The Proving by Ken Brosky Read Free Book Online Page B

“And it won’t be the last. Give me a place to stand and I will move the Earth.”
    “Homer? Bravo. But they have a point, you know. The Ring has an endless supply of Specters with which to torment us. Every time two chunks of ice crash into one another, Specters go flying like sparks from a dry piece of kindling.”
    “The Ring is a finite object,” Gabriel snapped. “Building a massive ship and shooting it into another galaxy isn’t going to save humanity. Abandoning Earth won’t save humanity.”
    They walked down the empty hall and through a pair of sliding doors, which led to the capitol rotunda, a large circular space in the center of the Parliament building. Gabriel walked to the marble railing and looked down: the rotunda was three levels deep, and below he could see other Neo Berlin Parliamentarians milling about near the railing. On the lowest level, a cleaner bot was dutifully polishing the glossy floors, spinning its circular body.
    Above Gabriel’s head was a mural of Neo Berlin’s history, an old-fashioned painting that had been painstakingly restored only a few years ago. The images celebrated Neo Berlin’s achievements: a world peace agreement, the first Phenocyte reactor, the development of a gene therapy for PX54 cancer, and the heroic stand against the Specters in the town of Jericho, just west of the city.
    “I hate that mural,” Armando said, leaning next to him and looking up. “Must we trumpet our successes?”
    “Who else will,” Gabriel murmured.
    “You forget about Carnivale.”
    “I can’t forget about Carnivale,” Gabriel said with a smile. Last night’s festivities were supposed to mark humanity’s great “triumph” over its greatest threat: the Specters. But Gabriel no longer saw it that way. After all, what was a triumph when the last of humanity was sequestered inside invisible bubbles?
    The entire world, celebrating. Pointing up at the Ring and laughing. Running through the streets trailed by Specters made of orange fabric and paper composite until the effigies were surrounded and violently lit on fire. Cheering. Sweat clinging to foreheads. Orange flames reflected in the windows of skyscrapers. Gabriel had seen it every year of his life, and last night he’d seen enough.
    So he’d snuck away. The Martinez family was supposed to be at one of the “main events” where an effigy of a Specter was set ablaze, but in the chaos of the reveries it was easy for Gabriel to make like a ghost. The Metropolis of Neo Berlin may have embraced Carnivale, but that didn’t mean there weren’t quiet spaces. Spaces he could get away from the madness. Spaces he could hear himself think.
    He went east, following a street named after a Persian inventor whose very cleaning bots were even now skittering along the wide sidewalk, sucking up confetti and littered cups. He walked between towering skyscrapers made of glass and steel — durable, even in earthquakes. And yet if the shield ever fell, the Specters would kill anyone hiding inside. They would kill everyone, passing through their bodies like ghosts and leaving grayed husks of rotting flesh.
    That was when he found the Bridge.
    Gabriel had known there was a small lake on the east side of the city, but the neighborhood was Persian, full of techies and tech companies and experimental bots roaming around like lost souls . . . not Gabriel’s cup of tea. But this area was quiet during Carnivale, and Gabriel had felt drawn to the silence like a moth to a flame. When he reached the lake, he was shocked to find that running across the center of the small lake was a bridge that dipped into the water.
    Gabriel stepped closer until he was at the top of a small staircase leading down to the lakeshore. The bridge was made of some kind of concrete, dividing the lake in two like a channel. The concrete walls of the bridge were just tall enough to reach the surface of the water. Water poured over the sides of the concrete walls, but instead of