Bridgetown, Issue #1: Arrival (8 page)

"They were gathering intelligence," Wayne
said. "About what was inside my factory."

"I believe so," the sheriff said. He blinked
twice, and looked like he was holding back his tongue.

"What's on your mind?" Wayne asked. "Go
ahead, you can say it."

"Well, Wayne…don't take this the wrong
way."

"Oh, this is gonna be interesting."

"Now, you've obviously contributed a great
deal to our town. Heck, you just about put us on the map! But I
don't think you've been entirely forthcoming with us about the
nature of this factory you're building out there."

Wayne furrowed his brow. "It's all in the
proposal we delivered to the mayor's office last fall…"

"Right, right, the proposal. Well, see, I
looked up the proposal, and it said you were planning on making
patent radio parts. Funny, I thought you were still making watches
in there. I must be falling behind the times. World's passing me
by."

Wayne nodded. "There's only so much to be
earned in the watchmaking enterprise, Sheriff. It was a great way
to start a business. But anyone can put a watch on a leather strap
and call it a day—and they are, believe me. My board and I agreed
that we were capable of moving on to more ambitious challenges. So,
if I need to update the mayor's office's plans, that's fine, I can
do that—"

"Well, well, now, hold on just a tick," the
sheriff said. "I'm no engineer, but it seems to me that judging by
these photographs, whatever you've got going on in there, it's a
lot bigger than radios, even, or telephones."

Wayne broke out into a grin. "Sheriff, I can
see there's no fooling you. You're quite right." He bit his lip,
then looked the sheriff square in the eyes. "Why don't you come
with me, right now, to the factory? I do apologize for all of the
secrecy, but when I show you what we've got going on, I think
you'll understand why."

He began to untie his smock. "Humor me, with
a few more minutes of mystery, so I can show you in person what
we're working on. For maximum dramatic effect."

"Alright," was all the sheriff emitted.

Wayne led White out the side door of the
ranch house, to a covered garage. Within, he had two horseless
carriages parked. Next to these, under a tarp, was a third
vehicle.

It was the Jeep, that had once belonged to
Jesse. Wayne and his team had disassembled and reassembled it fully
three times, each time studying and recording, with a Talmudic
reverence, how it was put together.

From those exercises, Wayne
had built the other two cars in the garage. His team of engineers
mimicked the basic frame and the mechanical underpinnings of the
Jeep. The first car had been an exercise in trial-and-error. The
end product worked well enough—it
ran
—but it was evident that it was
the product of an inferior society. Even compared to the
utilitarian source material, the Cole Automotive Mark I prototype
was bare-boned. Only the bravest would only tolerate its roughshod
ride on town streets and established highways. Its headlamps were
equipped with dim, off-the-shelf light bulbs not capable of much
throw. And it broke down constantly.

So Wayne began work on the Mark II just a few
weeks later. Again, his engineers labored like the Manhattan
Project scientists, toiling away in secrecy. This time, he spared
no expense sourcing the right raw materials. He hired the brightest
electricians and propulsion experts in the Western world to build
on what they'd learned forging the Mark I. They'd weatherproofed it
and road-proofed it; this time, Wayne would have happily driven
every man or woman of money in Bridgetown without fear they'd think
it a death trap. Compared to even the most lavish horseless
carriages being built in Europe, the Mark II was easily in a class
of its own, in both comfort and technical sophistication.

It was into this third auto, painted ivory
with meticulous hand-detailed trim lines and capped with a shining
new Cole Automotive ornament, that Wayne and the Sheriff now
climbed aboard.

Once White was situated in the Mark II, Wayne
backed the car out of the garage and began to drive down the long
dirt path that snaked away from the ranch grounds and towards the
factory, visible in the distance.

"This is a nice horseless you have," White
said. "Can't say I've ever seen one like it. German-made, I take
it?"

"No," Wayne replied. "It's American."

After a few minutes' ride in near-silence,
Wayne pulled his touring car up to the edge of the factory
construction site.

Thankfully, it looked like the damage from
the bomb had been fairly muted; it wouldn't take his crew long to
patch it up. It worried him, though, what it meant going forward.
How much of this kind of regressive nonsense would he have to put
up with, once the town knew what he was actually planning to
build?

Wayne and White made their way into the
cavernous hangar-like interior of the plant. The Sheriff wore a
baffled look, as he stared at long parallel tracks that traveled
the length of the facility.

"An assembly line," Wayne proclaimed. "The
product is assembled by different workers, each man performing a
single, simple task as it travels the length of the line. By the
time it reaches the end, the product is complete."

"And what is the product, exactly?"

"You just rode here in it."

White was flabbergasted. "That horseless
carriage?" You're building automobiles in this factory?"

"We intend to make a thousand in the first
month."

"A thousand? Where on Earth will you find
enough customers to afford them?"

"Producing at these kinds of scales reduces
our operating costs by a significant factor, Sheriff. In ten years'
time, every middle-class family in America will be able to afford a
car."

White turned to Wayne, a bewildered look in
his eyes. "Well, goddamnit, why did you hide this from us?"

"Solving the technical details of a problem
is all in a day's work for an engineer—that alone is not a
determinate for genius. Staying ahead of the competition,
constructing in absolute secrecy is the only way to preserve the
sanctity of an idea, Sheriff.

"If I had told the town ten months ago what
we were planning here, the wires would've been spreading the news
to the East as fast as an operator could tap it out. And the moguls
on the East have the advantage of capital."

"This is really something," was all White
could say.

"If they'd had the brains to invent the
assembly line, they'd have brought the everyman-car to market
before I could break ground on this facility."

The sheriff huffed air out his nostrils.
"You'll have to announce this to the world eventually, you
know."

"Oh, we will. On the first day of the fall,
we will host a grand event, to usher the world into the twentieth
century."

Susanna watched the activity on the factory
floor as she did every morning, from her office high up overlooking
the premises. She tried to focus on her task at hand, but something
was bothering her this morning.

She'd had a dream the night before. She was
in the Dark place, the place she'd encountered after falling into
the light in the desert five years earlier. The last time she'd
seen Jesse. She hated the Darkness. Hated how disorienting it had
been, hated the sensation of being totally lost and separated from
her physical self. It haunted her, knowing such a void beyond
reality existed.

In her dream, Jesse called out to her. Tried
to reach her. And then, he was gone.

She sipped her coffee, trying to steady her
feelings and redouble her resolve.

She had to sit down for a few minutes. If
anyone asked, she'd say she was just a little spooked by the bomb
this morning. But she couldn't care less about that. It was a
diversion, a fireworks show from the backwards hillbillies beyond
the town who wanted Bridgetown to remain a podunk outpost.

No, the real reason she was so shaken up was
because the dream had brought her right back to where she'd been
all those years ago. How she'd felt, when she first dropped out of
the sky and into this topsy-turvy world. Back to who she had been
when she first stumbled into town, a lost, frightened girl. Alone,
with no idea where Jesse was, or, at first, Wayne.

And now this life she'd built for herself,
over the last half-decade—it felt alien to her, as it had in those
early days. She didn't belong here. Wayne didn't belong here.

This factory certainly didn't belong
here.

Where's Jesse?

Why had he never dropped out of the sky like
they each had? Why had he never found them?

Or was he out there now, somewhere, looking
for them? Lost and alone?

Maybe he'd learned the truth about her and
Wayne, about the life they'd built together, and had decided to
stay away.

If she ever did see Jesse again, what would
she say?

How could she explain her and Wayne?

Jesse'd have to understand, wouldn't he?

Now she, too, felt lonely.

She drank the last of her coffee, sat up, and
straightened out her outfit. She needed to work, that's what she
needed. It would help her keep her mind at ease. Keep her focused,
keep the ambiguity away.

She left her office and descended the
staircase to the factory floor.

Within moments, she was back to her daily
routine, barking orders at the construction crew. Her men, for
their part, took her authority in remarkable stride, given their
era's views on gender relations.

Susanna had always chalked her ability to
command respect from this crowd to how pragmatic and blue-collar
her workers were. The worst sexism she'd experienced in Bridgetown
had been leveled against her by other women—the would-be
aristocratic upper crust she had the distinct displeasure of having
to deal with from time to time. Socialites from the East, paraded
through town on a whirlwind publicity tour designed to legitimize
Cole Co.'s inventions in the eyes of the world.

By contrast, here in Bridgetown, few had the
luxury to subscribe to Victorian morality. The hookers were as
important to the morale of this place as robust industry ever had
been.

So Susanna was irritated
when she made eye contact with Sheriff White—who, for some reason,
was standing in the middle of the factory floor with Wayne. The
lawman's eyes nearly popped out of his head at the sight of
her
bossing around her
subordinates.

No matter. She'd hold her own against her
doubters; she'd prove them wrong. Maybe she'd do for feminism what
Cole Co. was doing for the Age of the Automobile: jump-start it
with a ten-thousand volt electric shock.

She made the first move, sticking a firm hand
out for the sheriff to shake. "Sheriff White, how do you do?"

The sheriff blubbered for a moment, then:
"Quite fine, Mrs. Cole. Yourself?"

"To tell you the truth, Sheriff, I hardly
know these days. My mind's on making sure the line's rolling by the
time of our opening." She indicated, with a breezy hand, in the
direction of the tracks. "The first car we make will roll off the
assembly line carrying a turkey dinner and all its dressings."

White chuckled. "The papers will enjoy
writing about that, I'm sure." He paused for a moment, glanced at
his feet and then back at her. "With all of your, ah, construction
duties, how will you have time to prepare the decorum?"

Susanna gave no visible reaction. "Leave that
to Mayor Sheldon's wife," she said in a plainly dismissive tone.
"We can cart her in here at the eleventh hour to, I dunno, string
up some ribbons or something." Then she laughed, a big laugh that
was an invitation for the sheriff to laugh as well.

Susanna, One, Backwards Entrenched Gender
Roles, Zero.

"I must say," the sheriff began, "If any man
should doubt your abilities, he need only lay eyes upon what you've
accomplished here."

"Who's doubting my abilities?" She raised an
eyebrow.

The sheriff stammered. "Well, no one in
particular, I mean, you just know how people are." Then he leaned
in, and spoke in a hush. "It's a bit unusual, is all."

"What is?"

White was more flustered by
the moment; Susanna only smirked as he continued. "Well,
a...
woman
...foreman, Mrs. Cole. A forewoman. Not to put to fine a
point on it."

Susanna, dryly: "Of course not."

Wayne stepped in to break up the pissing
contest. "Are you through interrogating the Sheriff, Susanna?"

Susanna shot him a glare the sheriff didn't
see. She didn't need him ganging up on her. She put her work gloves
back on. "The rest will have to wait. Deadlines to meet. Good day,
gentlemen." She made her exit, with an ironic little curtsy.

Making her way back towards her office, she
spotted the bomb blast's damage from a new angle. It stopped her in
her tracks.

The irregular, scorched cavity the dynamite
had created formed a kind of archway proscenium. And through it,
calling to her, was Devil's Peak.

She took a step towards it. And another. And
another.

A familiar chill shot through her bones.

The Darkness. The void.

First her dream, then this—she had the
distinct impression that somehow, the mountain was calling her.

She stepped through the twisted wreckage of
the blast site, and continued walking in the direction of the mesa.
She wasn't sure why.

In her five years since she was transported
here, she'd never returned to the mountain. She had never tried to
find that narrow passageway leading to its hollow heart, nor sought
out the mystic waters at its core. It was so full of secrets that
these people, the people of Bridgetown, were completely oblivious
to. Even Wayne, who thought he was the smartest man on earth
because fate had given him the chance to steal from the greatest
inventors of his time, didn't know what lay at the heart of Devil's
Peak.