The Bridge Chronicles Trilogy (20 page)
Read The Bridge Chronicles Trilogy Online
Authors: Gary Ballard
Tags: #noir, #speculative fiction, #hard boiled, #science fiction, #cybernetics, #scifi, #cyberpunk, #near future, #urban fantasy
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 the 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?”
Lydia nodded. “I concur. That’s the only possible explanation.”
“Unless Bridge here is lying to us.”
“Yeah, fuck you, buddy. You think I’m lying then give me a goddamn car and I’ll drive my ass right back to L.A. where I belong. I didn’t come all this way to get insulted, attacked by ghosts and jerked around by the geek gaggle.”
“Ghosts?” Lydia asked with sudden, panicked interest. “You’ve seen the ghosts?”
“Seen ‘em? Shit, they almost got me killed. I ran one over with a truck. Well, ran through her anyway.”
“I want to apologize, Mr. Bridge,” Lydia began.
“Just Bridge.” Bridge gave her a smile that was full of charm. She scoffed like he’d just tried to pick up the last lesbian at the man haters bar.
“Bridge then. It wasn’t my call to bring you in on this. But now that you are, we all need to go back to the Engineering Center and sort this out with Balfour. He’ll be able to explain more when we get there.”
“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s all fly there now!”
Janicki coughed. “We’ll have to settle for the car.”
“Yes, we’ll have to take the car! Our buddy Wong doesn’t feel like sharing his flight equations. Isn’t that right, Wong?” Rolfsberg yelled angrily at Wong’s back, spittle flying from his mouth. Wong floated ten feet or so off the ground, his back to the group, ignoring the abuse completely. “Didn’t you hear me, Donger? I said you should share your flight equations so we can all fly like you and Carl!” Wong continued to ignore the insults, which only served to infuriate Rolfsberg more. “I’m talking to you!”
Lydia put a calming hand on Rolfsberg’s shoulder, but he shrugged it off angrily. “No, I’m tired of this shit. You! Ding Dong! We’re all going to the Engineering Center to work this out. Stop playing with your dolls and move your ass.”
“They’re not dolls,” Wong said silently over his shoulder. “It’s a complex physics simulation.”
“It’s junk science, you twerp! We have important work to do, and despite your painful immaturity, we could actually use your help. And it’s effing poor form to hold out on the rest of us. I’d like to fly. Wouldn’t you like to fly, Lydia? Janicki? Aren’t you goddamn tired of trotting around like a grad student while he gets to fly like a bird?”
“You couldn’t handle my calculations,” Wong said icily. He’d turned to face the group now, and a cold fire seemed to be building behind his eyes.
“What? You little shit. I could run rings around your math in my sleep. I spit differential equations and piss matrices. I don’t have to listen to this drivel from my intellectual inferiors. Why don’t you come down here and say that to my face?”
“Why don’t you come up here and make me?” Wong retorted with a puckish grin.
Rolfsberg’s face was fire engine red by this point. Lydia’s snickering didn’t help, only serving to enrage him further. He looked down at his flesh fist, which was squeezed so tightly the knuckles had turned white. Bridge began to feel crackling in the air, a building buzz of power consolidating in a single point of electrical energy. Rolfsberg’s fist began to shake and glow. Bridge unconsciously began to back away, aware at a cellular level that something bad was about to happen.
“That’s it!” Rolfsberg screamed, throwing his fist out at Wong. A blinding blue arc of lightning flew from his outstretched hand to strike Wong dead center with explosive force.
*****
Chapter 16
November 7, 2028
Time Unknown
Bridge dove for the cover of the car, losing sight of Wong for a second. Spots flashed on his vision, the afterimage of the lightning bolt still seared on his eyeballs. Lydia and Janicki had retreated with him, and they all peeked cautiously over the hood. A ball of lightning still sputtered in the air where Wong had stood, tossing off rivulets of electricity before dissipating completely.
Wong floated there unharmed. Anger was etched across his face, his teeth clenched and his fists balled. He looked every bit like a child throwing a tantrum in mid-air. “I’ve put up with just about enough of your shit, Rolfsberg!” he screamed. “I told you I was running a simulation, told you to leave me alone. But you can’t do that, can you? You have to feel like you’re in charge! Well, you’re not in charge of me!” He tossed off two fireballs directly at Rolfsberg.
The Norseman barely had time to raise a shield of his own, and the force of the blasts hitting his shield drove him back a few feet, buckling his knees. The area around Rolfsberg was charred, the grass singed, tiny embers glowing in the night like fireflies. Before Rolfsberg could prepare another attack, Wong sent his metal minions into action. Twenty-two players and even the ref charged at Rolfsberg with clanging ferocity, surrounding his bubble shield. Those who couldn’t reach it on foot climbed on the backs of the front ranks, creating a gigantic steel pile-on, until Rolfsberg was completely enveloped in metal. At first, they pounded on the shield, fists flying with awkward stop-motion violence, but with a few flicks of Wong’s fingers, they merged into a metallic cocoon that encased the Norseman completely. The metallic shell then began to contract with a sickening grinding sound.
Bridge felt the ground rumble underneath his feet. Small at first, it built until he could see the car shaking with the tremors. The ground imploded at the feet of the metal cocoon, a sinkhole about ten feet across forming, before exploding outward and upward in a shower of dirt. The cocoon flew a hundred feet into the air before crashing into the dorm behind Bridge. Rolfsberg knelt gasping at the bottom of the sinkhole. His lab coat was soaked in sweat and caked with dirt. His arms were outstretched at his side, and he brought them crashing together in front of him in an exaggerated clap. Lightning arced from two of the lighting fixtures on either side of Wong, trapping him in a circuit of boiling electricity.
Wong paid no notice to the lightning storm enveloping him, his fingers dancing. Bridge was unsure what was happening at first, but it quickly became obvious that the light from the electricity was dimming, draining into Wong’s hands, forming a ball of lightning that grew with every effort Roed toon lfsberg thrust into the attack. Wong was stealing Rolfsberg’s power.
Sickening realization struck Rolfsberg and he redoubled his efforts, pouring more power into his attack. It did no good. Wong had the upper hand. Fear wrote an ending across Rolfsberg’s expression and he screamed, throwing his arms in front of his face to ward off the final attack. It was in vain.
Wong redirected all the power back at Rolfsberg, throwing back a mixture of Rolfsberg’s lightning and Wong’s fireballs. Caught full by the blast, Rolfsberg’s shield was too weak to save him. Bridge caught a glimpse of Rolfsberg’s body being disintegrated, a Hiroshima shadow being wiped clean by a fiery wind, and then he was gone. Where Rolfsberg had crouched, there was only a blackened circle of earth and the melted remnants of the dead man’s cybernetic left arm.
Wong panted, his body covered in sweat with tears streaming down his face. The full realization of what he’d done was writ large in his eyes.
*****
The battle had lasted less than two minutes. Once Bridge was sure it was safe, he stood along with Lydia and Janicki, all too stunned by what had happened to speak. Finally, Lydia whispered, “Quon, what have you done?” Her raspy voice sounded deafening in the silence.
Wong stood shaking, his hands quivering, sparks dancing off both his metal and flesh fingers. His eyes were completely vacant, staring at the charred remains of his former rival, his mind a million miles away struggling to come to grips with his actions. Bridge had seen that look before. It was the haunted look of innocence being snuffed out, the tell-tale sign of someone who had never killed before realizing that they’d taken another human life. Bridge had seen it all too often in the riots, once the fever of the mob mentality had worn off and the full weight of sin had come crashing into focus. Everyone reacted differently. Some got colder, accepting murder all too easily, and those were the ones Bridge feared. Wong, however, was not one of those as evidenced by his tears. Somewhere in the boy’s fragile psyche, a torrent of emotions was building, and Bridge really didn’t want to be there when those emotions broke to the surface. Whoever was around when that happened would be lucky if Wong only hurt himself.
Wong fell to his knees. Lydia walked towards him slowly, repeating like a mantra, “Quon, what have you done?” She completely ignored the blackened resting-place of her former colleague. Janicki followed her, but his interest lay in the remains. He ignored Wong completely, picking up the melted cyberarm and examining the dust.
“That’s amazing!” he exclaimed. “It’s completely ashed, even the dirt and bones are gone. The temperatures, the energy required to do that is insane!” He seemed to be speaking to Bridge who ignored him in disgust. Thn disgusese people were crazy. Bridge stared down at the sinkhole, at the coldly calculating scientist picking at the ashes and somewhere in the back of his head a seed of an idea began to germinate. Not even consciously aware of what he was thinking, he let it sit in the back of his mind growing of its own volition. “One would need to heat bone for five minutes straight at over 900 Celsius to ash bone like this and he did it in seconds! Do you know what this means?”
Bridge scowled. “That you are a sick fucker?”
Janicki waved a hand dismissively. “Bah, Rolfsberg was a cock. If it wasn’t Wong he pissed off, it would have been one of us eventually. Besides, Wong is right, his math was weak. He couldn’t even break down Wong’s force field. The most interesting thing he managed to come up with was the mana engine’s casing, and I would have gotten around to that eventually. I’d better take this.” He indicated the cyberarm. “Wouldn’t want someone finding the engine when we leave.”
“You geeks going somewhere?”
“Yes, Mr. Bri… Bridge,” he replied. “That’s why you’re here. We’ve painted ourselves into a very tight corner and we need someone with your particular skillset to provide us with an exit strategy.”
Bridge was about to reply angrily when he heard Wong stammer to life. “He kept pushing me,” the kid mumbled. “He wouldn’t stop, you saw him. He attacked me first. He attacked first. I need to sit down.” Lydia had reached him by now and was guiding him to an awkward tumble back onto his bottom. His legs didn’t seem able to support his weight anymore. “You saw it, right, Lydia? You saw him attack me?” Lydia nodded sadly. “He just wouldn’t leave me alone, had to keep egging me on. I couldn’t let him hurt me, could I?” A frightened look came into his eyes. “You won’t tell Balfour, will you?”
“I’m going to have to tell him, Quon,” Lydia replied in a matronly tone. “We’re all in this together, and he needs to know what happened so he can decide what to do about it.”
“You don’t think he’ll take my engine away, do you? He can’t give it to me then just take it away when I make one little mistake.”
“You killed Rolfsberg, Quon. That’s not a little mistake.”
Bridge cut in angrily. “Look around you, lady. There’s not one goddamn body left in this place. Did you kill them all like Rolfsberg?” Wong flinched at the mention of his dead colleague’s name. “There’s supposed to be what… 20, 30,000 people in this part of Boulder? Where are they? Are those ghosts I saw REALLY ghosts?”
“They’re… gone,” was all she said. “We really must be getting to the Center. Balfour will explain it all.” She stood and offered a hand down to Wong. “Quon, are you going to come with us?”
“Can I just stay here for a little while, Lydia? I have to… I have to think. I… I need to be alone, ok?”
“I think we’d better.” Bridge was all too ready to find out what the fuck was going on with these geeks. Lydia collected Janicki and his melted trophy and led them to the car.
*****
Chapter 17
November 7, 2028
Time Unknown
The three got in the car and drove north, leaving Wong alone with his thoughts. Bridge took one last look back at the kid who had resumed floating over the field. Wong had retrieved the metal cocoon from the hole it had made in the dorm building and was busy recreating his players with a glazed expression. Bridge turned his attention back to the pair in the front seat.
“So how were you guys planning to leave? There’s like an army of Legios Corp cops surrounding the town, and just as many National Guard on top of that. Not to mention the horde of journos that swarmed on this fucking place like locusts the minute that news chopper went down. Did your buddy Carl do that?”
Lydia exchanged worried glances with Janicki. “We’re not sure. Communication with Carl has been somewhat sporadic. The only time it really worked well was when he was near the dome. What did he do to the news chopper?”
Lydia glanced back over her shoulder from the driver’s seat to watch Bridge make a poofing motion with his fingers. “Poof. Gone. Big flaming dragon knocked it out of the sky. Well, I assume that’s what he did. They saw a flaming dragon and they weren’t heard from again. Legios refused to talk about it. They actually don’t have clue fucking one what to do by the way. They’ve flipped between quarantining the area like some kind of outbreak and suggesting it’s some kind of a terrorist invasion.”
Janicki began asking questions intently. “We can’t see out much past the perimeter, but you said the National Guard was out. Why haven’t they just driven a battalion of tanks up to the dome and blasted it?”
Bridge returned his gaze with an expression of irritated confusion. “Do you really not know the effect you’re having out there? No, I guess not. Nothing works around the dome. No electricity, no cell, no GlobalNet, nothing. It’s the Stone Age. Our driver refused to get within three miles of this place because he said his car would just stop working. National Guard was using abandoned cars to build a cordon. No tanks, no Gunheds.”
“Does the power drain out gradually or does everything just blink out? Are there explosive effects when you pierce this dead zone?”
“Well, the jack in my head didn’t explode so I’m guessing shit just stops working. But I didn’t get to experiment what with being more concerned about not getting my ass shot off.”
The car had looped around past what appeared to be a basketball arena and an astronomical observatory. Lydia pulled the car to a stop at a stop sign, checking both directions for non-existent traffic. Bridge couldn’t resist needling her. “Why are you stopping? There’s no traffic.”
She smacked herself in the head and scoffed. “Duh. I know, I know. Force of habit. This intersection is usually crawling with bikes and kids, even this late. Early. Whatever.” She steered the car into a right turn, aiming it northward a little distance before coming to another stop sign. She ignored this one, turning the car right again. Bridge made a note of the street name, Regent Drive. He was lost without his GlobalNet maps. Knowing the street name would at least give him some bearing if he needed it. They continued on around Regent as it curved northward. Across an open field, Bridge got his first glimpse of the Engineering Center.
Even without the transformation these geeks had effected on the city, the complex would have been impressive. Made of the same brick exteriors as the rest of the buildings he’d seen, the Engineering Center was a striking series of constructs with severely angled roofs arranged in stepped tiers reaching towards the night sky. The roofs all seemed to either oppose or compliment the tallest structure, a tower over five stories high in the center of the complex. It was this feature that Bridge noticed the most.
At first, he wasn’t sure what was wrong with the tower. Bridge’s eyes seemed to slide off the building, as if he couldn’t focus his vision correctly. As they got closer, he figured out why. The tower wasn’t just big, it was moving. Not moving exactly, it was growing. The once-flat walls that comprised the structure had what appeared to be shiny, fungus-like outgrowths that drooped down to the surrounding buildings like stalactites. Bridge was reminded of the towers of South American ant colonies he’d seen on some nature vid. The growth was glacial. Only constant observation made it noticeable, and the movement made the tower appear to vibrate ever so slightly.
From the top of the tower sprouted a pillar of light, so subtle that only as Bridge drew within a few hundred yards did he notice it. His eyes followed the pillar up as far as he could see until he realized that the light was a column of energy sustaining the dome. “I think I’m too tired to be amazed, so I’ll just ask. What are you geeks doing here? What the fuck is that?”
“That’s where it all began, Bridge. That’s the power source sustaining the dome and every other electrical device underneath it. That,” Janicki pointed with undited withsguised pride, “is the future of human energy.”
*****
The geeks led Bridge into the Engineering Center at one of the entrances not affected by the fungus covering the tower. Through the mostly deserted parking lots and empty bike stands, into a confusing series of hallways, past classrooms, offices and labs decorated with the usual geek décor and college campus fliers, they led Bridge deeper into the complex. Up a flight of stairs, the group entered a covered walkway suspended over the street. On the other side of the walkway, the fungus grew on the interior walls, covering the hallway in shiny coal black gunk, like dark polished marble that shimmered in the cold fluorescent light. “What the fuck is that stuff?” Bridge asked, poking a finger towards it before retracting his hand in fear. “Is it safe?”
Janicki urged him onward. “It’s safe. Go ahead, touch it.” Bridge did so. It felt like a mixture of cold tar and liquorice and it oozed underneath his touch. “It’s an amazing new strain of nanotech construction material. Balfour came up with it one long crunch session. Of course, the uni wouldn’t allow us to test it on campus, but well, they’re gone now so we did. Program in your specs, stand back for a few days and it constructs things for you. It’s safe enough to be around while it does all the work, no need for costly labor and as strong as current construction materials at half the cost once we perfect the goop formula. All it needs is a power source, a rather big power source.”
Bridge marveled at the sheer naivete of these incredibly intelligent people. “Do you know how many people this would put out of work? Do you realize the kind of leg-breaking assholes in the construction industry you’d threaten if this ever went to market?”
Lydia’s earnest response was almost painfully innocent. “But those displaced workers can go on to learn a more lucrative, less labor-intensive trade. They don’t need to toil in such dangerous conditions…”
“Mmmmm, innocence, it tastes like candy. Look lady, you ever heard the expression ‘somebody’s got to dig ditches?’ Well, some people, that’s all they know and all they want to know. You think they give two fucks about improving their education? They want their GlobalNet titties, they want their reality vids, they want to drink and fuck themselves into a stupor every night until the day they die with as little hassle as possible.”
Lydia huffed. “I fail to see why we should retard human progress because some humans are lazy, lice-picking monkeys.” She turned quickly on her heels and continued on down the corridor.
“Because those lice-picking monkeys will burn your fucking house down,” Bridge yelled at her retreating back. Janicki smirked with cold humor and followed her.
As they penetrated further into the areas of the complex affected by the nanotech constructors, Bridge began to notice the thrumming hum of electricity. It grew in intensity until his fillings practically vibrated. It was as if the very air was supercharged with electricity, the constructors’ power needs so great they created a web of static charge that made his interface jack tingle. Finally, they reached a set of double doors and pushed through into a lab unlike anything Bridge had ever seen.
The room he entered had originally been very large but these geeks’ experiments with nano-constructors had made it cavernous. The lab was constructed as two interlocking rings. The outer ring was a series of workstations, crèches, and white boards. A barrier of transparent safety glass walls protected the outer ring from the machinery of the inner ring, which was full of robotic arms, worktables, assemblers, laser mechanisms and other machinery Bridge couldn’t identify. At one point in the near past, however, the roof had been destroyed. The nano-constructors were hard at work stabilizing and restructuring a new internal configuration. Where there had been at least three floors above this lab, now there was only a metallic silo reaching to the sky. That silo was filled with light, the shimmering light Bridge had seen rising from the tower to feed the dome. The shaft of light terminated in a machine about six feet tall by ten feet wide in the center of the inner lab. The machine was lined with glowing circuits and capacitors and appeared to have no moving external parts whatsoever. Oblivious to the marvel glowing behind him, another scientist toiled at one of the worktables on the far side of the machine.
Standing barely five foot eight, the scientist was balding, his shiny scalp showing through a halo of graying brown hair. Dressed in a lab coat with goggles reflecting the sparks his experiment produced, he waved his empty hands in the air as if working with invisible tools, manipulating the robotic arms of a constructor just as Wong had controlled his football players. “Mark,” Lydia shouted across the room. The man jumped as if shocked and stopped working.
“Oh, didn’t see you there,” he muttered. “Is this him?” He threw off his goggles excitedly and ran over to greet Bridge.
“Yes, Mark Balfour… excuse me, DR. Mark Balfour,” Lydia began. Balfour waved away the honorific with an irritated gesture. “Meet Artemis Bridge. He likes to be called Bridge. No Mister.”
Balfour reached out both his hands to give Bridge a handshake which Bridge clumsily refused. “Sorry, don’t do handshakes. Germs, nanoviruses, never know what somebody’s going to give you.”
“Nonsense, these things are sterile as a surgeon’s scalpel.” He held up his hands, both of which glimmered in the light, their metallic surfaces as smooth and shiny as any cybernetic limbs Bridge had ever seen. Though mildly insulted, Balfour accepted Bridge’s phobia. “Fair enough, then. I’m glad to finally meet you. I’ve heard a great deal about you.”
Bridge’s eyes narrowed into a suspicious squint. “From who? Who the hell told you about me?”
Balfour seemed to ignore the question momentarily. “entarilyForgive our manners. Tea? Coffee? I’m sure you must be parched after walking all that way to get here.” When Bridge refused, he prattled on. “We have a mutual friend, Mr. Bridge. I’m sure you are familiar with Michael Freeman?”
Bridge scowled. “Freeman. That shut-in gave you my name?”
Balfour nodded. “Yes, Michael was kind enough to provide me with a full accounting of your services. He’s quite impressed with your ability to… bullshit shall we say?”
“Yeah, I bet he is.” Freeman was the god of hackers, a world-class GlobalNet runner of exemplary skills. He had saved both Bridge’s and Angela’s lives during the election fiasco, providing the leverage Bridge needed to escape from a no-win situation. Freeman wasn’t just an accomplished credcrasher, information thief and all-around security expert, he was an interplanetary genius. Despite his past and present illegal activities, he worked for Chronosoft in Los Angeles. Bridge wasn’t exactly sure what parts of the corporation’s operations he didn’t have a hand in. Bridge also wasn’t sure when or if Freeman ever slept because he’d work just as tirelessly on his freelance projects outside of work as he did anything during office hours. And because Freeman had done Bridge such a huge solid before, Bridge was now stuck in this mess. He cursed the hacker silently. “How do you know Freeman?”
“Michael was a student of mine at UCLA years ago. We kept in touch. I’ve been known to get his thoughts on a few thorny problems. He has an absolutely breathtaking ability to analyze systems and point out the flaws, even in areas he’s not well-versed in. I’m hesitant to name him a super-genius, but he would certainly qualify. I think he’s a mutant, personally, a once in a generation evolutionary marvel with astounding mental capabilities. Why he spends his time working for those corporate bloodsuckers, I’ll never know.” He walked over to a coffee maker and poured a cup. “You sure I can’t offer you a cup? It’s Blue Mountain.”
The smell of the coffee was intoxicating and Bridge relented. “Yeah, I’ll take a cup. I could use the pick-me-up.” Bridge took the cup in both hands, barely allowing it to cool before sipping at it.
Balfour seemed to finally realize someone was missing. “Where are Wong and Rolfsberg?”
Lydia started down at her feet. “There was an… incident.”
“Incident? Somebody got dead and that’s what you call it, an incident?” Bridge fumed.
Balfour’s raised an eyebrow, but seemed otherwise unconcerned. “Dead? Who’s dead? Wong?”
Lydia shook her head. “No. Rolfsberg instigated a showdown with Wong. Wong didn’t back down and they fought. Wong won.”
“He dominated, you mean,” Janicki said with an unsettling glee. He held up the melted cyberarm. “This is all that’s left of that cocksucker.”
Balfour grabbed tour grabhe arm and began to examine it intently. “Impressive. Nothing else left? Everything ashed?” Janicki nodded with an irksome smile. Bridge had always considered himself cold-hearted, but Janicki and Balfour seemed to have no remorse about the death of their colleague. “The energy conversion rate is even greater than I’d calculated. That explains why our first large scale conversion was so explosive. Rolfsberg’s math was dangerously inaccurate.”
