be showing what snow looks like for a nearly blind person.

  “Come on you piece…” the pilot growled at it.

  “What’s going on?” Will asked with groggy bluntness.

  “Nav system went out,” The man answered without looking at who had asked.

  “Wait, are we lost?” Will asked his mind slowly working through what the lack of navigation might mean.

  “No, and you can thank your lucky stars on that one. Look for yourself kid.” The man pointed through the windshield into the distance and Will could see the gray shape of a planet illuminated by a sickly red sun. He even thought he could see the black shape of a cube orbiting it.

  “Can you land without a nav system?” Will asked.

  “Of course,” The man laughed as he whacked the freaked out system again, “As long as I can see where I’m going and nothing else decides to go on the fritz which I wouldn’t rule out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well there’s been a lot of stuff going haywire up at the school this weekend.” The man replied, “Some of the lights have been going on and off randomly and the retina scanners have shut down completely.”

  Will thought about the retina scanners he had to look into every time he wanted to enter the first year lounge and dorm room. They were there to keep students from sneaking into each others dorms and worked perfectly well every time Will had used them, which was several times a day. All he had to do was glance at the little black dome of glass over the doorway and a little red light would flash before the door would slide open.

  “So how are kids getting into their dorms?” He asked the pilot.

  “They just push the button on the side of the door now.” The pilot replied, “That’s not what’s worrying people though. Dorms are no big deal but the scanners for the dean’s office and all of the maintenance areas are off line as well. People can just walk in there now.”

  “Well what’s the worst that can happen with someone in there?” Will asked

  “Well dang kid. They could crash the school if they messed with stuff they shouldn’t be messing with. But don’t worry it’s just minor glitches and no one’s going to be messing with that stuff.” He assured Will seeing his face begin to bud with panic.

  The conversation had brought them to Bridgeworld itself and the pilot steered them inside of the hanger and set the shuttle down with a slight thump. Abby opened her eyes and stretched her hands over her head as she let loose a large yawn.

  “We’re back,” she said after glancing out the window.

  “Yep sure are,” Will said and gave her a kiss on the cheek which made her blush and giggle.

  The pilot opened the door of the shuttle and Abby stood up and walked out with the stiff movements of the recently awakened. Will followed her and was already forgetting his conversation with the pilot which seemed meaningless. After all technology had glitches all the time and it wasn’t like any important systems were going down. By the time he walked into the atrium the memory had completely walked out of his head and all he considered was what was for dinner.

  Chapter Twenty

  Technical Difficulties

  Will grabbed his tray and began to slosh food on it with drowsy apathy. He nodded acknowledgment to Sean Hester as he passed him on his way to his seat and sat down next to Jon with a thud.

  “You’re not a morning person are you?” Jon smiled at Will from over the lip of his glass.

  “I am when I wake up naturally. I hate getting woken up especially by the teachers. When are they going to fix the alarms?” Will grunted in reply.

  “Dunno,” Jon replied with a shrug, “I overheard some of the maintenance men talking and they said they have no clue what’s going on,”

  Will moaned his displeasure and took a gulp of water to awaken his senses. It had been two weeks since the trip to Abby’s house and the technological difficulties the pilot had mentioned had grown steadily. At first the retina scanners hadn’t worked just as the pilot had said. That didn’t bother Will all that much and pushing the button to enter his dorm had become routine and unimportant after the first day.

  However, the troubles started to spread during the first week back. He awoke one morning to find one of the math teachers parading up and down his dormitory shouting for students to wake up. He found out later that all the alarms had somehow deactivated themselves and instead of a mechanized voice telling him to wake up or go to class a human one would shout it in its place. It was a problem he thought they would fix quickly, but that had been three days ago and the alarms were still silent.

  Will spooned powdered eggs into his mouth and began chewing lethargically. He glanced around the cafeteria at the familiar faces that drooped with morning weariness. He nodded to a few people as he met their eyes and was about to turn his attention back to his food when he made eye contact with someone that was nearly halfway across the cafeteria.

  The boy sat at a table with none other than Brandon Crosby. He appeared to be a senior judging by the faint shadow of a beard that colored his pale face and his age made the freckled face of Brandon seem comically young. His head had a faint covering of black hair that matched the cold black eyes that observed Will.

  “Hey Jon,” Will said nudging him with an elbow, “Do you know that guy sitting with Brandon?”

  Jon glanced up and searched the room for a moment before locating Brandon. He squinted in the direction as he urged his eyes to form a better picture before replying.

  “Nope, never seen him before. Why?” he asked

  “I don’t know, he looks familiar but I’m almost positive I haven’t seen him around here. And why is he sitting with Brandon? He looks like he’s a senior.”

  “No idea man,” Jon said taking another bite of food, “Maybe it’s his brother or something. And the seniors like to eat in their private dining room most of the time so that’s probably why you haven’t seen him before.”

  “Yeah maybe,” Will agreed verbally but not mentally. He was almost certain he had seen him somewhere other than in the halls or cafeteria before but couldn’t place it.

  After a several minutes of fighting through his memory, he gave it up for a bad job with a shrug of his shoulders and went back to eating his bland bre
akfast.

  * * *

  Later that day Will sat in Intergalactic relations attempting to listen to the dull drone of another of Mrs. Edwards odious lessons. Will found himself drifting towards unconsciousness as she informed them of the trade sanctions between Broglio and other planets. Over the course of the year he had developed the ability to vacate his attention from the dry lessons of the gray haired woman and turn his mind loose to wander at his leisure, all while appearing avidly interested in what she was saying. He was in the process of drowsing off to his own world when the world began to rock around him bringing him back to reality.

  “What the…” he stammered as his desk shook so violently it began to bounce up and down on its legs.

  Around him his classmates were descending into chaos as the girls screamed shrilly and the boys gaped around in horror at each other.

  “Everybody remain calm,” Mrs. Edwards bade them although the affect was far from calming as she was visibly terrified.

  The Earth quake, that hadn’t bothered to wait on the Earth to arrive for the occasion, died out after only a few seconds, but red lights began to flash the room into a crimson worry as the tremors died away. Will looked sideways at Abby who was cowering under her desk and then at Jon who was as white as a Starview monogarb.

  “Jon, what’s going on?” Will asked.

  “No idea man,” Jon replied in little more than a whisper as fear tightened his throat.

  The lights continued to flash their steady dance and between bursts of crimson Will could see the terrified faces of his peers and teacher alike frozen in statues of fear. Their expressions were thawed into movement when the speaker over their head crackled into life.

  “Students and faculty,” The unnerved voice of Dean Norris called to them, “We are still experiencing technical difficulties and um… well I guess I’ll be blunt. The tremors you just felt were a result of the life pods deploying all across the school. We are not sure what is causing all of these glitches but rest assured it will not take us long to find it.”

  The voice crackled away in a blur of static as the Dean fumbled to turn it off. The class around him stood quiet as the news of what they had just heard sunk in and Jon was the first to break it.

  “The emergency pods have released?” he said softly, “But that means if something happens we’ll be stuck here!” he added with a shout.

  “Oh don’t be ridiculous,” Mrs. Edwards growled from the front of the room, “First of all, nothing is going to happen that would necessitate us vacating the school. Furthermore there are shuttles and pods galore in the hanger that would facilitate an evacuation with ease. So stop trying to start a panic.”

  Jon mouthed wordlessly and Will hated to admit it but what she said was more than logical. He bent down and helped Abby to climb out from under her desk where she sat trembling so much that the green amor he had placed on her wrist jangled a song of panic to the quiet classroom.

  “It’s okay Abby,” Will assured her with a whisper.

  She ventured a smile at him but it wasn’t true and Will grimaced in sympathy as he saw the panic that still rested in her eyes. He knew, as well as Abby, that even though Mrs. Edwards had a point that nothing would probably happen, the emergency pods launching themselves from the ship could not be good news. He glanced at Jon who had ceased the comical mouthing and had returned to his seat. Jon looked at Will and in that instant a message of silent unease was transmitted between the two as clearly as if it had been shouted.

  * * *

  Will deactivated the shower and squeezed back into his monogarb. He longed for the warm water and stress relieving force of Earth showers as he tingled in his perfectly clean skin. He missed it’s meditative powers as his mind worked over all of the technological glitches the school had been experiencing. Most of the students enjoyed complaining about them but few took them seriously. For some reason unbeknownst to him, Will was unable to take the same view and a prickling thought kept nagging away at the back of his mind that he wasn’t able to identify.

  He was standing in the locker room following a strangely sweat absent physical education class. Coach merely told them to stay active before disappearing from the gym and the students interpreted the command as take it easy. So they had sat around in knots talking about a variety of subjects like the impending start of the Quizex season or who had a chance with what girl. Will had sat with Jon and Corey while his two friends engaged in a heated debate over who would win the intergalactic Quizex tournament. Will hadn’t taken part in the conversation and had felt his mind drifting over the malfunctions that no one else seemed worried about.

  Will heard the door hiss open to the locker room and assumed that it was one of the other stragglers finally departing. There hadn’t been a drop of sweat shed amongst the entire class so most had decided to forgo their showers and head towards their final class early. Will had decided not to simply collect his micro from his locker and had jumped into the shower partly out of habit and partly from the desire to try and clean his mind up as well as his body.

  Will was reaching for the button to slide open the stall door when a voice echoed through the empty room and into his stall.

  “You sure no ones in here?” a gruff voice asked

  “I’m sure, none of the boys broke a sweat so they didn’t shower,” The voice of Coach Bower replied.

  “Good good,” The gruff voice replied absently

  “So what’s the news David?” Coach asked, “Did you guys find what’s been going on?”

  “Afraid so Richard,” The gruff voice paused and Will heard a sigh fill the room, “Someone’s been hacking our systems it seems.”

  “Hacking our systems? Do we know who?”

  “We don’t know who but we do know that whoever it is, is here,” David grunted.

  “Here? You mean on Bridgeworld?”

  “Yup and it could be anyone. Staff, an intruder, or more likely one of the brats.” David snorted in disgust.

  “You mean the students?” Will smiled as he heard the defensive tone from his coach.

  “Yeah yeah, students, brats, same thing,” The man said, “The point is someone’s royally screwing stuff up and we need to catch them soon.”

  “How can I help?” Coach asked sounding worried.

  “Not sure, I’m about to head up to the dean’s office if you want to come along.”

  “Yeah I’ll come I don’t have a seventh period class.”

  Will heard footfalls reverberate around the room as the two men exited. When he heard the door hiss open and hiss closed he knew he was alone again. So someone is doing this on purpose he thought to himself and then his mind clicked into the gear it had been struggling to find all day.

  Laugh while you can Bridgers, you don’t have long! A voice echoed out of his memory. You don’t have long. A face began to swim up from his memory to accompany the voice. It was a cruel face of a senior Starview player with a shaven head and cold black eyes. Another face soon formed in Will’s mind, one with a short shadow of a beard and equally short hair splattered on his head.

  It was him! Will realized in a wave of shock. That kid at breakfast is a Starview player. He’s the one doing all of this!

  Will slammed his hand onto the button of his stall and ran out of the door before it could finish hissing all the way backwards. He ran through the outer layer of doors and into the hall itself. He didn’t really know where he was running to but he had to tell someone and without conscious thought his feet guided him towards the stairs.

  He mounted the stairs at a run and was half way to the sixth floor before his mind kicked in gear and drove his feet to a standstill. What was he thinking? He couldn’t just burst into Dean Norris’s office with a wild accusation about an intruder even if he believed it to be true. Then there was the little fact that he overheard information that was not meant for his ears which would in turn put him into trouble’s vice like grip.

  He turned around in his mind and body and be
gan to walk down the stairs. They’ll figure it out, he tried to convince himself but he felt his stomach sink lower and lower as he headed towards the hanger and his next class.

  * * *

  Will sat in his usual table in the Study Hall with Abby next to him and Corey stationed across from him. Abby was whittling away at a mountain of homework on her micro while Corey meandered through videos of people having amusing accidents that he had found on an Earth website. Will eyes were resting on a half finished email to his parents but his mind did not linger there as well. The morphing image of the Starview player into the mysterious companion of Brandon’s had replayed on a loop inside Will’s head since it’s conception in the locker room. He hadn’t told his friends his suspicions and he told himself he needed another look to make sure. However, he hadn’t seen Brandon nor the suspected saboteur when Will had made a cursory inspection of the lounge, dormitory, cafeteria, and finally, the Study Hall.

  Will reached for his micro to add a fresh paragraph to the letter when a rush of hurried feet sounded behind him. He swiveled in his chair as Corey looked up to see Corey’s brother, Adrian, storming across the Study Hall in an obvious rage.

  “Adrian what’s up?” Corey asked his older brother.

  “What’s up? What is up!?” Adrian shouted bringing glares of outrage shooting from around the room, “I’ll tell you what’s up! Someone jacked up my Pod, along with everyone else’s!”

  “Adrian calm down man,” Corey begged him as he felt the glares of Study Hall-goers burning embarrassment into him, “Sit down and tell us what happened,”

  Adrian opened his mouth, in what appeared to be the start of renewed yelling, thought better of it and whipped out a chair and dropped heavily into it next to Corey.

  “So what happened?” Will asked the elder Edgar boy.

  “I told you,” Adrian huffed angrily, “Someone jacked up all the pods in the hanger.”