Branch Off

by Dario Solera

  ***

  “Colonel Rubais has ordered us to try an attack,” the driver recounted over the noise of the engine. “I heard we used modified Rapier missiles the British have sent us.”

  “Modified how?”

  “No idea, but whatever they did to them, it worked. It took twelve missiles, though.”

  “Why weren’t we informed?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  Gagnier shook his head. “We could have been an easy target there.”

  The jeep rocked on the unpaved road, and looking at the images from the drone’s control unit was hard. Sarah and Léa were sitting tight in the back, with Gagnier between them controlling the video on the drone’s control unit he held in his lap.

  On the screen the city’s dim lights came closer, pixel by pixel. The image was of a dark green color, with shiny dots here and there.

  Suddenly a thin slice of moon broke through the clouds and lit up the scene.

  They leaned closer to the LCD.

  “That’s a city,” Léa said.

  Roofs were visible, and a large, sparkling surface was in front and to the left of the camera.

  “And that’s the lake.”

  Outside the car more missiles hissed in the sky, and all around them explosions erupted from the ground as the battle raged.

  Dark smoke plumed out of chimneys on the roofs. Just like Gagnier had programmed it, the drone began descending, giving further details of what was beneath.

  “It looks much smaller than Geneva,” he said.

  When it reached the first buildings, Sarah noticed that some of the windows were dimly lit. She didn’t know if it was the quality of the video feed, but they looked too dim. The autonomous aircraft continued above the city and down to the Rhone, showing more low houses.

  “There!” Léa exclaimed as it took an ample turn to the left to begin its journey back. “You saw that?”

  “All units, cease fire!” the radio crackled. “I repeat, cease fire!”

  Gagnier scrambled to pause the video and wind it back.

  “Don’t you see it? The Mont-Blanc Bridge is not there!”

  Sarah’s lips parted as she stared at the grainy picture. “When was it built?”

  “This one in the sixties, but there was an older one built…” Léa paused, squeezing her eyes shut. “A hundred years before, maybe. Wait a minute.” She studied the image for a couple of seconds. She pointed at a dark mass in the middle of the river, just where it became narrow as it left the lake. “That’s Roussau Island, and here should be another bridge, connecting the two shores and the island.”

  “Yes!” he said. “Bergues Bridge. Nineteenth century.”

  “It’s the past! They moved it to a different energy state and turned it into a time machine.” She glanced at the anomaly behind the car. “Fucking awesome,” she whispered to herself.

  “Attacks incoming from everywhere,” the radio said. “Abandon all stations!”

  Gagnier steadied himself with a hand against the back of the front seat. “Is that even possible?”

  “Why not? Hell, until a few days ago, we didn’t even know multiple dimensions could exist, let alone a connection between them. These guys may be able to control these anomalies.”

  “Damn,” he said. “You’re even using the plural form. Anomalies. Are you sure?”

  “No. It’s a hypothesis, but there’s more.”

  He glanced at her with a worried face. Léa had a resigned look, as if whatever happened next would not change anything for her.

  “If that is the past, why are they interested in going there?”

  “Go on,” Gagnier demanded.

  “I have no idea. They might be interested in studying our history.”

  “After bombing us?”

  “Well…” Sarah looked down. This time, she didn’t have an answer.

  “Maybe,” Léa began, “they want to conquer us.”

  “We’re here, not there,” he said.

  “Yeah, I mean, conquer our planet without us fighting back. If you had infinite possibilities, which would you pick? The easiest.” Léa continued talking. “It looks like—I don’t know—the sixteenth century? We’ve been barely able to shoot one of them down, so how are they going to fight them? With pitchforks?”

  In the distance, the last explosions lit the night sky.

  Thirty-six

  Sweat covered Sarah’s forehead as they walked toward the object. The hazmat suit smelled of plastic, and her field of view was limited by the narrow faceplate.

  “What do you think?” Gagnier asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What’s inside?”

  “Aliens.” She wasn’t sure, but he seemed to send her a frown, which made her laugh. She was excited like a child, and the lack of fear surprised her.

  Some of the debris was still burning, but the main body of the object looked intact, except for a large, gaping gash on its side. Falling down, it had excavated a long groove in the field and had come to a stop when enough dirt had collected in front of it and dampened its inertia.

  Words failed Sarah. She stopped walking for a moment, admiring the spaceship.

  The surface was perfect. Smooth and shiny, as if made of black glass, but slightly opaque. The hole in the hull had a regular edge. From so close the shape of the object resembled that of a droplet, with a round front and a sharp tail.

  “It’s beautiful,” she whispered. She glanced up and down the length of the vehicle, estimating its size at about fifteen meters. The breach measured maybe a couple of meters in diameter.

  Four men were walking along the perimeter, taking photographs and readings with handheld devices. “No radiation,” one of them yelled from inside his suit.

  Two more suited figures approached the crash site holding submachine guns. “No way. I’m not going inside,” one said.

  “We’ve got orders,” the other noted.

  “I’ll go,” Sarah said. They didn’t seem to notice, so she repeated it louder.

  They stared at her for a moment, unsure.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Gagnier told her. He walked over to the men and asked for a weapon, presenting his rank. The two newcomers exchanged a glance before one complied and gave him his submachine gun.

  With a swift move, he swung the SMG’s belt around his shoulder and inspected the weapon, then he moved near the hole with a purposeful pace. The breach was half a meter higher than the ground, which made climbing in awkward. Once inside, he looked both ways, observing the darkness.

  Sarah went closer, pointing her flashlight into the spacecraft and catching a glimpse of its guts. Everything was black and some smoke puffed out, partially obscuring the view, but there was a large space inside the bowels of the object.

  Gagnier stood there, roughly at ground height, unsure of what to do. Once more he shot a glance back at them outside, and then he disappeared to the left toward the tail of the vehicle.

  Peeking inside from the hole, Sarah saw him walking in a wide undivided space. On the other side, a couple of meters afar, the round nose of the ship was visible. The object seemed as featureless from the inside as it did on the outside, except for dozens of bulbs placed at an even distance on the entire inner hull. There wasn’t a proper floor and the bottom was, like the rest, a smooth surface with bulbous protrusions. The very concept of up, down, left, and right didn’t apply to that thing.

  A hint of fear peeked in her mind as, with her heart in her throat, she climbed up into the spaceship. Inside there was nothing immediately visible, just Gagnier a few meters farther. Sarah helped Léa climb in.

  “Whoa,” Léa whispered.

  “Yeah.”

  Their voices resounded with a metallic pitch in the empty space. They looked around with eyes wide and mouths open. Outside, several men had gathered at the opening, watching and talking animatedly.

  Gagnier walked back to them. “There’s nothing. Just some kind of device down there.” His
voice trembled although he tried to act cool.

  “What device?”

  “Come.”

  Pacing carefully, they went to the tail of the vehicle, avoiding stepping on those bulbs. It was smaller there, only a couple of meters tall, just enough to stand. The object Gagnier was talking about resembled an egg, less than a meter long. What looked like tubes or wires ran from its back, disappearing into the hull.

  “Maybe it’s the engine,” Sarah said—almost whispered—inspecting the surface. She knelt down and illuminated the bottom, finding no other features. Visibility was terrible through the faceplate, and she had to lean very close to get a better view. “It’s seamless. No joints, no bolts. This thing looks like a single piece of… metal?”

  “You OK down there?” a loud voice came from the opening, ten meters behind them.

  Sarah’s body jolted. “Fuck!”

  “Yes, we’re fine,” Gagnier yelled back. “Stay there.”

  Sarah got up and looked at the smooth egg in front of her. Her heart had calmed now, despite the fright. She took a deep breath and extended her hand forward, tentatively touching the object with the tips of her fingers. Nothing happened, so she pressed her palm onto it. “It’s warm.”

  Just as she retracted her hand, a thin slice of greenish light appeared on its surface.

  “It’s opening!” Gagnier said as they all backed away a few steps.

  The upper half of the egg was splitting in two parts, which, without a sound, were sliding down onto the sides as something green glowed within.

  For long moments they stared at that thing in silence, incapable of moving.

  “Maybe we should go now,” he said with the SMG trained at the egg.

  Sarah ignored her pounding heart and took a couple steps forward, trying to get a glimpse of what was inside. Another three or four steps and she could see it. “Magnificent.”

  A glowing bubble of a greenish substance, the size of a baseball, fluctuated in the air with its surface covered in tiny waves and crests. The material seemed liquid, with millions of minuscule flecks of an iridescent matter swimming in it.

  “What is that?” Gagnier said. “Its source of energy?”

  She didn’t answer and bent a little forward, leaning closer to the bubble. Very slowly she moved her hand inside the open container. When her fingers were a few centimeters from the green stuff, its surface retracted, forming round waves that danced away from her glove. She pulled her hand out.

  “It’s alive,” Léa whispered.

  “How do you know that?” Gagnier said with a trembling voice.

  “It moves. It reacts to stimuli.” She extended her gloved hand and, with her right forefinger, pressed into the substance. At first it tried to retract, but then it became so stretched that it could no more, and finally Léa’s finger touched the green matter, diving into it for a couple centimeters. “It’s warm, and it moves! I can feel it on my skin, even through the glove!” Her eyes glowed in the greenish light and she could not pull them away. “I see something.”

  “What?”

  “I see. Oh my God! It’s horrible!” Her eyes rolled backward and her body fell to the floor, limp.

  Sarah grabbed her arm and inspected the glove with her flashlight. “Not even a trace of it. The glove’s intact. Léa,” she called, trying to shake her awake. “Hey, wake up!”

  “Let’s take her outside,” Gagnier said. He swung the SMG on his back and raised Léa in his arms. Once out, he yelled to the other men, “We need a stretcher!” His body quivered as he laid her down on the litter.

  “Léa,” Sarah said, pointing the flashlight to her face. “Wake up.”

  She moved her lips and her eyes opened a little, then she suddenly gasped for air. “Oh my God,” she mouthed as tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “How do you feel?”

  Staring into Sarah’s eyes for a long moment, Léa searched for words. “I saw the world burning.”

  “Our world?”

  She shook her head. “Beyond the sphere, in the past. They can’t travel over long distances in space, so they wait.”

  Sarah looked for a second at the darkness enveloping them. “For anomalies like this one.”

  “Yeah. Shortcuts. And then they spread in space and in time.”

  Thirty-seven

  The sky was lighting up a little toward the east, showing thin lines of pink and yellow. Another day full of broken promises lay ahead.

  Sarah’s shoulders ached for the brute force with which soldiers had rushed them away from the crash site. Her nose stung in the freezing air, but she didn’t mind, and her gaze was lost into the sphere.

  As the sun rose, it was clear that the skies were now empty. All the objects had flown into the anomaly, hundreds and hundreds, silent and swift. The anomaly still glowed blue, but the crescent daylight was beginning to wash the color away. At the horizon the mountains reflected a glimpse of pink from the dawn’s low light.

  Sarah stood with the sun at her back, staring into the iridescent surface. She was stuck here, forever. That reality had sunk in over the night, leaving a bitter feeling stuck in her mind. In her pocket she felt the envelope with the address of her biological parents, now useless. All that trouble for nothing. Will’s death, vain. She was guilty of thousands of deaths, but that didn’t really strike her as guilt. Will’s, for sure, but the others were distant, faceless people.

  Léa walked over to her side. “Hey.”

  A soft breeze sent a wisp of her red hair dancing. She was beautiful in that light, despite the exhausted look on her face. Sarah smelled the air with a long breath. “It’s going to snow,” she said with a broken voice. Her eyes filled with tears.

  Léa knew why she was crying and didn’t have to ask. With her friend locked in this world, she should have been happy, but she was not. How could she, with a heartbroken Sarah?

  They remained silent, hand in hand, for a long time, until the sun was above the horizon. Tears had faded away when Gagnier reached them.

  “It’s over,” he said. “They have treated us like ants, bombing our homes, using our land as they liked, just to find a way to kill more. But they’re gone, for now at least.”

  “Ants?” Sarah asked. Maybe he was right. Maybe they hadn’t been waiting for the chance, and it was only a lucky ball thrown at them.

  On cue, Gagnier continued with a harsh voice. “And what are we supposed to do with this thing now?” He too was looking at the anomaly with his hands resting on his hips. “It will be a mess. What if they decide to come back? So much for Swiss neutrality.”

  “It’s my fault.”

  He stared at her for a long time, forcing her to avert her eyes. Someone called him from a tent and he walked off without further words.

  Many minutes passed in silence with the sun rising behind them, its heat warming their backs. Despite whishing opposite things, Sarah and Léa still held their hands, in a comforting, familiar touch that both had learned to rely on during their time together.

  “So it looks like I’ll have to remain here,” she said with a dry smile. “I’ll die in my world to revive in this.”

  Léa didn’t say anything.

  “Thank you,” Sarah whispered after a long while.

  “For what?”

  “For still being here, despite everything.”

  Thirty-eight

  “Sarah!” Richards called as he saw her approaching him. “What happened?”

  “They’re gone. All of them,” she answered with a crooked smile.

  “Through the anomaly?”

  “Yeah.”

  “To your world?” he asked with a worried look.

  “No. We’ve sent a drone. It’s somewhere else. Well, sometime else, actually.” With the help of an exhausted Gagnier, she showed Richards the images they had recorded.

  Richards took a couple of deep breaths before speaking again. “That is incredible. It opens a whole new host of possibilities.”

  “It does
.”

  “Not all of them looking good, though.” Richards’s face faded into a grave expression as he nodded several times. He walked over toward the anomaly, pensive.

  Sarah observed him, knowing the kind of thought processes that ran in his intelligent mind.

  At once he turned back, his face just a big frown. “But, Sarah. You’re stuck here.”

  “Yes, Professor. I am.”

  ***

  Richards was in the passenger seat, staring at the anomaly. Sarah and Léa were in the back, and the military driver was talking to someone outside the car, maybe to arrange other details. He would drive them to the Institute.

  They didn’t have the slightest idea what would happen next. The place was calm now, with soldiers idling near vehicles and chatting. With all the alien aircraft gone, they didn’t have much else to do but wait for further orders.

  Sarah studied the iridescent sphere in the distance, wondering if, even if she couldn’t go back to it, her world was affected by it. Maybe they had just branched off another time line, one among the possible infinites. “Doesn’t it look like the blue glow is dwindling?” she asked after a while.

  Léa observed the sphere outside for a moment. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the sun.”

  “Yeah. It looks more orange than blue.” Sarah got off the car and walked a few meters toward the anomaly. She observed its liquid surface for a long time, and then she noticed something.

  “What is it?” Léa asked from a few paces behind.

  “Do you feel it?” she said, raising her hand with the palm toward the sphere.

  “What?”

  “It does not radiate heat anymore.”

  Léa paid attention to her skin for a moment. “Yes, it’s true.”

  Sarah ran back to the jeep and took the EMS detector from the backseat, where it lay without its case. They waited in silence as the instrument sampled the environment at all frequencies. “There’s an obvious radiation in the visible wavelength, but, indeed, on all other frequencies it’s much less strong than last night.”