The Bridge Chronicles Trilogy

by Gary Ballard

  Quickly glancing to either side for onlookers, he pulled out the pistol and cocked it. One shot sounded thunderous in the emptiness of the dome, but it did the job. The window cracked enough for Bridge to finish the job with a well-placed kick. Using the gun butt to clear the rest of the glass, he reached in, undid the latch and climbed carefully through the window.

  The electricity still hummed along like the other buildings he’d seen in the city. Bridge searched the room hungrily, snatching a bag of chips from a shelf overlooking a cluttered desk. Opening the mini-fridge revealed only a sparse assortment of vegan food and bottled water. “Fucking kids these days,” he grumbled. “Where’s the beer?” He was sorely disappointed in the room’s former occupants. He ignored the water and munched on the chips while pilfering the room, scoring a few more credit ID’s.

  Done with his search, he opened the door and peered up and down the hall carefully. The hinges squeaked too loudly, echoing down the empty hallway with enough volume to make him flinch. Seeing no pursuit, he began a thorough room to room search of the hall. The third mini-fridge he raided contained a stash of the sought-after golden elixir. It was a cheap brew, the kind college students drank because they couldn’t afford the good stuff, but at least these students had had sense enough to make sure it was absolutely ice cold. Bridge popped the top on the can and drained it with zeal, pulling another to carry with him along the way. The frigid liquid gave him a brain freeze and he felt the slightest hint of a buzz building. The bed next to the fridge beckoned to him with the promise of much-needed rest, but he resisted the urge. As fucked up as this place was, he’d likely wake up with three pissed-off bears fussing over his body, ready to revenge Bridge’s theft of their beer.

  By the time his search had reached the last door on the east side of the building, it was necessary to switch on the light to dispel the rapidly gathering gloom. It was only after minutes of searching the room that it occurred to him how unnaturally dark it had gotten. He could see the afternoon shadow of the building stretching out on the ground, inching too quickly forward. He had not noticed the quality of light before, but seeing the shadows now reminded him of those old time-lapse photography films of plants growing. It wasn’t quite noticeable at first glance but careful observation confirmed it. The sun was moving impossibly fast towards the western horizon. On the shelf to his right directly at eye level, a digital clock blinked, the numbers cycling through their sequence at breakneck speed. Time was almost literally flying past him.

  He tried to connect his jack wirelessly to the GlobalNet. He could feel a definite connection, but where the GlobalNet’s data stream should have been was only the void. He couldn’t check the actual time from the GlobalNet, so he tried to trace his steps back to his entry into the dome. He had left Carl at the entrance at somewhere around 1 or 2 in the morning, yet the dome’s interior was bathed in early morning sunlight. He had perhaps walked 20 minutes, spent another 20 in the house before stealing the car. The ride had been interrupted by ghosts perhaps five minutes after it began, and he had spent another 30 minutes walking from there to his current location. In all, he’d spent no more than two hours under the dome, and yet he could swear it was now as late as 4:30 or 5 o’clock.

  While he pondered the issue of time, his eye caught something in the distance, something moving. He could see it above the red-tiled roof of the residence hall to the northeast, floating probably 50 feet in the air. Bridge blinked two, three times, trying hard to comprehend what he was seeing. “The fuck…” he stammered. His mind could not comprehend what his eyes confirmed. Floating there effortlessly stood the figure of a man.

  *****

  Bridge’s legs began to move before his mind could work out the details. He bolted from the room and around the corner, slamming through the locked door at the bottom of the stairwell and out into the fading light. He barely noticed the fenced area covered in beach sand and volleyball nets. He was past the other residence hall before he even knew it. Bridge kept his eyes locked on the flying figure, expecting it to dissolve into ghostly nothingness any minute.

  The road he’d crossed earlier curled around northwards past the second residence hall, and beyond that were three open sports fields along the eastern side of the road, bounded by a line of boulders that followed the street’s curvature. Towers of arc lights had just exploded into life, outlining the fields with pools of light. The man hovered over the northernmost field, and as Bridge rounded the curve, he caught sight of other figures on the field, oblivious to the flying impossibility above them. In fact, the figures on the field were playing soccer. Bridge pulled up short in disbelief.

  A full game of 11-a-side soccer was in progress under the watchful eye of the flying man. Bridge wanted to run, to join the group, his desperate loneliness drawing him to the crowd. He so hated to be without a pressing mass of people around him that his natural inclination was to immediately join any crowd regardless of the potential danger. He forced his pace to a walk, wiping the sweat from his brow. His natural paranoia made him double-check the gun tucked into the back of his waistband.

  Every step closer brought the scene into more stark detail. He eyed the figures in the distance closely, and to his relief they were not ghosts. He didn’t feel stable enough to deal with another set o anrwellf phantoms. Bridge guessed the flier was about 5”9”, though it was hard to judge his size with only the sky to measure him against. He was wiry thin, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt with some slogan on the front made up of mathematical symbols Bridge could not decipher. The man looked Chinese, with spiky black hair and olive skin, likely a few years younger than Bridge. He was furiously waving his arms at the players like a maestro conducting a symphony.

  Bridge scanned the football players. From a distance, they appeared normal, but on closer inspection, they were nowhere near normal. He recognized the uniforms they wore almost immediately, the familiar reds of Liverpool facing off against the white kit of rival Manchester United. The players’ skin shined in the sunlight, but not from natural perspiration. In fact, their skin was a patchwork quilt of metallic detritus. As he reached the near touchline, he realized that the players weren’t human at all. They were walking Frankenstein constructs, made of bits of scrap metal and car parts. Every movement they made was accompanied by the faint sounds of twisting metal. The flying man’s excited gesticulations matched the player’s movements as if he was the puppet master Geppetto directing two teams of Pinocchios.

  None of the figures noticed Bridge’s approach. He stood watching the game in silent awe for minutes, until the United team slotted a silky header into the goal. The flying maestro cursed loudly. Bridge yelled up at the man, “Ummm, hello?”

  The flier screamed in shock, and gestured at Bridge as if throwing a baseball. Bridge’s eyes grew wide as a ball of blue fire erupted from the ends of the man’s fingers and he dove to the side just in time to avoid the explosion that engulfed the spot he’d vacated. Bridge rolled and tried to pull the gun out of his pants, but it had fallen to the ground in the awkward motion. He threw his arms out, palms forward in a gesture of empty-handed peace.

  “Whoa, whoa! Hold it, hold it! I’m not here to hurt you!” Bridge marveled at the idea that he could harm a guy who’d just tossed a fireball at him.

  “Who are you?” the flier screamed in response, his left hand held out in preparation for another fireball. Bridge could see tiny arcs of blue flame hopping from the man’s fingers. “No one is supposed to be here! Can’t you see I’m trying to run a simulation? You ruined it! I’m going to have to start over!” The clatter of collapsing metal filled the air as the soccer players crumpled to the ground. Something grabbed Bridge, an invisible hand that pinned his arms to his side and lifted him off the ground like a rag doll. The flying man’s right hand gripped air and as he raised the hand, Bridge was pulled into the air to levitate at the flying man’s feet.

  *****

  Chapter 15

  November 7, 2028

 
Time Unknown

  Bridge hung with his arms pinned to his side staring at the angry Chinese man floating above him. He wasn’t sure whether to be afraid or laugh hysterically. Other than the blue sparks dancing from the man’s fingers, the flier was almost comically non-threatening. His spiky hair was matted and unkempt, his skinny human arm probably couldn’t bend a wet noodle and his clothes gave him the appearance of a college nerd. Nevertheless, Bridge recognized the dangers of whatever invisible force this little geek was using to hold Bridge captive. Once he’d realized his predicament, Bridge stopped struggling completely and played possum. “Calm down there, dude,” Bridge quipped nonchalantly. “My name is Bridge.”

  “You’re named after a bridge?” The kid’s brows knotted in confusion.

  “No, my name IS Bridge. Artemis Bridge.” The name didn’t seem to provoke any sort of reaction. “Come on, surely you were told I was coming. Carl said you were waiting for me. Are you Balfour? He told me to go see Balfour.”

  The name-dropping seemed to confuse the kid even more. His hands relaxed a little. Bridge felt the vice group loosen on his arms enough for him to wiggle his hand free. “Carl… sent you? To see Balfour?”

  Bridge shrugged. “Well, that’s what he said. I’m supposed to ask Balfour all my questions, and boy do I have a bunch. What’s your name? You already know mine so how’s about you tell me your name and we put me down.”

  “Wong,” the kid said absentmindedly. “Quon Wong.” He seemed to come to some kind of decision, tightening his metallic fist. Immediately, Bridge felt the constricting grip close on his ribs, choking some of the breath from his lungs. “You’re lying!”

  Bridge squeezed out, “WONG, WONG! I swear… Carl… the fucking… flame dragon… sent me to see… some guy named… Balfour!”

  “Carl’s dead! We heard his last transmission. This is a trick! Who are you really?”

  “I’m… FUCKING… BRIDGE… GODDAMNIT! The dragon… sent me! He said only I could come through… the bubble… it was… set to allow… just me... how am I… going to… fake that?”

  That gave Wong pause, and Bridge felt the vice loosen slightly again. “I swear I’m Artemis Bridge. You’ve been sending me signals over my jack for five days.”

  “Hold on,” Wong snapped. The flames on his fingertips were extinguished as he made a flourish with his left hand. A dual-sided screen of data popped into view in the air above Bridge. He could see the mug shot he’d taken in ’26. Wong compared Bridge’s face with the mug shot, squinting and scrutinizing the grainy black and white photo. “That photo doesn’t flatter you. You should ha Yo. Wong ve been here days ago.” The grip was now loose enough for Bridge to move, and his stomach lurched a little as the invisible hand seemed to cradle his rear end in a floating invisible chair. “Carl told us you were coming three days before those bastards killed him.”

  “Three days?” Bridge asked incredulous. “Dude, I just saw him two hours ago. At least I think it was two hours ago. It was nighttime when I left him, and it’s daytime now, so I’m really losing track of time here, but it feels like two hours. Maybe three.”

  *****

  “I know, I have to turn the lights on and off all the time,” Wong complained. “I have to pause the simulation every time I do that, and it’s really interfering with my work. I tried to set a timer on the lights but it kept getting reset. The physics engine alone is enough to take up most of my cycles, and I can’t squash this glitch with the crosses from the left corner. The fullbacks want to follow the cross in rather than try to block it, but I think I have the subroutine located.”

  “The simulation? You mean that freak show of metal men you got running around tearing up the pitch down there?”

  “Frikkin’ awesome, ain’t it? I can alter the metal’s surface to put whatever kits I want on them, and I’m using the latest FIFA player rankings to set play characteristics, with my own special tweaks, of course, ‘cos those Man. U. rankings are way overrated. I thought about trying to put down an artificial surface to keep from tearing up the grass but then I’d have to alter my ball physics to work like grass, so just keep grass, you know what I mean?”

  “Whoa, whoa, man, you’re losing me. Focus.” He waved a hand in front of Wong’s face to fix the kid’s eyes on him. “How many of there are you?”

  “There’s me, obviously, and then there’s Balfour, you know about him, and then there was Carl but he was out there until he got killed and there’s Lydia and Janicki and that douche Rolfsberg. You don’t want to meet him.” Bridge was already tiring of Wong’s chattering. The kid had a horrible case of the motormouth, and most of it was a blithering spew that seemed to come from some other dimension, ideas sparking into words with little thought behind them. Just as Bridge was ready to cut the geek off, he was interrupted by the squealing of tires.

  A car had sped up to the field and stopped suddenly, disgorging three figures. The driver was a tall Nordic-looking blonde man with a stern, square chin and short, tightly curled hair. He wore a white jacket that looked like some kind of lab coat. The front passenger was a slightly stocky woman with close-cropped auburn hair dressed in dark slacks and a conservative silk blouse. From the back seat stood a towering bald man with a gray goatee dressed in a black button-up shirt and black jeans. All three appeared to have at least one arm that was cybernetic.

  “Wong, who the hell is that?” screamed the blonde. “Why didn’t you call and tell us there was someone here?”

  “Oh goodie, it’s the asshole brigade,” Wong muttered.

  *****

  “Is this the guy?” the woman asked.

  The Norseman responded with bitter irritation. “He’s got to be. How else would someone get in here without the wards frying him? And if Wong here had half a brain instead of being obsessed with his little toy footballers, we’d already be on the way to the Engineering Center. Wong put him down.” Bridge drifted softly to the earth, relieved to finally feel solid ground beneath him again. “You!” The blonde’s finger stabbed at Bridge like an accusation. Bridge had been in this man’s presence less than one minute, and he already wanted to kick the guy in the balls. Based on Wong’s descriptions, the blonde must be Rolfsberg. “What’s your name?”

  Bridge decided to play it dumb, if for no other reason than to tweak this douche. “Me? I’m nobody.”

  “You told me you were Bridge, that the dragon sent you here, Carl sent him, he said,” Wong stammered before finally catching on to Bridge’s joke. “Ohhhhhh, right.” The kid might be brilliant with whatever kind of magic physics simulation he was running on the football pitch, but he didn’t seem to have any idea how to read actual human beings.

  “So you’re the one Balfour sent for? Artemis Bridge?”

  Bridge tossed a sarcastic salute from his non-existent hat. “Artemis Bridge. You need something, I’m the Bridge, the path to whatever you want, so long as whatever you want is hard to find and someone else has it. I’m the go-between and the get-to-know. You stand over…”

  The man in black interrupted him. Bridge guessed this was Janicki. “Save the spiel. You spoke with Carl?”

  “The dragon?”

  “He’s not a goddamn dragon.” Janicki let out a sigh of pure exasperation. “He’s a man just like you and me. Well, not you. The dragon skin is an illusion.”

  “That’s one helluva an illusion,” Bridge retorted. “I saw that thing’s claws crush a car. How’s an illusion do that?”

  “That’s complicated,” the woman, Lydia, replied. “Balfour will help explain it as best he can.”

  Rolfsberg began to rapid-fire questions at Bridge. “When did you see Carl? How did he die? Who killed him?”

  Bridge was distracted by the sound of metal scraping against metal. Wong had lost interest and turned his back to the discussion, waving his arms up and down to bring the players back to life. “Like I was telling your buddy over here, I left Carl outside the dome two, maybe three hours ago tops. Of course, when I walked into th
e dome, it was late night but when I got inside, it was daytime. I swear I haven’t been in here more than an hour or two and it’s already nighttime. What the fuck is going on around here?”

  As a group, the three dropped their eyes to the ground, as if embarrassed to admit what they knew. “That’s impossible,” Rolfsberg said.

  Bridge stabbed an angry finger at Wong, who had floated a little ways off the ground. “I’ve seen a gigantic impenetrable dome cover a city, a flaming dragon and that motherfucker over there is FLYING while playing with life size toy footballers made of car bits. Impossible appears to be a relative term. You asked. I’m telling you what I know.”

  Janicki responded, “Rolfsberg says it’s impossible because the last transmission we got from Carl was five days ago. And that was three days after he said he’d escorted you into the dome.” He seemed to mull something over in his mind. “How long ago did you get the call?”

  “You mean the giant brain-stabbing hallucination you sent me and every other son-of-a-bitch with an interface jack from here to Los Angeles?” Janicki nodded. “Four, five days ago. Same time the dome appeared.” A panicked look spread from Janicki’s face to the others in the group. “What? What is it?”

  “We sent that message over two weeks ago, right after the dome went up.” The night had well and truly fallen by now. Janicki’s face was swallowed in shadow as dark as his mood. “Temporal distortion?”