The Bridge Burners

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. Their code appeared early one spring, injected into the fabric of reality without any warning from the Editer responsible.

In April, the first clumps of pixels were spotted crackling in the night sky over Knox Mountain and the Glenmore orchards. The clandestine clusters gave eyewitnesses the impression of sentient comet tails aflicker with photons that couldn't seem to settle on a form.

Following these early sightings, the vagrant pixels made themselves scarce for all of a month, and it wasn't until early summer— peak tourist season— that the first concrete account of a dragon made its way to city hall. The RCMP officers patrolling the Bennett bridge that Sunday were terror-struck when a monstrous mirage winged down out of the blank blue sky and burned through Bennett’s eastern pontoons in a blistering symphony of heat and static that set the hair of every pedestrian and patrolman on end. That was June.

“And still, no one will take credit.”

Priya shaded her phone from the sun and squinted to read the print on the screen.

“The Okanagan Valley has seen its fair share of Edits as of late,” Priya read aloud. “From the ArboReplica that allows Editers to quadruple the appearance of greenery in urban areas, to the DecriminalEyes, which reduces crime rates in impoverished neighbourhoods by projecting eyes onto the walls of vulnerable homes and businesses.” Priya rolled her eyes and walked her swing closer to Emile’s to hand off her phone. He continued where she’d left off.

“The newly-released Pleasure Garden app allows users to purchase and project a personalized virtual reality experience into their own backyard. Local app creator and Editer, Robert Keel, has confided that next month’s update will come with a range of new purchase options, including a fully-stocked koi pond, bamboo fountain garden, and colour-changing lotus flowers. The Fauna Enhancer— listen to this”—

“I know,” Priya cut in. “It makes it look like there’s deer and grouse and stuff in the forests when there aren’t any. Haven’t you heard about all the pissy hunters storming town hall? There’s like, a riot in the news every other day. Not that I give a shit about a bunch of beardy poachers in lifted pickups.”

“Oh, right. Vegan.”

Priya turned up her nose. “It’s just depressing. I went to sit under this big oak tree in Waterfront Park the other day and there was no shade. It was a hologram, only I couldn’t tell at first, not even when I got close up. I’ve started touching everything first to make sure it’s real.” She reached across the playground sand and pinched Emile’s collar between her fingers. Satisfied, she swung back to her own side of the swingset, unaware of the heat her touch had generated beneath his shirt. Emile hopped, grinning, off of his swing, and walked to the lawn at the edge of the sand. The grass looked remarkably lush for an Okanagan summer, and he wondered if this too, was an illusion; an Edit.

“Green makes people feel good.” Priya’s voice behind him, echoing his thoughts. Emile smiled at her uneasily and continued reading the article.

No one was taking credit for the dragons. Usually, when an Edit was made, there was an Editer behind it who would come forward, appropriately abashed, to accept whatever accolades and city council honours (and occasional government grant) that the adoring populace wished to bestow on them. In the case of the dragons, no one had come forward. Emile figured this was likely owing to the fact that their brilliant Edit had already cost the city $1.2 million tax dollars to repair the only bridge connecting Kelowna to its western bank.

I wouldn’t say anything, either, Emile thought. He handed Priya’s phone back and squinted up at the sky.

“I wonder if it’s someone my dad knows at Innov8.”

“Probably some Tolkien fanboy.” Priya snorted.

“Aren’t you a Tolkien fanboy?” Emile laughed, and Priya wound up to punch him, but then her fist dropped as though all the strength had gone out of her arm, and Emile saw the whites of her eyes become visible as she looked past him, and he turned to follow her gaze.

Across the park, in the boughs of a (presumably real) willow, a bizarre scene was playing out. The bizarreness came from the shape that occupied the tree. It was roughly the size, Emile ventured, of a woolly mammoth he’d once seen at the Royal BC Museum. The only thing was, the shape couldn’t seem to keep inside its own lines; it shifted and shivered like a mirage or a too-full glass of water. The shape was dark all over— shiny brown here and dull green there (almost gold in some areas), serpentine from this angle and knifelike from that. The shifting, shivering shape must have come down from the sky and, Emile realized with cold fear, broken through the tree’s canopy with its weight. A halo of debris lay like an ominous fairy ring around the base of the willow.

Emile wasn’t aware of pushing Priya, but suddenly she fell backwards, and the shape in the tree moved sharply at the same time.

“That’s it,” Priya breathed as Emile reached down for her hand. He felt her hot, terrified breath on his neck as he pulled her to her feet. “Sh-should we run from it?”

“I don’t know,” Emile whispered back. “I don’t know its programming.”

“We know it breathes fire.” Priya uttered a shrill laugh that died instantly.

“The newspaper didn’t say anything about it breathing fire. It said that it flew down and the bridge burned up.”

“Same difference.”

Their hushed conversation stilled as the shape moved in the treetop again. There was no one else in the secluded riverside park this late in the day. No officers, no parents, not so much as a stray cat.

“Do you still have that weapon app thing?”

“ArmorE? I... I think so.”

“Get it out.”

Numb and obedient, Emile retrieved his phone from his back pocket and began to scroll through his apps. It took tremendous willpower to keep his eyes rooted to the icons with the tree-dweller looming blackly in his periphery.

“I found it,” he breathed. He hadn’t had much reason to open the app since July. Then, it had served as a way to bond with his brother over their mutual penchant for medieval weaponry (swords and bows, respectively). Given that archery was one of the few subjects aside from coding that Gabe would speak more than five words on, Emile had subscribed to Archer’s Arsenal, one of ArmorE’s specialized mailing lists, and plumbed Wikipedia for every page on premodern projectiles that he could find, sorted according to Country and Era. He still had the notes in his phone, opened just once before Gabe was accepted to U of T, and Emile was left behind with his parents and Priya, the last of his friends to remain in Kelowna after graduation.

“Pick a sword,” Priya said. She sounded calmer than she looked. “I know you have one.”

Emile, indeed, had one sword. He’d invested an entire paycheque from last summer's barista gig in a Synthsteel shortsword with an opal-encrusted pommel (although he couldn’t remember sharing this information with Priya). It didn’t stack up to Gabe’s Synthsidian Crossbow, but Emile guessed that, as far as holograms went, neither would be of much use.

Emile selected the shortsword, the only eWeapon in his arsenal aside from a slingshot (which every subscriber started out with), and pressed the blue EQUIP button that appeared on the screen. He noticed with dull alarm that the shape in the tree was solidifying; even at two hundred yards, Emile could now make out the texture of the dark hide, rippling and reflective in the evening sun.

“Scales. It’s like… a real dragon.”

Priya’s words washed over them both like ice water. Emile could see the two of them, teenagers in tattooed Converse and off-brand denim, him brandishing a cellphone like a sword, her slack-jawed as a broken puppet. Nothing about their situation was grand, or heroic, or magical in the least. His eyes flickered down to his phone, where a bluish glow was building around the front-facing projector.

“Pri. Look.”

A low hum was emanating from the phone’s slim silver body; Emile could feel it whirring, a fast pulse against his palm. Photons swirled like dust motes in the projector’s blue beam, fragments of the hologram stacking one on top of another, until Emile found himself brandishing a ghostly shortsword in his right hand. His mouth was as dry as the soil beneath the Edited grass.

“Okay, we’ve got a sword,” he croaked, wetting his lips. “What do you want me to do with it?”

Priya’s mouth opened and closed, and then she made a fencing motion in the air.

“What, like, stab it?”

Priya nodded confidently. “That’s how you kill a dragon, right?”

“In a fucking movie, maybe.”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t”—

“Think about it. Whoever created that flying glitch would’ve had to include a Kill Function in its code. They wouldn’t be able to launch it, even a half-baked one like that, without a Kill Function. Isn’t that what your dad says?”

Emile thought for a moment and nodded slowly.

“Right. So, I’m thinking that the person who makes Tolkien-esque dragons for fun would make them require a Tolkien-esque death. And how does every dragon die in every dragon movie ever?” Before Emile could answer, Priya went on, “The knight slays it, with a sword. Or an axe, or whatever.”

Emile looked down at the hologram in his hand. It didn’t look like much: weightless, semi-transparent, and no more than three feet long from its emanating point in his phone. He turned it over in his hand, wishing he could test the sharpness, wishing he were taller and stronger and older, wishing that the very first Edit had never been made.

“But that’s not the world we live in." He sighed and looked over at Priya, anticipating an ironical look. Instead, Emile followed her ashen stare to the opposite side of the park, where the willow tree stood vacated against the darkling sky.

For the second time that day, Emile reached for Priya’s hand, and as his clammy palm met hers, a large shadow closed over their heads. Emile tightened his grip on his sword, and looked up.