Adam Christopher - The Age Atomic

The tremors worried him. They were getting stronger and more frequent, far more so than when he had left the city.

He straightened up. And how long ago had that been? How many years had he been traveling, lost in the fog? Too many, and somehow far more than had apparently passed here.

If this was the same place, the right place.

He had to admit, he wasn’t sure. The buildings on the other side of the bridge were dark and apparently empty. The sky was clear but completely black. The fog bank behind the man cast a dirty orange glow over the bridge.

The bridge was the problem. The city was alone, isolated, surrounded by a wall of fog. Beyond the fog was nothing but the lands of the Enemy.

Or so he had thought. He knew, now, that his knowledge of the universe was incomplete. There was plenty beyond the fog. The Pocket was larger than he had ever dreamed, stretching far beyond the reach of his instruments.

But the bridge, that was different. He hadn’t known about it before. But as the cold had gotten worse the fog had receded, exposing the structure at the very northern tip of the island. It provided the perfect watch point, the airship anchored to it quite securely, hidden just behind the fog bank. It wouldn’t pay to take any chances and leave themselves exposed, if the city was the wrong place.

And the bridge was the one thing that made him pause to consider whether this really was the right place.

He dared not go any further across it. Not yet. There were still tests to do and measurements to make. He stared ahead, trying to judge distance, to recognize any part of the cityscape before him.

There, perhaps, due south, where the air was a little misty, where the glow was captured, the lights of something big, the lights of civilizations, of something more substantial than the collection of empty shells that crowded the end of the island, on the other side of the bridge.

Perhaps it was the right place. Perhaps he had found home.

Perhaps.

The man on the bridge slapped his cheeks to get the feeling back into them, rubbed his thick mustache to get the ice out of it, and turned carefully on the frozen bridge. Looking down, he stepped forward slowly so as not to slide on the ice, and vanished into the fog.

The interior of the airship was silent until the man returned, his wooden leg tapping loudly on the floor as he made his way to the pilot’s seat on the flight deck. He fell into it, and began pulling his gloves off. In front of him, the windows of the craft were opaque with frost.

“Have you come to a decision?”

The man paused and looked up at the ceiling, then shook his head as he dropped his gloves onto the control board.

“No. I can’t be sure. We need something else.”

A shadow flickered in the room. “We could fly in and investigate.”

The man chuckled. “And look what happened last time,” he said, banging the end of his wooden leg against the floor. “No, we need to wait. We need to be sure.”

“We cannot wait here forever.”

That was true. The man sniffed and tugged at his beard. “If only there was a signal of some kind, something we could home in on.”

“You only found me because I activated the ship’s beacon. It is unlikely we will find such a signal out there.”

The man hrmmed , and scanned the controls. It was worth a try.

“A distress beacon, no,” he said, flicking a series of switches. On the control board a row of orange lights came on. “But maybe there will be something else. See if you can boost the output of the number two power cell. Perhaps we’ll be able to pick something up from the city — radio, perhaps, anything that might give us the information we need.”

The shadow moved again. “Very good, sir” said the voice, this time nearer the door.

The man sat back in the pilot’s seat, and looked at the frosted windows.

Perhaps it was the right place. Perhaps it was home.

But he had to be sure.

“We can do great things together, you and me.”

Doctor X ignored the voice, and focused instead on the clipboard an inch from his face. He ticked some more boxes and scrawled a note in a hand he knew he would not be able to decipher an hour from now. His handwriting was poor at the best of times, but today she was coming to the laboratory to visit. And she expected much, even though she didn’t perceive time the same way as everyone else. He glanced out of the corner of his eye and adjusted his round-framed glasses. She could appear from anywhere, which, if he were honest, scared the living crap out of him. And at such a delicate phase of the operation, he needed his wits about him.

“I know you’re listening, pal.”

The doctor held his breath and flicked a switch on the panel in front of him. The voice wasn’t doing much for his nerves either. It filled the space, echoing against the hard surfaces of the laboratory. It was a male voice, eerily calm and muffled slightly, like someone on the end of a long-distance telephone call.

Not that Doctor X knew much about that kind of thing. He’d only been introduced to the concept of “long-distance” in the last year. Imprisoned in the laboratory as he was, he still didn’t quite understand what it meant that there was more than just the city outside.

The doctor ticked another box.

“You know I’m speaking the truth,” said the voice.

The doctor shook his head, and put the clipboard down.

“I think we’re almost ready, Dr Richardson.” No response. Doctor X turned on his heel, but he was alone in the laboratory. Well, the Project was there, trying hard to get his attention.

“Laura?”

The thin plastic safety door at the back of the laboratory flapped open as the doctor’s assistant came in, wheeling a trolley covered with electronic equipment. She leaned forward on the trolley, picking up the pace.

“Sorry, doctor,” she said, bringing the new equipment to a halt by the laboratory’s main workbench. “The guys on the door were being jerks again.”

Doctor X nodded. “Well, the Director will be here shortly. No wonder they’re jumpy. The whole facility seems to be on alert.”

Laura began unpacking small trays of components, arranging them on the workspace. “You’d think she wouldn’t need to come in and see us. I mean, can’t she see the whole city at once?”

“I think she likes to visit in person. It makes her feel like she’s still one of us.”

“Creepy,” said Laura. She set down the last tray and pushed the trolley out of the way. Then she turned to the mesh cage. The door was open in preparation for the next phase of the operation, allowing access to the Project within.

The Project stood in the center of the cage, leaning back against an angled metal slab, around which was an elaborate framework of hinged struts, cables dangling.

The Project itself was huge, seven feet tall and made of polished silver. It’s head was a rectangular box, with a man’s face crudely constructed out of moving metal cut-outs: a nose, even eyebrows. Its jaw was a separate piece and it had two red lights for eyes, which lazily moved from the doctor to his assistant.

The robot had only one arm; the metal of its right-hand side was tarnished, the innards exposed along the flank, sheered clean off, the damage reaching as far down as the hip and upper thigh. From the open side, a dozen cables fed out to the instrument banks in the laboratory proper, with several more connected to the framework suspended over the slab.

“You and me, kid. What a team we could be,” said the robot, its amplified voice echoing around the laboratory like it was coming out of a PA. Laura flinched and turned quickly away. Doctor X just shook his head.