Entangled Earth

“Don’t make me do it, please,” said Celeste, grabbing Mia by the arm. “I can’t even look up.”

“You made me a promise and you’re keeping it,” replied Mia, brushing off her grip. “What would be the point in coming to Paris and not seeing it from the top? It’s not so bad. You’ll feel better once you’re at the top.”

“No, I bloody won’t,” said Celeste as she craned her neck upwards and looked at the iron latticework of the tower curving upwards away from her, nearly toppling over backwards before righting herself with a jerk. “How old is this fucking tower? Isn’t it time they knock it down and replace it with something not made of hundred-odd-year-old iron? Something with windows, really thick triple glazed, reinforced windows?”

“Wimp,” said Mia.

“Come on, you can do this,” Celeste half muttered to herself.

Mia watched her friend struggling. She was feeling slightly guilty but she was glad Celeste was there. She didn’t see enough of her, especially since the baby. Paris was Mia’s first trip on her own since Freddy was born. She hadn’t told Jack but she really needed a break from home life before going back to work. She felt guilty about leaving them but Jack understood and had insisted she go. The conference that had drawn her to Paris was a break but it was also Mia’s plan for easing back into academic life before when went back to work properly. The venue for the conference flitted between a few different cities, picked depending on where the organisers decided they wanted a holiday. This year was Paris’ turn.

“You really do this every city you go?” asked Celeste, staring at the ground.

“If there’s something good to go to the top of, yes. It’s a tradition now I suppose.”

“You’re a bloody lunatic.”

Something happened to the team in Cambridge when they got out the lab that meant the conferences had become excuses for the attendees to go on drunken benders. Mia had somehow managed to get to the top of the Empire State Building with a massive hangover the year before she’d taken her sabbatical. The year before that she had been very thoroughly sick on, but thankfully not off, the viewing platform of the Tokyo Tower. The Eiffel Tower was next on her list and Celeste had promised to get to the top with her as a celebration of her impending escape from nappies and daytime television.

The rest of the delegates were gathered at the conference centre to watch the early morning live stream of an experiment being carried out in the lab she used to work in in Cambridge. Quantum entanglement was exciting stuff but even after a few years away Mia was familiar with the science. The lead scientist had joined after she’d left and wasn’t a friend so she’d decided she could happily skip it to spend the morning with her friend without offending anyone. She rarely saw Celeste and this was the only time her friend could get off work and given the opportunity to visit Mia had jumped at the chance. This year she’d decided to do her climb before the boozing had actually started so she could see Paris with a clear head. It was just unfortunate for Celeste and her fear of heights that seeing her friend and scaling the tower had to coincide. Things wouldn’t really get going until tomorrow at the conference. The networking, boozing and physics could wait.

Mia poked Celeste in the back with a knuckle “So, lift or stairs?”

“Fuck off! Stairs? Not a chance. Strap me into the lift and tell me when we’re at the top.”

There was a cough from behind them and they looked up to see the queue had moved up ahead of them. They scrambled up the steps toward the ticket booths and were beckoned over by an attendant waiting behind a glass screen.

“Deux vers le haut s’il vous plait,” said Celeste through the plastic grid embedded in the glass.

“To the top is fourteen Euros fifty.”

Celeste handed over the cash and took the tickets and the change, looking slightly disappointed she’d been rumbled as English so quickly. Celeste had been living in Paris for three years but she’d apparently yet to get the accent perfect.

“Why do they do that?” Celeste asked.

“What?”

“Reply in English. Pisses me off. It just reminds me I’m not really a local.”

“Maybe that’s the point.”

Mia’s French was limited to ordering beer so Celeste’s efforts seemed fine to her. All she could muster was a few sentences of conversational French and a few words of Russian she’d managed to pick up from her mum. She grabbed Celeste’s hand and dragged her towards the lift.

“Come on, let’s get this over with so we can get some coffee and a croissant or whatever the locals really eat for breakfast,” said Mia.

“I miss Shredded Wheat,” said Celeste.

Mia was staying in Celeste’s tiny apartment for the duration of the conference, saving herself a fortune on hotel bills. They had slept in and then rushed to get in line before the queue got too big, forgetting to eat and now Mia’s stomach was rumbling. They stepped into the lift cage and Celeste made her way past the other tourists who had gathered near to the front to get the best view and positioned herself as near to the middle of the cage as she could.

“Remind me again why you do this to yourself?” said Celeste.

“You’re the one afraid of heights! I love it. I can’t believe you’ve been here for years and never gone up,” said Mia, grabbing her hand.

“I lived next to the Thames for six years. I never jumped in that either.”

Celeste visibly restrained a yelp as the machinery juddered into action and the lift started to ascend. Mia stopped paying attention to Celeste and instead focussed on the view out through the lattice of metal surrounding them. At first, they were low enough down so the view of the city was masked by the buildings bordering the park where the tower stood but as they rose Paris went through a transformation as their view passed the rooftops. Churches turned from the barely visible tips of steeples to fully fledged pieces of gothic architecture and then gradually merged into the rest of the city. A complex web of streets stretched out into the distance and cafes and boutique shops slowly appeared along the winding streets. Somewhere out there, lost amongst the sea of hotels, was the conference centre Mia was due to speak at tomorrow but she couldn’t spot it yet.

Mia was the guest speaker for a small, fairly niche offshoot of the main conference focusing on quantum entanglement. She was young at 32 to be a speaker at a conference of this level, her PhD and 3 years of postdoc study at Cambridge notwithstanding. She suspected that she’d been bumped up the queue because she was a young and relatively attractive female, still something of a novelty in her field dominated by bearded men in their fifties. It was exactly the same phenomenon that had got her a couple of appearances on TV documentaries when she was still active in the field but token female or not she wasn’t going to pass up the chance to move up from attendee to speaker and had jumped at the chance to present, even if it was only a rehash of some old work she’d finished years ago. She’d grown up with science in the house. Her dad had been a botanist and her mother had studied chemistry for a while before giving it up to raise her and her sister. They were both now happily retired and living by the sea in Bournemouth. The family rarely saw each other as a group and didn’t have much to talk about other than science when they found time to socialize at Christmas and big birthdays.

After a minute or two of slow climbing, the lift came to a lurching halt. The crowd poured out leaving Mia and Celeste on their own in the lift. Celeste finally released Mia’s hand and Mia took the chance to shake some colour back into it. Mia put her hand on Celeste’s back and gave her a gentle shove and they stepped out onto the platform. The first set of lifts stopped about a third of the way to the top where a wide platform housed the lower viewing area. Thick crowds of people bunched around the barriers, straining to get the best view. Mia hoped it would be quieter at the top. The four legs curved closer together here, each housing its own lift to carry passengers further up the tower.

“Really?” sighed Celeste as she saw the second set of lifts, waiting to take them the rest of the distance to the top.

“We could say this counts as you going up the tower if you want. I won’t tell.”

“No, screw it. I’m here now, might as well go all the way.”

“Ok, come on then, let’s get it over with. I don’t think my hand can handle much more,” said Mia, rubbing the feeling back into her palm and stepping into the second stage lift.

Celeste closed her eyes for the second journey up. Mia put her hand on her friend’s shoulder in a poor attempt to reassure her but Celeste shook her off. The carriage started moving with a jerk and a rattle and their climb continued. When it reached the top of its ascent they stepped out to find another iron viewing platform. It was less busy on this level and they easily found a relatively quiet spot next to another young couple, brashly dressed, all money belts, Hawaiian shirts and expensive looking cameras. If Mia had to guess she’d say American tourists. Her nerves apparently calmed somewhat, Celeste looked around and took in the view, her fingers wrapped tight around the railings.

Mia looked out, taking in the view. After a few minutes of staring she pulled out the little map, the conference organizers had emailed her. It had the tower marked in the middle and the conference centre marked with a big circle. It wasn’t far away and she had thought she’d be able to spot it but all the buildings looked the same from above and she’d rather be staring at the view than stood at the top of the Eiffel Tower staring at a map. She could see why people raved about Paris. It was a beautiful mix of old and modern architecture spreading out from the long patch of green parkland that surrounded the tower. The rest of the day was going to consist of coffee, pastries and wandering along the river trying not to look like tourists as Celeste browsed the little bookshops that lined the Seine. She wished Jack could be here with them, he’d love it, but Freddy was too young to appreciate a city break just yet and there wasn’t anyone close to home they trusted to leave him with.

After a minute of slightly pained staring out at the city, Celeste turned to Mia. “Ok, I’m done here. Take me down.”

“Seriously? Can’t we stay for a few more minutes?”

“Not unless you want to see me be sick,” she threatened.

“Ok, message received. Can we just watch this first?” said Mia nodding towards the couple next to them. The man had lowered himself to one knee and was holding out a small ring box to his teary bride to be. She reached down and took the ring, placing it on one finger and stretching her hand out, the diamond glistening in the sun.

“Aaaw,” said Mia, grinning.

“Cheesy,” said Celeste, but she didn’t stop watching.

“Want an ice cream?” asked Mia, eyeing a tiny snack shop on the platform.

“Are you kidding? You trying to make me sick?” said Celeste shaking her head.

“Come on! Live a little!”

Then the world disappeared. At least that’s what it felt like. All of Mia’s senses stopped working. She couldn’t see or hear. The sense of having a body disappeared, like she was floating in one of those isolation tanks she’d lasted about five minutes in a few years back. This was much worse. It felt more like she was a brain in a jar, just a pile of thoughts with no physical form. Time seemed to stop, but it was hard to tell with no physical input at all. At some point, either a millisecond or hours later whatever had happened unhappened. She was stood, eyes wide open as if nothing had happened when the world reappeared, flickering into existence around her, or she flickering into it. She lurched and grabbed the rail. Celeste stumbled and bumped into her. Had the same thing happened to Celeste? Mia started to look around but then came the noise. Mia heard it as if it was inside her head. It started with a high-pitched whine, like the whistle of an old steam train but getting progressively louder and higher. Soon it was all she could hear. The crowd all covered their ears. Mia turned to Celeste and mouthed “What?” but her friend was staring out at the city.

The noise ended abruptly and for a moment the world was perfectly silent, as if it was frozen in place. There was no quiet drone of traffic, no birds squawking, nobody said a word. The man next to them dropped the ring box he was holding and it hit the metal floor without a sound. The box bounced through the rails and over the edge, then a second later reappeared and flew past them up into the sky, buffeted upwards by a gust of air. Mia felt an enormous pressure on her chest and her ears popped. She screamed silently as a jolt of pain ran through her head. It was like someone had turned the pressure up on the world.

The tower underneath them lurched sideways with a loud crack. Celeste’s tight grip on the railings held but Mia and the rest of the crowd were thrown to the floor. They slipped across the metal floor of the lurching platform. Mia was thrown against the stairwell in the centre of the platform and stopped, her legs taking the brunt of the impact. The main mass of bodies carried on past her and past the stairwell. Mia saw faces screaming in fear as they flew past but no sound. All she could hear was ringing. Arms reached out to grab onto something but the flowing throng was gaining too much momentum, gathering more people as it slid. Mia could see where it was heading. The metal barrier on the far side of the platform was already amassing a pile of squirming people and more were heading right for them. The mass of bodies hit the barrier with a loud crunch. The metal buckled and twisted, splitting and breaking apart but just holding in place, doing its job and keeping the writhing mass from toppling off the edge of the tower.

Mia reached out as the couple they had been watching slid past her but couldn’t reach and could only watch as they landed in the crowd, piled up against the far side of the platform, now twenty feet lower than the side Celeste clung to. The impact of the last two bodies was too much and the metal finally gave way. Mia and Celeste watched in horror as the pile, now made of about thirty people slid and toppled over the edge of the platform and out of sight. The screams reduced to a quiet squeak by the ringing in Mia’s ears. She felt something wet dribbling down her neck and reached up to find a slow stream of blood coming from her ear. She tried the other. More blood.

Oh god, am I deaf? she thought.

Mia yelled at Celeste, “Come on, this thing’s coming down. We have to go. Now.”

She could hear herself! Thank god. Mia’s voice had barely penetrated the ringing in her own ears but Celeste clearly got the message. The tower was going to collapse and they needed to be off it when it did. Slowly shifting one hand at a time she shuffled across a few inches to the spot where Mia had slid from and shouted to her.

“Don’t try and catch me,” shouted Celeste, exaggerating the movement of her mouth so Mia could read her lips.

“Ok,” Mia mouthed back, giving her the thumbs up sign. Celeste was a good three stone heavier than Mia. She understood.

Celeste let go with one hand, swinging her body around so her legs were in front of her pointing down the slope. She took a deep breath and let go completely. She bumped hard onto the sloping floor and slid across the corrugated metal, each bump jarring up her spine. As she slid the tower lurched again and she slid straight past Mia and through the open door to the stairs. Celeste cried out as she came to a halt, half dangling over the first step of the spiral stairs. Then Mia was behind her gripping onto her collar.

“I’m not letting you go. Come on, we’ve got to move,” she said, helping Celeste to her feet.

“No kidding! What the hell is going on?”

Mia shrugged. “No idea, but the top of the Eiffel Tower is not the place to be right now.”

“Right. Let’s get off this thing before it kills us.”

They started down the stairs, encased in metal, reminding Mia of a long birdcage. Celeste went first, Mia following right behind her. The steps were more corrugated metal and the tilt of the stairs made progress uncomfortable and slow. Halfway down they came across a gap in the stairs. The metal cage on either side of the staircase was torn in two as if something had been forced through and the stairs were twisted and buckled. There was no way to carry on as they were. They were going to have to skip a loop and drop through the gap. Mia stopped, looking puzzled at the damage.

“This makes no sense. What could have done this?”

“Terrorists?” asked Celeste. “Aliens? Roland Emmerich?”

“But how? There was no explosion, no light. It was as if...”

Celeste stopped her mid-thought. “We can worry about the how and why when we’re safely on the ground Mia. Get a move on.”

“Sorry, you’re right. Go.”

Celeste turned around and carefully lowered herself so she was dangling from the stairs, still feet above the next turn of the spiral. She let go and landed with a loud clang on the stairs below.

“I thought you were afraid of heights,” shouted Mia over the ringing in her own ears.

“Adrenaline, does wonders,” yelled Celeste. “Your turn.”

Mia followed Celeste’s example and carefully lowered herself down into her friend’s waiting arms.

One step at a time, they struggled down the staircase. More and more of the strange holes appeared in the cage as they descended. Mia could see people moving down the stairs below them through the holes. They were the people who’d already been on the stairs when whatever it was that had happened had happened. They had a head start and weren’t waiting around for Mia and Celeste. No-one wanted to be trapped in the restrictive staircase. The wind whistled through the mesh cage surrounding them, blowing dust in Mia’s eyes. Step by step the middle platform came closer until at last, they stepped out through the gate and into the open. Mia held Celeste’s hand and looked around. Crowds of frightened people huddled together in the shadow of the upper platform, gathered in groups of fives and sixes, yelling questions at each other, no-one wanting to be on their own. Some stood at the edge of the tower, looking out over the city with blank expressions on their faces. Not everyone had made it. For every group of survivors, there were twice as many bodies, covered in lacerations, limbs missing, pools of dark blood spilling out over the metal floor.

“Why haven’t they evacuated everyone?” asked Mia.

Celeste just shrugged.

The lean was less pronounced here on the relatively open space of the platform and they took a moment to look back up at where they’d come from. The top of the tower was twisted and bent, curving to one side, and still noticeably moving. Rivets flew out of their sockets, clanging as they hit the iron girders. Behind them, there came a deafening clang as one of the main supports shifted and bent. The staircase they’d just stepped out of broke away from the floor, twisting and scraping across the metal. It swept through a pile of bodies, smearing the remains across the floor then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. With a crack, the massive support strut finally gave up, folding inwards under the weight above it. The movement of the tower was no longer slow. The remaining three struts groaned and creaked in pain then with a snap, another strut broke. Not folding this time but shearing in two halfway along its length. The pull of the collapsing tower too was much for the other struts to take and it started to topple.

“Shit. It’s going. Run,” shouted Mia.

They ran up the slope, away from the path of the falling tower, crouching and curling up together and waiting, eyes shut, helpless. The snapped strut swung over them. Mia suddenly felt the warmth of sunlight as the metal above them was lifted away by the tower’s movement, pivoting on the two remaining struts.

If they hadn’t been partly deaf already the noise would have done it. The creaking and screaming of the twisted metal was replaced by a single, massive bang as the tower reached its new resting place.

They stood and found themselves stood at the top of the tower again. What had been the middle platform of the grand old tower was as far up as it went. The top half of the tower lay on its side, resting suspended in the air, hundreds of feet above the Paris skyline. The base of the toppled tower still partly attached to one side of the platform, a mess of twisted girders and sharp metal spikes. The lift shaft had been lifted up with the tower, leaving a single lift sat uncovered, thick metal cabling piled on top. Where the stairs that had once led to the top of the tower had been was just a circular hole with a set of steps leading down to the ground below.

The city beneath the devastated tower was in a strange kind of chaos. Some buildings looked untouched, as if nothing had happened, while their neighbours would be completely demolished. Streams of rubble spread out like spider webs, crisscrossing each other as if it was flowing along some new pattern of roads. Flowing was the right word, it was as if something was alive under it. The rubble was moving, humps of junk and brick, one after another flowing as if giant unseen moles were burrowing underneath it. One of the things veered off its path and started in their direction. It ploughed into a so-far undamaged office building and popped out of the other side a few seconds later. The dust cleared as it carried on and they strained to get their first good look at whatever was causing this. There was nothing there, just a pair of parallel lines being carved out of the grass, whatever was causing them completely invisible but still hurtling straight towards one of the legs of the tower.

There was nowhere to run so Celeste and Mia just watched in horror as the leg burst into pieces. The invisible thing ploughed straight through without stopping, piercing a giant hole in the thick iron and leaving nothing holding the corner of the remaining tower up. Mia braced herself on a barrier for another collapse, this time with her and Celeste on top, but the tower didn’t shift an inch. The corner of the tower seemed to be levitating, unconnected to the ground. Mia had just released her grip when there was a loud crash and she was showered with glass fragments. She ducked down, covering her head as the lift behind her was peppered with six-inch holes by some invisible force.

Celeste stepped back from the edge. “What the fuck is going...”

Mia twisted to see why she’d stopped. Celeste’s torso was gone. A huge hole had been punched through her chest and she could see clear through to the daylight on the other side. She just stood there, arms by her sides, no emotion on her face, motionless, with a gaping hole right through her.