Overture

by Mark Wandrey

“Why was the crew going so slowly?” Billy asked.

  “The Mexican dude, Jorge? Anyway, he said one of the trucks died, so they just piled everything in a Bobcat front loader and came back. The loader can only go like 10 miles per hour. He said it was the last load.” Billy returned to Mindy.

  “I heard,” she said, tapping on the computer. “Can you check on the wounded man?” she asked. Up on the dais, a woman was standing in front of the portal with her wide-eyed, 8-year-old daughter who was staring at the portal with a mixture of awe and fear.

  “It’s okay, baby,” the woman said. “It’s just like Narnia! Remember the book?”

  “Yeah!” the girl said excitedly, “are there elves?”

  “I don’t know,” the mother said. Mindy could see tears in her eyes. “Just walk through. See that nice police officer?” On the other side, Tall was waving to the little girl, who waved back. “He will take care of you until I get there.”

  “It won’t be long?” the girl asked. Mindy ground her teeth at the delay. Every minute LM -245 came thousands of miles closer to Earth.

  “It won’t be long, I promise. Now hurry up, it won’t hurt a bit.” The girl hesitated for a moment longer, then closed her eyes and ran through. Tall scooped her up in a hug, and Mindy could see the girl laughing. She smiled too. Tall cleared the way and crates flew.

  “Go,” Mindy gestured to the mother, who looked confused. The briefing had said to wait. “I know what we told you, but just go, go, go!” The woman nodded and, dodging crates, leaped over to Bellatrix. There was another blue flash, and another soul was 250 light years away. “We’re speeding it up!” Mindy yelled.

  * * *

  In the blink of an eye it was 07:00, and the sun was climbing into the eastern sky, lighting the sides of the buildings on Central Park West. Mindy went outside to catch a last glimpse of LM-245. It was a supreme waste of time, but she did it anyway. The artifact glowed like a welder’s torch as it dropped to the west, faster now than before. She couldn’t look directly at it, so she held a thumb over the flare. Even in daylight, she could see the red of her blood through the flesh of her digit. She had to slowly move her thumb to keep the flare covered.

  “Not long now,” she said.

  “Won’t it take hours to feel the impact here?” someone asked, sweating as he carried more crates inside. “I saw something on Discovery that said earthquakes travel about 700 miles per hour.”

  “Kilometers per hour,” she corrected, “but this is different. It will pass through the core after it hits, so that’s more like 8-10 kilometers per second.”

  “That’s like twenty-thousand kilometers an hour,” he gasped.

  “Closer to 30,” Mindy said. After another minute, LM-245 had dropped below Central Park West. It was less than an hour to impact. A short distance away, Jorge oversaw the movement of the crates into the dome. The Bobcat had proved useful. The ground was so muddy, they couldn’t get the trucks up the little hill from the road anymore. The Bobcat handled the climb with ease. A half-dozen armed cops pitched in while watching the surrounding area for attackers, but no one wanted to challenge them after the earlier incident.

  Back in the dome, Mindy was pleased to see that the operation had proceeded without her. Even better, someone had found some black Sharpies and was making notes on the concrete wall. Since they’d shifted into high gear, 44 more people had gone through with an average of 175 kilograms of crates each. She ground her teeth thinking about the lost equipment, but there was nothing she could do. Of the 130 people waiting, only 60 had gone through. She noticed a pile of crates stacked to the side. She recalled the contents from memory—tablet computers with solar chargers, and thousands of SD cards of data. She called it her ‘society on a disc.’

  “These have to go immediately,” she said to the team.

  “None of them have “ES” on them,” one man complained. They’d been rotating responsibilities. When the loaders got too tired to move crates into the dome, Mindy reassigned them to throw crates through the portal. When they became exhausted from those duties, they went to Bellatrix.

  “I didn’t think it would be an issue,” she admitted, “but the plan has gone awry. Who’s next through?” Because there were only 61 females, many of them had already gone through. She’d made sure her coworkers were among the first. Then she spotted Samantha off to the side, trying to look inconspicuous. “Damn it, what the hell are you still doing here?”

  “You need me,” the other woman commented.

  “Yeah, I need you to get your ass out of here.” She got a loader’s attention. “She’s next!” Samantha looked rebellious. “Throw her through if you have to.”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  “Bet me.” Samantha stared at her for a moment. “Damn it, time’s running out! Move it.” Samantha finally nodded and moved. She could only carry one set of “ES” crates as she shuffled through the portal in a blue flash and arrived on Bellatrix. On the other side, men and women worked to move crates out of the way as fast as their tired bodies would allow. “Now, those!” Mindy pointed at the data crates.

  Mindy had managed to memorize a lot of the information about the various crates she’d used her hacked access to move around, but weight wasn’t part of it. Three of the four crates of data tablets had gone through, and the fourth was about to follow, when she saw the stencil. The identifier was ‘DT-1193’ and the weight was ’83 kilograms.’

  “Wait,” she started to say as a man and a woman attempted to pitch the fourth crate through. The result was more of a slide, as the crate was too heavy to throw. She gritted her teeth, hoping it didn’t pop open and spill its guts when it bounced off the capped-out portal. It sailed through, landed, and slid across the dais on the other side. “Wait,” she said, “what?!” She keyed her headset. “Sergeant Tall?”

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  “Those four crates that just came through? Can you tell me if the weights feel right?”

  “Uhm, sure,” he said and went over to the crate that had just come through. He grunted as he lifted one end of it. “Feels like it’s about 180 pounds,” he confirmed.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing,” she said and yelled to the panting tossers. “Throw another ‘ES’ crate!” They both shrugged, but complied. The ‘ES’ crates were lighter, about 25kg each. This one sailed through, and was caught on the other side. Oh my god, she thought, the damned weight limit was gone! “Hey Tall…damn it, I can’t keep calling you by your last name, what’s your first name?”

  “Leonard,” he said.

  “Good. Leonard, the weight restriction is gone.”

  “I thought you said…”

  “I know, I know,” she said, “I can’t explain it either.” Something you did, she thought, but shook her head. “Standby for a flurry of crates!”

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  “Improvise,” Mindy said, “improvise.” She ran toward the door, and yelled over her shoulder to the loaders, “Keep throwing crates until the portal closes!”

  * * *

  Billy was surprised, but he was used to doing what Mindy said. She’d proposed using the Bobcat to take huge scoops of crates into the dome, where it would then dump them on the dais. The problem was, they still had to move them after that. She and Jorge were going around in circles as the Bobcat came up the little hill with another load of crates. He watched the metal grating used for pathways as the Bobcat ran over it, and an idea suddenly hit him.

  “The grating!” Billy said. Mindy and Jorge stared at him with confused expressions. “The damn grating can hold the weight of the Bobcat.” Blank stares. “Shit, for a pair of logistics types you two are dense.” He found a piece of broken packing crate that was flat, long and narrow. Then he scooped up a rock. He put the rock down, and set the piece of crate on one side, letting the other side rest on the ground, forming a ramp. Then he used his hand like a kid would to mimic driving
up the ramp, making motor sounds and all. Mindy and Jorge figured it out at the same time.

  “Shit,” Mindy said.

  “Mierda,” Jorge echoed. The two looked at each other excitedly. “Like a flap-jack on a dock,” he said.

  “Bingo!” Mindy agreed, then gave Billy a quick kiss. He grinned like he’d just won the lottery.

  “Hey, you guys!” Jorge yelled to the men at the bottom of the hill, unloading a truck. “Come help us!”

  * * *

  Mindy rushed back into the dome and kept people moving through the portal. She didn’t bother having them carry a single crate. Her watch read 07:30. Any minute, she thought, but didn’t say it out loud. The last thing she needed was a panic.

  A dozen men came in with sections of muddy steel panels. She couldn’t decide what was muddier, the men or the panels. They were obviously heavy; it took six men on a side to move them. They placed the ends of two of the panels on the floor, and their other ends on the top step of the dais. Someone ran in with a sledge hammer and a handful of huge metal stakes. His hands were raw and bleeding from pulling the stakes, but he was smiling at his accomplishment.

  “Keep going through!” Mindy yelled. By the time they’d hammered the bottom edges of the panels into place, 91 people had gone through the portal, leaving 39 on their side. Jorge inspected the work, walking up and down the makeshift ramp a couple of times. He had a dozen men stand in the middle and jump up and down. It rattled, but didn’t bow. “What do you think?” Mindy asked.

  “I think it is what it is,” he said and walked to the door. He cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed, “Bring up a load!” A few seconds later, the Bobcat came churning up the hill. It just fit through the door, its bucket filled with at least a dozen crates. “Go, go, go!” Jorge yelled and pointed at the ramp. The driver eyed the makeshift construction suspiciously. Mindy saw the bloody bandage on his forearm, and realized he must have been the one wounded in the earlier attack. “Come on, puta!” Jorge snapped. The man gritted his teeth and hit the gas.

  The little front loader wasn’t quick. It lurched forward and over the bottom of the ramp, which banged loudly, then up. The dozen men hadn’t made the steel panels bend, but the Bobcat did. Mindy gritted her teeth as it bowed at least a half a foot under the weight of the machine. Then it was at the top and trundling onto the dais.

  “Careful!” Mindy yelled. “Don’t drive through the portal!” The driver waved, got more confident, and went right up to the portal. Mindy saw the surprised looks of a dozen people on Bellatrix as the driver raised the Bobcat’s bucket, angled it forward, and dumped. The crates cascaded out of the bucket with a rattle, but no crash. That crash happened 250 light years away, and she heard it through the headset, until four of the crates obliterated the transceiver on the other side. She shrugged and tossed her headset on the ground.

  “It won’t be good much longer anyway,” she said. The driver used the Bobcat’s near zero turning ratio to spin around and descend the ramp. It didn’t bend quite as far now. “How many more loads like that are there?” she asked as he went by.

  “Two or three!” he yelled over the motor. The machine smoked, making her glad a few chunks were missing from the dome. She gave him the thumbs up.

  “Hurry as best as you can,” she said. “All the rest of you,” she called to those in the portal, “bring every crate you can grab up here, and start tossing!”

  As the Bobcat came up the hill carrying its last load, the crew clung to the sides, abandoning the empty trucks. With the Bobcat, the process took 10 minutes. Two people went through the portal to keep it open. The Bobcat started loading the crates from outside when someone yelled. Mindy looked out the door to see the morning sunlight’s intensity growing quickly. She ran outside and found everyone staring up at a sky filled with neon tracers of surreal red and white.

  “It hit,” someone said, “didn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said. “About 3800 kilometers to the west,” she said and did some math. Billy came up behind her.

  “How long?” he asked.

  “Maybe 10 minutes,” she said.

  “Jesus,” he hissed.

  “Everyone except us through!” she yelled. She didn’t have to tell anyone twice, they all ran. Some grabbed a crate, most didn’t. “Can you drive that?” she asked and pointed at the Bobcat.

  “Yes,” he said, and leapt into the driver’s seat. He began slowly, trying to carefully scoop up a stack of crates.

  “Screw careful!” she yelled and went around to the front of the stack. Billy dug the edge of the bucket in and moved forward. Mindy pushed against the other side and the stack fell into the bucket.

  He maneuvered the machine with surprising agility, turning it and moving inside the dome. He drove the Bobcat up the ramp to the dais, where the last few people were jumping through the portal. On the other side, they had to climb over a huge stack of crates, as the people on the other side were too exhausted to finish clearing them away. The Bobcat loads had overwhelmed them. Billy paused at the bottom of the ramp until only Jorge remained.

  “Go,” Mindy said.

  “No,” he replied, “I help you finish.” She didn’t feel like arguing, so she swept a hand from the Bobcat to the portal.

  “Go!” Billy gunned the machine and climbed the ramp which bent more alarmingly this time. The Bobcat’s load was much larger than in the previous trips. Still, the ramp held. Billy got to the top and realized he couldn’t dump the crates through, there wasn’t room. “Tip and push,” Mindy said, and hope no one gets crushed on the other side, she added silently. Billy’s eyes grew wide, but he did it. He set the bucket on the shiny surface of the portal, angled and pushed. The crates fell through and around the portal. Several missed entirely as he hit the gas. The wheels spun and squealed, smoke coming from them as the machine fought for traction. Then it moved, and with the cracking of some of the plastic, the whole stack went through. Several crates got caught between the loader and the edge of the portal, and were cut cleanly in two, which was an alarming thing to witness.

  “Last load!” Jorge said, and leaped down, heading for the exit.

  “No time!” Mindy yelled. He stopped by the door, just as it hit. The portal dome gave a menacing groan as the earth moved. It felt like a ship rolling in the surf. A huge crack appeared across the reinforced concrete surface linking two big holes created by the earlier fighting. “Let’s go!” she yelled to Jorge. Mindy hopped over the Bobcat’s bucket, and in with Billy in the small driver’s area. There was barely enough room for him, but she somehow fit. Billy gritted his teeth as her weight crushed his arms. He had one hand on each of the joystick controllers.

  Jorge spent an extra moment looking at the pile of crates that still sat outside. “No!” Mindy yelled. The man didn’t know what was coming—what was already on the way. “Run!” He finally decided she was right and turned to run just as a massive jolt hit the city like a tidal wave of earth. The portal dome cracked, and rebar bent, and broke. A piece of the roof the size of a small car fell, and Jorge was no more. Mindy screamed, and Billy pushed the gas.

  “Hang on,” he growled as the wheels spun and smoked against the unyielding dais surface. The pile of crates on the other side of the portal must have been truly titanic for the powerful loader to not even budge it. “It won’t move!” Billy had to yell, as the planet cried out in agony. Mindy wondered if that was what it sounded like when an atomic bomb went off.

  Billy threw the loader into reverse, and Mindy panicked as he almost drove off the back of the dais. The jolts had dislodged the ramps. He stopped at the very edge, locked the brakes and hit the gas. The engine RPM jumped, and the rear drive wheels screamed. Then another jolt hit, this one so hard the whole of Manhattan seemed to do a bunny hop. The explosive destruction of many high-rise buildings a few hundred feet away temporarily subsumed the roar of the quake. He released the brake and the front loader accelerated across the dais, ramming into the pile of crates wi
th a loud banging crunch. Mindy didn’t care what irreplaceable equipment they’d just destroyed, because the pile moved a foot.

  “Do it again!” she yelled. The roar of the quake was building to a frightening intensity. Billy backed the Bobcat up again, this time more carefully, and revved the engine. Then Mindy realized she felt like she was on an elevator going up. The pressure was growing quickly, and her ears started to pop. “It’s now or never!” she cried.

  Billy released the brake. The wheels didn’t squeal this time. Mindy glanced to the side and saw half the dome collapsing. Outside, the huge, once-proud buildings of New York City were crumbling. As the loader accelerated toward the portal, the shaking increased rapidly, as did the feeling of being pulled down. The entire continental plate is rising! Mindy realized in horror.

  The loader slammed into the pile of crates, this time pressed down by the suddenly increased gravity, and blasted through. One instant they were struggling under the growing force of the North American tectonic plate expansion, the next they’d careened though the portal and into another world.

  Mindy screamed and held on to Billy as the loader spun sideways, crashed onto the ground, and slid to a stop. The sudden lack of noise was the first thing that hit her; the pain in her left arm was the second. She gasped for breath as dozens of hands were suddenly there, lifting the loader back onto its wheels, and her from the driver area.

  “Ow!” she yelled when someone touched her arm.

  “Careful, she’s hurt,” someone said.

  “Check on Billy,” she said.

  “He’s unconscious,” another person said.

  “What happened?” Samantha asked.

  “The planet,” Mindy replied, tucking her arm gently into her shirt front. She didn’t think it was broken, only strained. “The portal,” she said and moved around the smoking loader. The view of Earth was nightmarish.

  The dome was gone, and what remained of the city was visible. There were no tall buildings in evidence. She stood, her surroundings and the pain in her arm forgotten, as the world ended.