by Jake Bible
“That’s perfect,” Ivy said. “Nice shooting.”
“I can only take credit for half that work,” Mike said. “Brain programmed the shredhawks to be efficient killers since we couldn’t risk any winged visitors getting loose Topside.”
Brain.
Ivy hadn’t thought about the artificial intelligence program that had been the heart of Topside Industries dominance of Flipside for a long while. Brain had been instrumental, along with Dr. Lakshmi Lawrence, Raff’s wife, in stopping the chaotic Turns of the time bubbles that had threatened to destroy Topside and Flipside. Lakshmi and Brain had orchestrated a shorting out of the Wyoming Bubble, which resulted in all of the time bubbles shorting out and disappearing.
That meant everyone in the past was stuck in the past until Lakshmi, in the future, figured out how to get the bubbles working again without risk of destroying the planet in either timeline.
Which made studying the new time bubbles even more crucial. There was a chance they were showing up because of Lakshmi’s doing and if that was the case, then there might be clues as to how everyone Flipside could get back home to their proper time.
For Ivy, though, it was the rescuing of Lewis and her team that was her first priority. Yes, she felt a deep responsibility to confirm whether or not the new time bubble actually existed, and if it did, whether or not it was going to be a good thing or bad thing for everyone Flipside. But, more than that, Ivy was Head of Security and despite Lewis’s dual role as one of the lead techs and Bloom’s second-in-command with the Australians, Lewis and her team were operators and Ivy was duty and honor bound to make sure they made it back to base safe and alive.
Ivy didn’t hear the buzz of the shredhawks returning to formation over the speed rollers, but she caught the movement of the drones out of the corner of her eye and returned all of her attention to what was outside the speed roller’s windshield.
Grasslands. The never-ending rolling grasslands that their part of the continent held for kilometer after kilometer after kilometer.
For many of the international operators, their environments had been tropical, with towering palms and ferns everywhere. Jungle vines choked the landscape and flowers of questionable intent bloomed throughout. Waterfalls, hot springs, grand cliffs overlooking seas filled with creatures more massive than anything the land could hold. From Australia to China to even the European bubbles, the flora had been incredibly diverse.
Not in the Wyoming Bubble.
Grasslands. Vast savannas that stretched from horizon to horizon, broken up only by the beginnings of what would become the Rocky Mountains. Even the geologists and paleontologists that first visited Flipside had been surprised. Yes, there were pockets of prehistoric forests here and there, and even a couple waterfalls and spring-fed lagoons, but those were rare and abandoned as viable locations for where Flipside FOB could be built. Tyrel Thompson wanted the base in the middle of the grasslands so nothing could sneak up on his crowning achievement. He wanted three hundred and sixty-degree visibility.
The man didn’t have his company spend billions of dollars to dominate the past only to have his creation destroyed by a sneak attack from out of the foliage. Not to mention the rate that the vines grew. They were like kudzu on meth. Even a summer in Atlanta paled in comparison to how fast the vines grew and strangled anything they could get ahold of in Flipside.
So…grasslands.
“Should be a small lake up over the other side of that hill there,” Cosio said, nodding to their one o’clock. “Might make a good spot to set up camp for the night.”
“We still have six hours of daylight,” Ivy said. “We push on and sleep in the rollers.”
“Lakes bring herbivores,” Cosio pressed. “Herds of herbivores. And herds of herbivores keep packs of teeth at bay. The predators wait and pick off the weak ones once the herds move on back out into the plains. They stay away from the lakes while the herbivores have the numbers.”
“And the herbivores are getting used to our presence,” Ivy said. “Which makes them just as dangerous. These rollers have armor that keep teeth and wingers out, but a few collisions from a pissed-off Triceratops mama thinking she needs to defend her babies can destroy an axle in seconds.”
“Copy that,” Cosio said. “Pushing on, it is.”
They drove and drove until the sun began to set before them. Cosio dimmed the glass in the windshield and the horizon turned into a palette of warm watercolors.
“The place may want to kill us all, but it sure is beautiful while it does,” Cosio said, the first words any of them had spoken in a long while.
“No shit,” Ivy said, appreciating the beauty of the view. She activated comms. “As soon as the sun is down, we pull over and get some sleep. Blumhouse has first watch, followed by Morgan, Cosio, DeLuca then me. Understood?”
Everyone replied they understood and Ivy went back to appreciating the glowing horizon.
Six
Corporal Pytor Kasinov was twenty-six years old, but he felt decades older as he sat with his back to the Russian speed roller, his eyes watching the flames of the campfire flicker and reach up into the night’s sky. His belly was heavy, but so was his heart.
To the expectant faces, he told his story.
If the Flipside operators had reached them only a couple days earlier, the love of his life may have survived. Instead, Corporal Oleg Lebedev had succumbed to dehydration brought on by a severe bought of dysentery. His grave was two clicks back. Pytor had dragged the body that far himself to keep scavengers from getting close to their roller, which was all they had between them and the savagery of Flipside.
Savagery of Flipside.
In Russian, the name they had for the past was not Flipside, but translated to Savageside. They were a people that knew extreme danger and hardship when they saw it, especially within the bubble that had appeared inside their borders. No grassland prairies broken up by small, rolling hills. The Russian bubble had contained geologic upheaval and plenty of monstrous nightmares filled with teeth.
Despite the immense dangers, that geologic upheaval was also a plus for the Russians. Veins of precious metals and valuable ore weren’t kilometers below the surface of the earth, but sitting right there, only a few meters worth of digging away. Despite the international accord that forbid the exploitation of the past’s natural resources, Russia had immediately gone to work on mining everything they possibly could from their time bubble.
And when those resources were close to depleted, they set their sights on other time bubbles. For the Russians, the past was like the New World, ripe for the taking even though other countries had laid claim. The continents of Topside didn’t exist in the Russian Savageside, so why would international borders count? Who could say where a border truly began and ended when the land was not even remotely the same in both times?
An easy justification for the Russians to make in order to carry out the attacks on other Flipside bases. And being a true Russian patriot, Pytor had believed those justifications with all his heart. Even after the bubbles collapsed and the Russian forces were stranded Savageside. Even after the combots never returned from their attack on Flipside FOB and the Americans’ hold on the past. Even after tech began to malfunction at an alarming rate.
Pytor was a true patriot to his core.
Then the sickness came.
In the beginning, it was only a cough here and there. Some sniffly noses and a few low-grade fevers. Nothing unusual for Savageside. Everyone caught a little bug now and again despite the constant rounds of inoculations they were given. Whether in 2046 or over a hundred million years in the past, allergies could not be stopped. Flowers bloomed, pollen floated, people coughed and sneezed.
But the coughing and sneezing changed as the Russians crossed the vast and deadly ocean to get to the West Coast of what would one day be North America. The shipbuilders had figured out how to shield the ship’s engines from not only the destructive nature of Savageside, but also from the de
tection of the monsters of the deep that were easily two to three times the size of the Russian ships. While the international coalition that was fleeing the Russian attacks had to rely on steam power and sails to move their ships across the water, the Russians had corrected the issue of the frequencies modern engines put out, frequencies that attracted the monsters of the deep.
Yet, technological innovation aside, the Russians were doomed before they hit the shore. Whatever virus had managed to infect a few of the crew had treated the confined spaces of the ships as incubators to mutate and become something far more dangerous and deadly than any of the hundred-ton beasts that lurked in the waters below the ships.
Over sixty percent of the Russian personnel were dead by the time the ships made it to the west coast and docked at the port the international coalition had abandoned for the safety of the interior and Flipside BOP.
Sixty percent.
The Russians departed the ships and sent them floating back out to sea, all set aflame in hopes that whatever pestilence was still aboard would die by fire. Those were silly hopes made by desperate men and women that already saw their fates.
Another ten percent were dead by week’s end. Ten percent more by month’s end.
The Russian personnel left set off from the port and headed east, leaving burning mounds of dead behind them.
“Excuse me,” Dr. Xipan interrupted. “I apologize, but whose idea was it to burn the infected bodies?”
Pytor, his mind lost in the past horrors, had to blink a few times at the woman before he realized she was speaking to him and expected an answer.
“Oh, I do not know,” Pytor said in English. “There were so many that digging graves was too time-consuming. Those of us spared by the plague were ready to leave and seek help. Leaving the bodies to rot felt…wrong.”
“Where were the doctors?” Dr. Xipan asked. “Were there no medical professionals there to warn of the dangers of turning infected bodies to ash and that ash becoming airborne? Many viruses cannot be killed by fire and instead end up infecting others when the ash is breathed in.”
Pytor blinked in the firelight, his eyes brimming with tears.
“Back off, Doc,” Raff said. “This guy didn’t make any of that shit happen. He’s a fucking corporal and had zero say.”
“That is true,” Pytor responded, his gaze shifting to the sleeping form of the wounded Lieutenant Yvgeny Poylatova. “Even the lieutenant could not have stopped the burning. Not with Colonel Petrov in charge.”
“Petrov?” Barbara asked. “Colonel Igor Petrov?”
“Yes, that is him,” Pytor said and nodded. “You have heard of him?”
“Oh, I’ve heard of him,” Barbara replied. She gave the others a worried look. “Comes from a long line of oligarchs. Ruthless reputation. Rumor has it he had his own uncle killed because of debts the man was incurring using Petrov’s reputation and connections.”
“He left the man naked and alone a hundred kilometers from any city or village,” Pytor said, nodding in agreement with Barbara. “Colonel Petrov would say that nature killed his uncle. He smiled when he said that. It was a favorite story of his to tell.”
“Christ,” Cash responded. “And he’s the guy leading the Russians to attack Flipside BOP?”
“Yes,” Pytor said. “But it will not be a military attack.”
“Uh, what other attack is there?” Raff asked.
“Biological,” Dr. Xipan said. “With the Russians comes sickness. And sickness spreads.”
All eyes fell on Pytor then the sleeping Yvgeny.
The group was deadly quiet until Haskins said, “With the Russians come sickness. Great…”
“No, no, we are not infected!” Pytor exclaimed as he lurched up onto his feet, his hands out, pleading for mercy. “We are immune! All those left are immune! The virus cannot live in us! Please!”
“Calm down, Pytor,” Barbara said. She gave Cash a hard look and he nodded. “No one here is going to hurt you.”
“They could be carriers,” Dr. Xipan said.
“We are not!” insisted Pytor. “Both Yvgeny and I were tested. Same with the rest of our comrades. Clean. We are clean.”
“Then why leave?” Cash asked, his hand close to his rifle, his eyes burrowing holes in Pytor. “What are you doing here? You said Petrov was coming from the west. You’re coming from the southeast.”
“I… I do not know how we got here,” Pytor said. “We were scouts. Out a day ahead of everyone else. We encountered…trouble. All sense of direction was lost and we found ourselves impossibly off course.”
“What kind of trouble?” Raff asked.
“A different landscape,” Pytor answered. “Upheaval that we had not seen before. The ground would split open and boiling geysers would erupt without warning. Animals and beasts we did not know. Dangerous beasts. Swamps. Jungles. So much that should not have been where we were. We tried to backtrack, but we encountered more and more of the impossible. Then we finally drove out into these grasslands and were so thankful. That was when our vehicle broke down.”
“Tell us about it,” Raff said. “Flipside ain’t no friend of modern tech.”
“It is not the tech,” Pytor said.
“What?” Raff asked.
“The tech is not the issue. Time is,” Pytor said. He sat down, but was still visibly wary and agitated. “Time does not like technology that does not belong to it. That is why all vehicles and equipment eventually stop working in the Savageside. Even our combots. Time does not want technology to work.”
“That’s an interesting theory,” Dr. Xipan mused.
“A fucking frightening theory,” Haskins muttered.
“What frightens me is these damn new time bubbles,” Raff said. “Ground splitting open? Boiling geysers? Dangerous beasts. Shit, guys, this place sucked before…”
“Hold on,” Cash said. “You said you were scouting ahead of the others, right?”
“Yes,” Pytor replied.
“You were coming from the west?”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“But you ran into trouble and ended up coming from the southeast,” Cash said.
“They drove into a time bubble, Tre,” Raff said. “Cut the guy some slack, will ya?”
“What? No, I’m not getting on him,” Cash said. “What I can’t wrap my head around is how they moved. For as long as the bubbles have been around, west is west and east is east. You head west in one time and you’ll be heading west in the other time. They moved, Raff.”
Everyone stiffened as realization hit them.
“The new bubbles aren’t just transporting through time, but through space,” Dr. Xipan said, verbalizing what everyone was thinking. “This is not good.”
“Come on,” Haskins said. “Like being stuck here wasn’t bad enough. Like losing my arm wasn’t bad enough. Like the idea there’s some super virus wiping people out wasn’t bad enough. Like tech crashing all the time wasn’t—”
“We get it, Haskins,” Cash snapped. “This is bad.”
“Do you think the bubbles are moving from location to location?” Barbara asked. “Or can you enter one bubble and come out the side of another bubble across the globe?”
“I think that’s now what we’re here to find out,” Cash said. “Pytor? How far back was the edge of the bubble you came out of?”
“Came out of?” Pytor asked, confused.
“Yes,” Cash pressed. “The one you escaped with all the geysers and dangerous beasts. A few kilometers? A dozen or more?”
“I do not understand,” Pytor said.
“Is something getting lost in the translation here?” Cash asked Dr. Xipan. “Can you translate for me?”
“Translation is not the problem,” Pytor said. “Your understanding of where you are is the problem. Operator Cash, is it?”
“Yeah,” Cash replied.
“We did not exit a bubble,” Pytor continued. “We entered one. We are inside a bubble right now. As are you
. Outside the perimeter is a wild world made of nightmares.”
“Outside the bubble we’re in…” Cash echoed. “Well…fuck.”
“Exactly!” Haskins said and threw his one hand up in the air. “I fucking hate this place!”
***
The night landscape was nothing but pure blackness that stretched in every direction. Ivy stared into that blackness, her mind wandering as she failed at sleep in the speed roller’s cab. Cosio was up top, her turn for watch, and Ivy knew she should have been asleep so she could be more alert for her turn at watch. But the wandering mind would not rest so she sat upright, her back against the driver’s side door, and studied the nothing that went on and on forever.
Then confusion crept into that wandering mind.
Ivy sat up straighter then leaned forward. The speed roller’s nose was pointing west, which meant the passenger window, which Ivy was staring out of, should have been pointing north. Except that Ivy could swear she saw the sun rising.
“Cosio?” Ivy called over the comms. “What time is sunrise?”
“Still got a couple hours, boss,” Cosio replied immediately. “I’m taking it you’re seeing that glow to the north.”
“You see it too?”
“I see it. It appeared about fifteen minutes ago. Been watching it through my scope.”
“What do you see?”
“Jack shit. Too far away for any details. I’d guess it’s a grass fire. Certainly ain’t the sun coming up.”
“Want to go take a look?” Ivy asked, shifting from the driver’s seat to the passenger’s seat. “How about you hop down and we go for a drive.”
“Over a grass fire?”
“Might be more than a grass fire. I want to know for sure.”
“Lewis’ team is west, boss. That glow is north.”
“I understand that, Cosio. Still want to check it out.”
“Okay,” Cosio replied. “Let me stow the .50 cal and wake the others.”
“I’ll wake the others, you just get your ass back in the driver’s seat,” Ivy said.
“Copy that.”
“Wake up, people!” Ivy shouted into the comms. “Time to move!”
