Dopecentury XLIII --- The Bridge
This short fiction is part of Dopecentury, an experimental project where I attempt to channel the aural aesthetics of Dopesmoker into written text. (Dopesmoker is the legendary stoner-doom metal masterpiece by the band Sleep, of which it is said: "the monotony rarely becomes tedious.") My plan is to listen to the single hour-long track of Dopesmoker while writing each of these "Dopecentury" entries. And repeat that 100 times. See the Dopecentury project page for more details.
At dawn the gangs of people approach the bridge from both the south and the north. They come in accompaniment to vehicles, monstrosities of welded steel some two stories high, with grease and rust and oil flaking and falling and dripping from the chassis. The machines roll forward slowly, some on wheels some on treads, some seeming to struggle to cover any ground at all, lurching and wheezing and clanking their way forward. From the depths of the machines smoke rises black and impenetrable, leaching from cracks and splits from deep within the machines, searching its way up through the superstructures, passing the people who sit high up at the controls and billowing up in an uncontrolled cloud that settles among the buildings that line the roadways of the city like some smog the portends a future doom.
Alongside the machines the people walk. They are clad is leather and wool, steel plates and metal caps, heave boots of rubber with shining toes capped in metal. They are armed with pipes of steel and iron, rusted brown chains that they swing above their heads and let off a terrifying shrieking caw as the metal cuts the air. The walkers keep pace with the machines, walking aside or among them, but not ahead of them. The gangs time their march so both sides will arrive at the bridge as the sun first peeks above the river in the distance to the east.
The timing is more or less accurate, as it should be since the gang members of both sides know their portions of the city from a lifetime of wandering (and defending) their streets. The southern gang is the first to put a foot on the bridge, just before the sun peaks over the horizon to the east, and the gang members let go a cheer with such heartiness that it grows to feel like some initial victory.
In reality, it signifies nothing, as the northern gang is already rolling the forward-most of their machines onto the span, the wind catching the smoke now and blowing it off and down until it gathered blackly above the surface of the river. The northern gang let up their own cheer.
The machines rolled forward onto the bridge, from both the north and the south, gaining the slope of the span at roughly the same speed. The machines swarmed with the gang members around them, now climbing up onto them, and some climbing up onto the superstructure of the bridge. The seething members of both gangs spread out on either side of the machines, occupying the entire width of the bridge until it was a wall people and metal and smoke crawling blackly up the bridge towards the middle.
Now authorities arrived at the embankments along the bridge, with their flashing lights of color and their bullhorns and sirens. But the gangs on both the north and the south hand rearguard machines ready for this, heavy and in place behind at the entrances to the bridge on both sides. Heavy unmoveable machines, stopped dead, driveshafts removed, and aligned to prevent any significant presence on the bridge of anyone not involved in the action these gangs took to settle their differences.
With the entrances of the bridge walled up, the gangs gathered in greater numbers in the middle of the span. Between the two forward most machines is a unoccupied no man's land, cleared roadway empty of all but a few birds. Into the gap step two people, one from the north and one from the south. Huge people, draped in black and brown clothing with plates of steel and boots that clomped heavily against the steel decking of the bridge, audible in the silence that now spread from the foremost gang members down the bridge.
Insults are traded back and forth. Black flags mounted on long poles are brought forward, each with an insignia, and thrown down into the space between. Feints and false charges are made from one gang leader to the other. But this is all for show. The settlement will happen between the champions.
Which is the next part of the ceremony: the declaring of the champions. With much verbosity and hyperbole the champions are brought forward. Bodily, they are nothing much to consider, slight people of little mass. But each champion is most expert among the gang and piloting their chosen machine. So it follows that after the choosing of the champions, the choosing of the machines commences. The chosen machines are, of course, well known to each gang ahead of time, and so are near (though not at) the front of the lines of machines, where they are protected by the forward machines but readily brought out for the combat of the champions.
With the champions and the machines declared, the partying begins. Drinks and smokes are distributed, music is blasted from loudspeakers mounted on the machines, on either side of the bridge, large dangerous-looking people dance. The bridge quakes with the sound and the motion.
And then it is time for combat. The southern machine is on treads and is at least twelve feet tall, with long whipping lengths of steel cable, and jaws of thick steel with jagged teeth closed by hydraulic rams mounted on either side. The northern machine rolls on huge steel wheels that tear up the asphalt where it passes. Its superstructure is a massive block of steel with long arms that can swing back and forth in huge arcs.
The signal is given and the champions mount their machines, climbing up and deep inside where they can see and control, but are protected by steel cages and wire that wrap around their control seats. The machines engage, slowly. crunching and grinding together, steel cables whipping and singing through the air, metal jaws clamping down and long thick arms of rust and iron smashing into one machine and then the bridge structure.
The bridge structure.
Which no engineer ever contemplated would need to withstand the forces now unleashed upon it. The massive welds are the ligaments holding the massive rams to the heavy steel arms give way mid swing, and tons of steel smash through critical supports for the bridge. The machines, locked together, tip. And they fall into the very part of the bridge structure that had just been weakened by the flailing arm. The machines dangle and hang for a second, and then the machines go over the side of the bridge taking a whole section of the bridge structure with them to the river below.
The bridge seems fine for a minute. And then a light gust of wind twists it in such a way that the stresses travel right to the missing section, and the roadbed there collapses into the water. With the roadbed gone, the other side of the bridge falls, and then the bridge collapses completely, all the stress and tension that had been held static for decades suddenly released, and with the great swinging motions of a giant going down on the battlefield, the bridge fell completely, the two gangs and their people and their machines falling downward with it.