Damn, That's a Pretty Bridge (Pt. 3)

In his dreams the sun is shining and earth is how it once was, green and blue and clear. As it once was, or at least the way Bobby imagines it was. He's seen pictures and videos of the way it had been, and in his dream he walks down a lush but well cropped grass path by clear blue water, shining like sapphires in the sunlight. Ten foot long alligators swim lazily in the river as flying fish flit out of the water on long arcs through the air. He reaches out to pet a deer that wonders by and it nuzzles his shoulder with its soft antlers. Up ahead, a group of cute blonde girls in pink bikinis splash around in the water, not a care in the world.


The soil feels soft and warm underneath his bare toes, and he lies down in a clear, brilliantly green patch of grass to bask in the sunlight. His skin is tanned and brown like fine leather, not the sickly green which he's so used to seeing. One of the blondes starts making eyes at him from the water and he winks at her, smiling. They always come to him sooner or later, but she's quicker than most and catches the attention of an alligator near by, hopping a ride over to Bobby's resting spot, crawling out of the water with a gleam in her eye and a bear in her hand, her large, round breasts jiggling as she moves towards him.

And then lightning strikes and the world shakes and she is gone, along with the alligators and the deer. The sky goes dark and electricity crackles along the peripherals of his vision. Something is wrong with the neural up-link. This system is glitching again. Maybe this is what it was like for poor Marty, right before the end.


Bobby wakes in a cold sweat, knocking the dregs of his beer to the ground and nearly jerking the cable from its port in his skull. Course it would happen right before the blonde gets to me. He pulls the connector out gently and pushes the reset button on the jack, counts to thirty in his head to give it time to reboot and plugs it back in. Guess we'll try that again.

***

As Bobby walks toward the elevator he sees that the hobo is still and lifeless on his pile of cardboard and detritus. They always bite it sooner or later when they try to sleep without their jacks plugged in. Every time. One of the cleaner robots should be by to clean up the mess soon though, and there'll be one fewer person to worry about in this part of the tunnels tomorrow. More fertilizer in the hydroponics bays too.

Ricky is standing by the elevator door when he walks up, adjusting himself inside the containment suit, trying to get it to fit correctly. From years working outside he's learned that no matter how much he tries to get it settled just right, it always chafes somewhere, so he sympathizes. “Another day, another dollar.”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Guess we'll be mappin' out the last bits of the bridge for 'demo today then.”

“May be.” Ricky isn't as glib as usual this morning and Bobby doesn't care today, not after a night of restless dreams and input failures. It's hard to focus on the day at hand when he never found the release the neural jacks usually provide. “Long way up.”

“Yep.”

They both set their packs down inside the elevator and wait for it to spool up and begin its upward ascent. They can barely feel the acceleration, though they're traveling at something like a mile per minute. Eventually they reach the top and step out onto the windy surface, the concrete crunching under their boots and the robots already floating out in the endless blue abyss, staring out at them with their sensors and cameras.

“Excuse me. Hehe,” Bobby turns around puzzled. That didn't sound like Ricky at all.

“What the . . .” Standing in front of him is the blonde from his dream last night, and she's tugging on the arm of his containment suit, pulling at the thick kevlar fabric softly with her dainty little fingers. “You . . .”

“I think we forgot to finish our fun last night.” She giggles to him and begins to pull her bikini top down, her large round breasts flopping out from the tiny pink cubs of the suit, her nipples dark brown and pointing at him, almost distracting enough for him to forget that he shouldn't be able to hear her from inside the suit. Never mind how she could be alive in the methane wastes.

“How? Ricky –“ He looks to Ricky but he's not there. Standing five feet from him across the bridge, even with the blue wind whipping against the helmet, he can see that it's not Ricky inside the helmet, it's Marty. Marty who died in his chair when his neural implant shorted out.

“Come on baby, focus on me.” She's tugging at him again but he can't take his eyes off of Marty, standing silent across the bridge, staring at him. She's pulling at the back of his suit, tugging gently when suddenly alarms start ringing inside his helmet.

“Hey, what the fuck?” She's beginning to detach the suit, trying to open the seals on the back. “Stop!”

***

Bobby wakes up in a cold sweat and jerks the neural implant from his head, gasping for air. Ain't never had a dream like that, what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.

The chair is soaked with his sweat and he takes a long hot shower before suiting up. It's almost time to go to the surface. Better not to think about the nightmare, just move on to work instead. Just a fluke. Must be. Go to work, it'll all be okay.

On the way to the elevator the hobo still lies cold and lifeless on his mattress and Ricky is there by the elevator adjusting himself. They climb on and it's just like the dream, but really it's just like every day. Doesn't mean anything.

“Hey Ricky?”

“Yeah boy, wha's up?” He's grumpy this morning, just like the dream, but Ricky's always grumpy. Isn't he?

“You, uh . . . You have any like, ya know, weird dreams last night or anythin'?”

“The fuck are you talkin' about Bobby?”

“Nevermind. Sorry for bringing it up. Don't worry about it.”

“Yeah.”

Ricky takes a deep breath and walks out of the elevator when it reaches the surface. The concrete grinds underneath his heavy boots and the two men walk side by side to the edge, where they can see the two robots floating on their platform a few hundred feet away, their strange inhuman mirrors. Something else is on the platform though. He can't make it out from here, with the wind and dust in the way. It's like someone is on the platform with them.

Don't think about it. As the robots float out there in the wind, the two men begin placing the small charges at regular intervals along the edges of the bridge, deliberately gluing them down to the concrete so they won't blow away in the hard weather. Each one goes down, snicking into place on the bridge.

“A girl'll start to think she's not liked if you keep this up.”

She's there again, smiling at him, seduction in his eyes. Her top is already off and she's pressing them together, massaging them to get his attention. “Please, you're not real. Just go away.”

“Aw, baby.” She touches him again and he flinches away, falling on his back and then scuttling backward.

“Ricky!” But Ricky isn't there. Instead it's Marty and the other two. He can't remember their names now, but they all look angrily at him and the buxom blonde waves to them.

“Y'all had your chance, it's his now.” Her smile gets bigger.

“No!” He clambers up as best he can in the cumbersome containment suit, the kevlar fabric grating against the concrete, hard under him. “Get away from me!”

Ricky begins running away, or the closest thing to running he can accomplish in his suit, clutching tight the satchel with the remaining explosive charges, running blindly with blue wind slicing across his visor, condensation forming at the edges from his heavy breathing, tears in his eyes.

And he trips. And he falls. And it's the edge of the bridge. And he falls. And it's over.

Ricky looks up just in time to see Bobby slide over the edge. “Ah, shit! Bobby!” He moves to the edge, but he stops mid stride. He knows it's too late and he's seen it happen before. “Bridge is damn cursed. Poor kid.”

[The other human has fallen from the structures surface. His survivability chances are 0%. Do you know why he fell?]

“Damn if I know. Damn bridge is cursed.”

[Cursed?]

“Ah, nevermind ya damn robot. Don't understand people at all.”

[You did not see why the other human fell from the bridge?]

“No I didn't, damn it. Damn shame. Still and all, that damn Bobby couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the 'structions written on the heel. Kids today. Poor kids.”