Part 31 : PreTrip

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After the grin had faded I slept all night. I was well rested when I woke up. I barely remembered any dreams.The whisky had done it’s job. BlackJack had allowed me to rest.

I was several hundred miles south of the Bifrost’s most southern point in South America. The bridge hadn’t got there yet. The Bridge was the reason I was there. I was point man for the Bridge. I scouted trail.

This was going to be one hell of a trip.

Considering the events of the last few days I decided to conduct a complete, thorough pre-trip inspection. First thing was a full computer diagnostic.

“Trog” I said “how you feeling buddy?”

“I’m doing fine Austyn” he said “Mary and I were wondering where you had been. You normally don’t stay gone so long. I was beginning to worry about you”

“Um…Mary and You have been talking to each other?” I asked.

This was passing strange. I admit to being eccentric. I anthropomorphize the hell out of my smart machinery. I’m alone a LOT and I enjoy talking. It’s fun to pretend that they are alive.

But I know better. It’s a game I play to pass the time. Troglodyte isn’t intelligent. He’s just a machine. Just a program. So is Mary.

Yeah…right.

“Things happen Trog. Some times bad things happen.” I said.

“Mary has been worried about her driver “ Trog said.

Oh shit. This was getting out of hand. Apparently Chris was as bad about make believe friends as I was.

“Shit happens too,Trog.” I said. Might as well not beat around the bush. “Her driver is dead. He was killed by bandits. Break it to her gently please? If you need me I’ll be here.”

“I’ll do that Austyn. Thank you.” Trog said.

“I’m sure you will” I said…this was border line surreal. Had I programmed that? Yeah…actually I had. I’d done a better job of it than I’d realized.

“I wasn’t kidding earlier. How do you feel? Run a level one diagnostic please. Squirt a display to my HUD”. I asked him. “Let’s go over it step by step. While we’re doing that get an inspection drone ready. We’ll need it when we get done here.”

He didn’t reply but he did that. I studied the display carefully. He and I went over each item step by step. Everything was color coded. It looked normal. All green.

We were good to go….according to the diagnostics. I was relieved but that wasn’t good enough. I pulled the ThumBrain from it’s slot in the dash and snapped it to my Torque. Time for a walk-around.

“Send out the Drone Trog” I said.

I needed some exercise after spending so much time flat on my back in the clinic. I climbed out of the truck and joined it.

I’d programmed the drone to carefully inspect Trog and the trailers as I slowly walked alongside. I circled the rig, down one side, across the rear, up the other side and across the front. I was examining every square inch VERY closely. I was paranoid. There was NO telling what kind of surprise might be attached here or there. Explosive surprises perhaps. The drone flew a helix pattern around the rig…and videoed everything. It squirted the feed to my HUDS. Troy and I cross checked everything.

Including the BloodyMary.

“Hello Mary” I said out of habit “Do you mind if we look you over?”

“Hello Mr. Austyn” she said. “Trog had told me about you. I appreciate your concern for my feelings in regard to Chris. He and I had been together for a long time. I’m going to have a hard time getting used to him being gone.”

Did I say surreal? This was beyond surreal. This was crazy. Oh well. Soldier on. I checked every square inch of Mary. I paid particular attention to the securement. She was built to Mil-spec. I love Mil-spec. Tie down points were numerous. She had a lot of D-rings. I’d used every one of them too, and heavy hi-tensile chains and binders.

Yup...she was on there. She wouldn’t fall off.

“Thank you Mary. Everything looks secure. If you have any issues be sure to let me know” I told her. Trog and I completed the inspection.

It took a while.

Finally I was done. Best I could tell everything was in tip top shape. Everything seemed to be up to snuff. No damage from the bandit attack. No little surprises. No damage from vandals.

We rolled

….. in a manner of speaking. When Trog isn’t flying on mag-lev on the bridge, he’s crawling…he has tracks. ‘Crawling’ just doesn’t have the right ring. ‘Crawling’ doesn’t convey the right impression.

Maybe I should say…”Let’s ride.”

For such a big truck he was leading a small train. We only had a few trailers. The one with the Bloody Mary on it and some empties. That just made things easier.

Like I said, most Lightning Trucks had wheels for use when they weren’t levitating. Not Trog..he had tracks…that’s a good thing on goat paths.

We crawled for twelve hours that day. The roads were every bit as bad going north as they had been coming south. Trog was an awesome truck. Unreal actually. Even so...the roads…they were miserable. They really sucked. They weren’t well maintained and they traversed some of the most rugged country imaginable. I was thankful time and time again for Trog’s tracks. He could find traction where wheeled vehicles wouldn’t have had a prayer. The weather sucked, the roads sucked, the terrain sucked and my headaches sucked. (Yeah…I still had one) Everything about the situation sucked.

Except for Trog. Troglodyte didn’t suck. Trog was Saaaaah Weeeet!

I’m a LoneWolf by nature…I chase the Wild Geese…that doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate my clan and my family. I do. They must appreciate me too. They had gifted me with Troglodyte. (And my SmokePole..and other nifty gimmicks) I bless them for that daily.

It had taken a mere twelve hours to come the whole distance that an ICE truck would have taken a week had an Internal Combustion Powered Truck even been able to make the Trek…which it couldn’t. Troglodyte was that good. The roads were that bad. We actually managed to get within sight of the Burning Bridge by dark.

That was good enough..

I was whupped.

This was the brand new part of the bridge. The leading edge. The end that was growing. The get-on ramp that I’d be using wasn’t as mature as the older parts. None of the doodads and safety gimmicks were in place yet.

Old people get to be old for a reason….like not taking unnecessary risks.

Best wait until sunrise. I found a wide place, out of the way, off the goat path I had been using as a road. Then again, maybe it wasn’t a road. Maybe it was a stream bed. Hard to tell.

I settled back to watch the show. I was within sight of the leading edge of the burning rainbow bridge.

It was an awesome sight to behold.

Imagine a crystal cloud full of lightning. Imagine ThunderFog. That’s what it was. Crystalline ThunderFog full of boiling lightning moving slowly across the sky…high in the air. The Bifrost Bridge was forming in it’s wake. Immediately behind the fiery cloud of ThunderFog the Bridge was but a translucent outline. It reminded me of spider webs laden with dew in early morning sunlight..except that it glowed internally with it’s own light.

The Snapping, Crackling, Booming Cloud of ThunderFog moved, slowly but steadily, at about walking speed, onward. In it’s wake the bridge coalesced and grew thicker and stronger by the second. In a day or so it went from gossamer to MASSIVE...but still it burned.

The Norse had a Bifrost Bridge in their myths and legends. My favorite nephew claimed that his wife’s mother was of Norwegian extraction. Or Swedish, or Finnish or Icelandic, or LapLander..…or something. Every time he’d tell me the story it would be different. I don’t think he had a real firm grasp on north european geography.

I later found out that our wife’s mother was fifth generation MinneSNOWtian. I didn’t need to tell him that.

At any rate...the Norse had a myth, a legend, about the Rainbow Bridge. Sometimes they called it the ‘burning bridge’, other times they called it ’Bifrost.’ The God that guarded the burning rainbow bridge was named Heimdall. He was the Guardian of Bifrost. So…we called ourselves that too, or the Aesir. We were the Guardians. Bifrost Bridge Headquarters was on Asgard Island… in Texas.

I was the point man, sometimes. Sometimes I scouted trail for the new bridge. That’s why I was so far south from the bridge. That’s why Troglodyte was such an awesome…all terrain…fusion powered…super truck.

I sat there for hours and watched a slow motion comet creep across the night sky. I fell asleep watching it. I dreamed .

(Dammit…I was getting tired of those dreams..they made me uneasy)

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To Be Continued
The Next Episode is
Part 32: First Day on the Bridge…
The Last episode was
Part 30 - Interlude -4 (concluded)…
the first episode was
Part 1 : Winter Storm

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