The Bridge

by Simon Winstanley

  Although Tristan had always kept the exact reason a little vague, the sub was now also equipped with a refined temperature detection array. If another ice-ring anomaly came their way, he’d be recording every last detail; anything that might help him gain better insight into the ultimate destination of his friends aboard the Sea-Bass.

  It was almost time to leave for the surface, so Tristan and Izzy walked back through the ARC’s different spheres. Occasionally, they met a few people who’d opted to stay below the surface, but for most of their journey they were alone.

  “The kit aboard the Britannia’s great,” said Izzy, “All we need to know now is where the Sea-Bass went.”

  The new information Tristan had discovered a few days ago had sent his theoretical research in a fresh direction. Having had time to review the data, he knew it was the right time to talk about their geographical assumptions.

  “Izzy, ‘where’ may be the wrong question.”

  “What do you mean?” she stopped walking.

  “You remember Marcus telling us about Douglas Walker?” Tristan checked, “Archive’s early experiments into manipulating time itself?”

  “It sounded like a story Archive might make up to deflect people’s attention.”

  “I thought the same thing,” he said, “But I’ve been going through Archive’s declassified databases.”

  He opened up a page on his computer tablet and showed her a sequence of images.

  At the centre of three electromagnetic field measuring probes, was a bright pink flower. It appeared to grow larger with each frame. Another image appeared to show someone pouring water over an invisible sphere that surrounded the flower. The final slide contained an energy distribution graph; a circle centred on the origin, with a point marked on the upper right of its circumference.

  “This,” he tapped the screen, “has a remarkable similarity to the boundary of the anomaly that the Sea-Bass encountered. An energy gradient that would be consistent with a temperature that fell below the zero K limit.”

  “Wait,” she was now studying him, “You’re saying that Walker’s theories…”

  “Weren’t theories,” he put the tablet away, “I think the atomic clock discrepancy was due to the distortion that surrounded the Sea-Bass. I don’t think that it used the same tech that was developed for the flower experiment, but I think Walker must have figured out temporal transport another way.”

  Izzy laughed, “You think that the Sea-Bass was taken somewhere in time?”

  “Relatively speaking, yes,” he replied seriously.

  “But that’s -”

  “Impossible?” he looked at her askew.

  “Or…” Izzy realised what he was driving at, “… we just don’t understand it yet.”

  Tristan placed his hands a few centimetres apart.

  “The Iseult was absent from conventional time for two seconds, but the Sea-Bass…”

  He now moved his hands further apart and waited for her to infer the meaning.

  He saw her shoulders sag.

  “It’s why the Sea-Bass hasn’t come back to find us,” she said and pointed to the gap between his hands, “They couldn’t.”

  Tristan nodded, “Their ‘jump’ is still going on. We haven’t caught up with them yet.”

  She looked away and seemed lost in her thoughts for a while.

  “We could already be part of their past,” she realised, “We might not live long enough to meet them again.”

  He’d had the chance to think through these types of hypothetical issues, but the uncomfortable thoughts were new for her. He suddenly felt the need to console her and take back everything he’d said.

  “Just theories, Iz,” he said, “Maybe it’s like Marcus says, I go looking for patterns where there aren’t any! I’m certainly not going to give up looking for them. Maybe they’ll just turn up here and I’ve got it all wrong. I -”

  “It’s very sweet of you, but you’re forgetting something,” she cupped his cheek with her hand, “I know how to read this face.”

  They walked on and passed through the empty common area. When they reached the other side, Tristan stopped to check the status of its Glaucus Ring. While he was running a network check, a thought suddenly occurred to Izzy.

  “Marcus,” she said, “We can’t tell him.”

  “O… kay,” he hesitated. The idea of concealing information from their closest friend seemed completely out of character for her.

  “I mean,” she said, “You want to find Mat and Pavna, just as much as I want to find Tessa, Noah and the others, right?”

  “Of course,” he said, “I’m not giving up on them.”

  “Neither is Marcus,” she said, “It’s important that he keeps searching for Sabine. We can’t take that away from him.”

  “He may work it out though,” Tristan pointed out.

  “Yes,” she admitted, “but we have to let him work through it in his own time.”

  “OK,” he said, “We can keep an eye on him together.”

  “But we’re both leaving on the -”

  “Broxbourne asked for the Britannia crew manifest,” Tristan shrugged and showed her the tablet’s screen, “So I added Marcus.”

  “But you haven’t even asked him!” Izzy looked shocked.

  “It just seemed like the right thing to do,” he shrugged, “If I’m wrong, it’s easy enough to alter the list. But at least this way he’ll have the choice.”

  Although Marcus had told them he had a few last-minute things to do, they knew that most people were already heading up to the surface. The beach would offer the best place to witness Siva’s impact with the lunar debris ring. If Marcus wasn’t there already, he soon would be.

  “OK,” Izzy smiled, “Let’s go and ask him.”

  THE CHOICE

  When Marcus arrived at the calibration room, Robert Wild was busy adjusting an elasticated band around his head. Wires trailed off it and ran behind a multitude of displays.

  Marcus gave a discreet cough to announce himself.

  “Hey!” Robert pulled the band from his head and turned off one of the screens, “Come in! Surprised you’re not already up top with everyone else.”

  “A few last-minute things to do,” Marcus admitted and pointed at the equipment, “What about you? I thought you were all done with the Cryo stuff?”

  “Eleventh hour inspiration,” Robert tapped the side of his head, “There’ll be a few exceptions, but most people will now get an eighty percent alignment with their original calibration recording.”

  Marcus whistled. From what he understood of the process, this would mean an ultra-stable hibernation state; no degradation of the body and a sleep state tailored to the individual’s mental landscape.

  “Sounds like heaven,” Marcus complimented him on his work.

  It was fleeting, but Robert appeared to hesitate for a fraction of a second.

  “Absolutely,” he smiled, “People can get the eternal bliss that they deserve.”

  For some reason Marcus found himself thinking of Bradley again; someone who did not deserve a sleeping life of bliss. Before he could raise the subject, Robert made his way over to a cluttered desk.

  “I think…” he began searching through piles of paper and computing tablets, “it was something in your data that gave me the idea.”

  “You’re welcome,” Marcus frowned, “I guess.”

  Robert gave up searching his desk.

  “It came up time and time again,” he said, “An almost avian reaction that bordered on desensitivity to the drop reflex.”

  Marcus shook his head, “You wanna try that again?”

  Robert thought for a moment.

  “You don’t fear the falls.”

  “Yeah, that does not sound like me!” he laughed, “Maybe check the wiring.”

  Robert smiled but didn’t reply. Instead, he opened a bulky-looking packing case and began sorting through its alphabetically arranged contents.

  “There’s
only a few of these things left to give out now,” Robert continued his search.

  “Listen,” Marcus began, “I… I’m not going into hibernation… Bad experience.”

  Robert’s shoulders dropped and he looked at the calibration chair at the side of the room, “How much of it do you remember?”

  “Almost nothing now,” he lied as his eyes welled up, “Just a feeling of being alone.”

  “You know,” Robert shook his head slowly, “the Cryo unit won’t be anything like that.”

  “Even so…” he shrugged, “Think I’m gonna keep it… er, real.”

  “Listen,” Robert looked down at the floor, “I know your time in the chair was about as much fun as a dental surgery in the dark, but you should know something.”

  “What?”

  “Your data response to the calibration sleep was the most detailed I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen everybody’s,” he picked out a black, palm-sized hexagon from the packing case, “Your personal Cryotrace, is a work of …”

  “Art?” Marcus completed with a grin.

  “I was going to say… clarity.”

  “Clarity’s good,” Marcus agreed; the blue inhaler in his pocket had, at various times, given him much-needed clarity.

  Robert held out the chip for him to take, “Just in case you change your mind.”

  Very soon, Siva would make its impact with the lunar debris. Once more, the world he’d known was about to change.

  Marcus looked at the simple black hexagon. Even if he took it, it didn’t mean he had to use it right now; he could use it to hibernate later.

  The choice would be his.

  He took the chip and put it in his pocket.

  “OK,” he smiled, “Just in case.”

  .[>>> -]

  SEPARATION

  Mat already knew what Pavna was going to say.

  “I think we need to split up,” she said.

  He’d been dreading the words, but he knew she was right. It would be pointless trying to argue that they should stick together. Their situation was not going to get any easier.

  “OK,” he sighed, “What about the kid?”

  “I don’t think that Sabine will even consider separation,” said Pavna, “so she’ll have to come along too.”

  Mat lowered his voice, “You realise the problem would go away if Sabine just waited here?”

  Pavna looked at him with incredulity.

  Again he knew that she was right. When the decision was made to take the Sea-Bass to Pico Island, Sabine had been among the first to volunteer. There was no way that she would simply sit this one out.

  Mat sighed and brought up the ARC section diagrams on the Sea-Bass’ surface display.

  “If we’re going to split up,” he arranged the plans across the screen, “we should work out the teams.”

  Pavna picked up the handset and pushed the button. A brief tone sounded throughout the submarine, then Pavna made the announcement.

  “Paging Lucy Jacobs, Tessa Locke and Noah Broadstone to the control room.”

  Mat looked out of the bubble-like forward window. At this depth the seawater was almost black, but suspended within the Sea-Bass’ searchlights was the distinctive cluster of the ARC’s submerged spheres.

  He suppressed a shiver. After so many years away, he was finally coming home.

  It wasn’t the welcome he’d been expecting. But, as he would be the first to admit, the threshold for what counted as ‘normal’ had changed several years ago. In the space of a single day, the Sea-Bass crew had encountered a ring-shaped ice anomaly, rescued people from an underground survival village, and met with astronauts and Iceland exiles.

  Normal, it seemed, was relative.

  Within a few minutes, the others had arrived and gathered around the surface display. Lucy had always been a crew member but Tessa and Noah, both evacuees from the Dover USV, were more recent additions.

  Lucy pointed to the ARC plans on the surface display.

  “As far as I can tell, only two spheres have lost pressure, but the Glaucus fail-safe activated, protecting the adjoining units.”

  “I’m new to this,” Noah pointed at the plans, “but how do you know the ARC isn’t just flooded?”

  “A piece of old-school Westhouse tech,” she glanced at Pavna, “The visual pressure markers are still in place.”

  She brought up an image of a small, transparent cylinder on the surface of one of the ARC’s spheres.

  “If there’s air pressure inside, these markers stay popped out. It’s why we know that the secondary airlock is safe.”

  “So that’s where we’re going in?” said Tessa.

  Mat nodded.

  “Assuming there isn’t a massive welcome party to greet us with a ticker tape parade, we’ll need to get to the central control room as quick as possible,” he rescaled the plan to focus on their entry point, “Pavna and I know the ARC layout, so we’ll take two different routes to get there.”

  “Why not just go together?” said Noah.

  “Because we’ll cover the ground faster,” Tessa’s eyes were rapidly scanning the plans.

  “Noah,” said Pavna, “You’ll be with me.”

  “Tessa,” Mat followed on, “You’re with me, Sabine and her daughter.”

  “What about you, Lucy?” said Tessa.

  “If everything’s fine,” she replied, “I’ll follow you in. Until then, I’ll be making sure we can make a swift exit.”

  “Good to know,” said Noah.

  Lucy cleared the surface screen and accessed a second set of controls.

  “Fai, can you hear me?”

  “Yes, Lucy,” came the reply through the display’s speaker.

  “Is the transfer program ready?”

  “Yes, would you like me to initiate the process?”

  “Not yet,” said Lucy, “Probably best that we save their power until we’re ready to enter the facility.”

  “I concur.”

  Mat saw that Noah had his arms folded and one of his fingers twitched repetitively.

  “Something on your mind, Noah?”

  “I know this is your home… It’s just the thought of entering another space like the USV,” he shook his head, “I just hope the ARC will be… better.”

  “I’m sure that it’ll soon feel like home,” Mat couldn’t resist the opportunity, “You’ll soon be calling it Noah’s ARC.”

  Noah couldn’t help smiling, but Pavna groaned in dismay.

  “So glad I’m on the other team,” she turned to Tessa, “Good luck not hitting him.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Mat smiled, “Do you?”

  Pavna walked around the display surface to face him.

  “No,” she kissed him, “Just stay out of trouble.”

  “You too,” he said, “I mean it, Pav.”

  REC

  The laptop’s camera continued to record.

  Marcus raised his middle finger at the lens. Even with his best efforts, he found he couldn’t keep a straight face. Despite the fact that the world had been falling apart around them, they’d always found ways to make each other smile.

  He still missed Sabine, but he knew that today’s recording was a special one. Feeling his smile fading, he looked at the hexagonal chip on the work surface in front of him and continued speaking to the camera.

  “You know, I kept imagining the conversations we’d have when we met up again,” he considered his time in the calibration chair, “Some of them seemed so real. Like you were actually here with me.”

  He shook his head to clear the thought. He’d talked through his experience with sufficient numbers of people to know that he shouldn’t dwell on the torture he’d endured. He knew he had to focus on things he could change.

  He looked at the lens and sighed.

  “Gotta get back out there…” he looked in the direction of the door, “… you know… take care of those who need us. Help shape the world into somethin’ better.”

  Over the pa
st year, they’d helped so many people. Along the way they’d found people with genetic changes, some having no connection to Bishop’s list at all. It now seemed completely ridiculous that Archive could once have hoped to maintain their control.

  “Archive had it so wrong,” he shook his head, “They were trying to keep everything the way it was. Wrapping it up and protecting it from change… You can’t do that… You’ve gotta go with the chaos. Adapt to it. Live it.”

  He looked away from the camera for a moment. This was proving harder than he thought.

  TRANSFER

  Taking her daughter by the hand, Sabine walked across the lower deck of the Sea-Bass docking room.

  Although she herself was used to the vibrations of the metallic mesh flooring, it was still a novelty for Ebony. Every step was therefore an opportunity for her daughter to jump between squares and make loud, reverberating echoes bounce off the walls.

  The others in the away party were already gathered and turned to see the source of the noise; their expressions shifting to broad smiles of greeting when they saw her three-year-old’s antics.

  “There she is!” Tessa beamed, “Ça va Ebony?”

  “Good thank… you,” the childish voice came from behind Sabine’s leg.

  As the polite claps of encouragement petered out, they continued their preparations and Lucy approached.

  “All set Sabine?”

  “Yes,” she replied and added a relatively new phrase, “Good to go.”

  Lucy nodded, “Great.”

  The others became quieter and took a step back from the circular Glaucus airlock mounted in the floor of the deck.

  “At least we won’t need to take a Pod down,” said Mat, “It’s short enough to use the access ladder.”

  He pressed a button that was recessed into the floor and the door spiralled open like the iris of an old camera, exposing the short airlock beneath.