Bridges: NIWA Anthologies, #7

By Pamela Bainbridge-Cowan, EM Prazeman and William J. Cook

Bridges take many forms, but all span a gap from one thing to another--between two places, two people, two worlds, or anything else.

Sixteen authors each share a tale of connection.

Featuring stories by: 

EM Prazeman

Jonathan Eaton

William J. Cook

L. Wade Powers

Liam RW Doyle

Steven C. Schneider

Pamela Bainbridge-Cowan

Emma Lee

Leila Rose Foreman

Neil Orint

Connie J. Jasperson

Richard Gene Shannon

Patrick Dwyer

Amber Michelle Cook

• Language: English
• Publisher: Northwest Independent Writers Assn
• Release date: Nov 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386199700

Book preview

Editor's Note

Bridge n.: a connecting, transitional, or intermediate route or phase between two adjacent elements, activities, conditions, or the like.

This is the dictionary definition of the word bridge.  When presented with the challenge of writing stories which incorporated this idea, our authors took many different approaches. Herein, find stories exploring the theme of bridges that span gaps between any two things—places, people, worlds, or ideas. Some are straightforward, some are metaphorical.

Every author whose stories are found within these pages belongs to the Northwest Independent Writers Association. We write in many different genres, a fact reflected by the contents. But we all share a fiery passion for the written word.

Love, hope, and reconciliation lie within. Enjoy.

—Lee French

A True Love Story

Susie Slanina

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The tiny puppy. Helpless. Eyes clouded over.

Nuzzling, cuddling, gazing up at Forever Friend.

Both hearts thumping. The Love Story begins.

Becomes the young pup, roly-poly, playful, mischievous.

Becomes the young dog, frantically pulling at the leash.

Becomes the junior dog, trotting in front, pom-pom tail swaying.

Becomes the stately dog, walking proudly at Forever Friend’s side.

Becomes the noble dog, lagging a bit behind.

Becomes the dignified dog, hobbling bravely; short walks.

Becomes the carried dog, gazing up at Forever Friend.

Nuzzling, cuddling, both hearts thumping.

Becomes the elder dog. Helpless. Eyes clouded over.

The Love Story remains.

Becomes the beloved memory... the Love Story lives on.

Becomes the wise teacher, illuminating the sad, sweet circle of life.

The Love Story is never over.

***

Susie Slanina lives in Vancouver, Washington. After graduating from California State University, she went to school in Ireland where she studied the Montessori approach to educating children. She retired at age of 50 to spend more time with her dogs in a mountain cabin in Big Bear. Her interests include reading and exploring the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest with her three dogs. She is best known for her Metro The Little Dog series.

At the Quantum Mechanics Union Bar

Steven C. Schneider

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A bunch of Carthies at the end of the bar had some local girls in stitches. The ladies were in a scrum admiring one girl’s ring finger by the beer sign light. The Carthies all sported Cheshire cat burglar smiles as the girls settled onto their laps.

A flash off that ring hit Stuart right in the eye. He was transported to a memory that was as clear as day, a memory of a slight girl with long brown hair holding up her hand to admire a silver band engraved with initials and a heart that Stuart had made in metal shop. 

As she turned to him and smiled, her eyes sparked. They did not twinkle, no, not this girl. They arced with electricity that burned the air between them. Then and now, a heady perfume grabbed him and shrank his world to a silent cocoon that had only enough room in it for two lovers and the entire universe.

His isolation in Geneva also made him think about the memory of Christine that he had constructed over the years. It had become his focus of longing and regret.  He imagined her doing the books or rising up the management chain of some space export or insurance firm, slowly forgetting him.  

He had thought she was probably being wooed by some rich Angkor Wat financier in Londinium. Probably tandem sailsuiting to some lunar hot tub spa right now. He knew he didn’t deserve her and that he had waited too long. But still, it was the only fantasy that kept him going. 

When he finally got up his nerve, he had picked up his phone-pad and dialed the still archived number for Christine’s mum in Glasgow.

Halloo?

Misses Taylor?

Aye, who’s this? Her voice was a bit thin and shaky but Stuart recognized it immediately.

Misses Taylor, it’s Stuart. Do you remember me?  Stuart? Christine and I...

Stuart... ah...my memory’s not as... Stuart!  Of course luv, where are you?

Geneva. On a job.

I’m just getting ready to go to the Hebrides for the summer. It’s way too hot in Glasgow these days and my sister Clara has a nice little cottage on the water and some of the family goes along and it’s ... Oh, sorry, why did you call?

I just wanted to get in touch with Christine, I might be heading that way soon. Can you tell me...

She interrupted, Oh...oh my... Stuart, you didn’t know?

Stuart was silent for a beat. Know what?

When the New Futurists attacked London...Londinium, she was at the... That was five years ago.

I didn’t know... sorry, Misses, I mean, sorry for your loss...

Stuart, luv, you don’t have to say anything. I don’t know what happened between you two. In a different world, maybe...  Come and see me if you’re coming through, ok?... ok? Stuart?

I will Misses.

He walked out on the loading dock and stared at the slag.

~*~

Another round, barkeep. At the sound of the familiar voice, Stuart’s reality snapped back to the bar. He recognized a clean-shaven Arab with hoop earrings and long black hair with magenta highlights tied in back. The others were still in their work clothes, jeans or overalls, but this guy was all panache in his new wave burnoose.

Technically, it was Stuart’s job to keep track of these guys even when they weren’t on dismantler duty at the Large Hadron Collider. He was curious too. What kind of nonsense have these guys got themselves into now? In those days, at the Quantum Mechanics Union Bar, it was anything goes and the Wild West all rolled into one.

By the turn of the 22nd Century, Carthage, Babylon and the Greco-Buddhist Xanders had beat the crap out of ISIS, taken away their nuclear toys and, by 2115, were just mopping up the mess they left behind. As for the old first world, the wealthy were heading upstairs as rising sea levels and climate change turned temperate zones into deserts.  The Carthies and others were simply filling the vacuum left by the northern elites riding the Space Elevators off-planet.

They were ever so much more civilized than the old guard terrorists. With national borders more or less erased, everybody was welcome to the party as long as they paid their tribute. The economy chugged along just fine, but at a more leisurely pace. Working class Joes like the ones at the Meyrin bar were more interested in impressing girls than building a caliphate—harems not terror, make love not war. Seventy-two virgins? Not for long brotha!

~*~

Stuart remembered the feeling of being stalled between a limitless youth and the cautious mantle of adulthood, the feeling that something was about to slip out of reach never to be regained. In a recurring dream, Christine had moved away and he couldn’t find her phone number. She made a new life while he rummaged through drawers until he couldn’t remember what he was trying not to forget. Those dreams ended with an emptiness that pulled at him the whole day.

Stuart liked to say he was from a working class neighborhood of Glasgow, but most people didn’t get the joke. Post-Brexit Glasgow was all working class, some neighborhoods just rougher than others. A young tough on the street, just petty theft and minor mischief, Stuart was also a promising artist in secondary school. But, eventually, art became just another regret.

Like most people, his adult life was the product of a series of very ordinary concessions. It was just a harder road in Glasgow. Financial realities required a day job so he put his shoulder to the wheel and started off on a predictable path.  First he was a hod carrier, then an apprentice with the pipe fitters union in Glasgow. When the jobs dried up in Scotland, he went chasing work across the continent.

The call came from CERN for the tradesmen and labor needed to dismantle the 150-year old Large Hadron Collider. The parts were being used in the construction of the new Orbital Collider. The physicists that used to fuel the squint bars and discos around Meyrin were gone. So, the work boiled down to mothballing the parts that were in good condition, hauling them into orbit on the Space Elevator and scrapping the rest. When that job was done, the whole place was going to be a twenty-seven kilometer empty hole in the ground.

~*~

The ladies hung onto their guys and laughed at whatever sweet nothings they whispered in their ears in Arabic. Probably just eighteen, they were basically high school girls milking the working stiffs and maybe getting a grubstake together, putting their big plans on layaway. Taking their drinks, they started up the ramp to watch the sunset from the roof.

Stuart sighed and left his Guinness to warm. He sidled down to the end of the bar and nodded to the natty Carthy, a foreman of the dismantlers. He was the only one of them Stuart might call a friend. Just a few hours earlier they had sparred over favorite fútbol teams, with the Carthy gently asserting the homo-erotic implications of Man United.

Stuart said, Hey Hannibal, what’s with the sparklies?

Now that’s just racist Stewie, you know my name, he said with good-natured indignation.

Khadafi? Why isn’t that name racist too? It’s just as much a stereotype.

"Weren’t you at cultural sensitivity training my friend? Our given names are Arabic. Hannibal is a name used to make fun of our proud Carthaginian heritage. So hurtful in so many ways. Someone might report you. Send you back to empathy school."

Like who? Nobody’s in charge but us.

Khadafi put on a little pout. It’s nice to be nice Stewie. Then, a little snarky, What you want brotha? We’re off duty. You good cop or bad cop today?

Depends. Where’d you get the rings? Stealing some salvaged goods again? Diamond drill bits, that sort of thing?

Borrowed, and that was just one time Stewie. The girls wanted to make proton bubble tea. Big mistake. He bumped his two fists together and then pantomimed an explosion, Booosh!

You ‘borrowed’ proton accelerators and did something that blew the roof off the storage building.  It was the explosion that had gotten Stuart in trouble with the admins. He didn’t really mind the theft.

The things we do for love. Like I said, big mistake.  But here, sweetheart, look, this one’s harmless.

Khadafi slid an ornately carved wooden box along the bar, the kind the Carthies sold to tourists at the bazaars in Geneva. Stuart frowned.

Khadafi smiled and said, "No, really, éykiju no, look in the magic box."  When the box was opened, a lovesick tune played—an old Farsi ghazal. He took a lump of coal from a drawstring bag, put it in the black velvet interior, closed the lid, and shook the box. With a nod and a wink he tossed it over to Stuart who snagged it out of the air and examined it.

He opened the lid. This time it played an applause track.  Nestled in the velvet was a large uncut diamond, four or five carats, at least. He wasn’t sure he would know the difference, but it seemed real enough.

Stuart passed it back dismissively. Sleight of hand, that’s all, in goes coal and out comes diamonds.

Khadafi said, Stewie, that wouldn’t be profitable, I’d have to buy the diamonds first.

Well, if it’s the goose and the golden egg, you sell the goose to the rubes. And if it’s to impress a girl, easier to buy her a ring at Bucherer’s on the Rue de Rhone.

Old school Stewie, these girls are smart. If you tell them you made it with shady tek, they want the box as much as the sparklies.

"A good trick. What did you steal to make it work?" Stuart leaned into Khadafi’s personal space. The Carthy leaned in too, eye to eye, affecting a conspiratorial stage whisper.

Nothing, we found some microscopic black holes cleaning out the experiment housing, not on any salvage list. They disappear when you scrap the machine. So, we catch them like fireflies with a standard graviton wrench. Physics does the rest. Wa La!

Ok...

Now, what else do you think we scraped out of that collider?

There’s more?

Unintended consequences, emergent properties, the implicate order, quantum entanglement, Einstein-Rosen bridge.

Wormholes? Stuart knew the technical name for wormholes from the safety manual protocols.

Khadafi pulled out two more boxes, each with a glittering rainbow on it. Traversable wormholes, yes, Stewie. Send one box to your girlfriend up north, put a lump of coal in your box and it comes out in her box as a diamond. I thought of the name, The Rainbow Bridge.

That’s Norse mythology, not North African. Stuart said.

Bifrost, correct, I was thinking of you. Some Viking shagged your distant ancestor on a raid I bet. But very poetic, don’t you think? Tells your girl she’s your road to heaven, your flaming rainbow bridge, Woof! Great idea, no?

Well, it’s an idea, I’ll give you that, Stuart said.

Khadafi touched a finger to Stuart’s chest, Ssssst! She’ll be so hot, you’ll sizzle.  Nome sayn?

It’s still theft. CERN just doesn’t know it has what you’re stealing.

No admins here, all upstairs building their new toy. Why do you care? We’re both underpaid. Wage slaves. Maybe you should get your share too.

Be careful, pal.

No cameras here, no worries. And who’s in charge of cameras downstairs? You, my friend.

Stuart put his hand down on the boxes, Fifty-fifty on profits, boxes or diamonds.

Eighty-twenty.

He pulled the boxes toward him. "Forty-sixty, and I’ll have to confiscate these. See you on the day shift. And don’t talk about my girl, any girl, like that, or I’ll make you sizzle."

Stuart had not dissuaded Khadafi from thinking he had a girl waiting for him back home. Even though she was imaginary now, Stuart started to get defensive of her honor.

No offense intended, Loverboy. You think about that girl. You know she’d love it.

~*~

And he did think of her. Christine’s grandmother had lived next door to Stuart’s family, so they had known each other since childhood. At one point however, when they were fourteen, a woman he didn’t recognize waved from the house next door. He blinked his eyes and it was Christine, blinked again and it was a stranger. He saw the same effect as he closed one eye and then the other repeatedly until finally, Christine yelled, What are you blinking like an eejit for?! From then on she made him nervous and he hung back a bit while watching her intently.

She always traveled in a gaggle of girlfriends, laughing and telling secrets as he kept his distance. Every so often she would toss her shining brown hair over her shoulder and her eyes would flash as she looked straight at him. She might be telling stories at his expense, but at least, he thought, he was on her mind.

Then one day she spun around and didn’t turn back, letting her friends go on without her. As Stuart walked up to her, she said, Stuart, are you following me?

He was emboldened by her directness and reacted with studied disinterest, just the opposite of how he felt.

What if I am?

A laugh burst out of her pursed lips. Stuart, don’t try to be tough with me. You can’t pull it off. You’re a sensitive guy, not a bully boy.

Sounds like an insult.

"You’re such a numpty. Some girls like Neds and Teds, but I’d rather