Third Shift: Pact (Silo #2C)(24)

The beeping of the keypad outside chased away disturbing thoughts. Donald turned as the great slab of steel hinged inward on pins the size of a man’s arms. Dr. Wilson, the shift doctor, stepped inside. He spotted Donald and frowned. “Sir?” he called out.

Donald could feel a trickle of sweat working its way down his temple. His heart continued to race from the memory of that dark place in that dark past. He felt warm, despite being able to see his breath puff out before him.

“Did you forget about our appointment?” Dr. Wilson asked.

Donald wiped his forehead and rubbed his palm on the seat of his pants. “No, no,” he said, fighting to keep the shakiness out of his voice. “I just lost track of time.”

Dr. Wilson nodded. “I saw you on my monitor and figured that was it.” He glanced at the pod nearest to Donald and frowned. “Someone you know?”

“Hm? No.” Donald removed his hand, which had grown cold against the pod. “Someone I worked with.”

“Well, are you ready?”

“Yes,” Donald said. “I appreciate the refresher. It’s been a while since I’ve gone over the protocols.”

Dr. Wilson smiled. “Of course. I’ve got you lined up with the new reactor tech coming on his fourth shift. We’re just waiting on you.” He gestured toward the hall.

Donald patted his sister’s pod and smiled. She had waited hundreds of years. Another day or two wouldn’t hurt. And then they would see what exactly he had helped to build. The two of them would find out together.





Silo 17



Year Two





17


Jimmy couldn’t bring himself to write on the paper. He was drowning in paper, was surrounded by paper, but he didn’t dare use even the margins for notes. Those pages were sacrosanct. Those books were too valuable. And so he counted the days using the key around his neck and the black panels of the server labeled “17.”

This was his silo, he had learned. It was the number stamped on the inside of his copy of The Order. It was the label on the wall chart of all the silos. He knew what this meant. He might be all alone in his world, but this was not the only world.

Every evening before he went to bed, he scratched another bright silver mark in the black paint of the massive server. Jimmy only marked the days off at night. It seemed premature to do it in the morning.

The Project started sloppy. He had little confidence that the marks would amount to much, and so he made them in the middle of the machine and much too large. Two months into his ordeal, he began to run out of room and realized he would need to start adding marks up above, so he had scratched through the ones he’d already made and went around to the other side of the server to start anew. Now he made them tiny and neat. Four ticks and then a slash through them, just like his mom used to mark the days in a row that he was good. Six of these in a line to mark what he now thought of as a month. Twelve of these rows with five left over, and he had a year.

He made the final mark in the last set and stepped back. A year took up half the side of a server. It was hard to believe a whole year had gone by. A year of living in the half-level below the servers. He knew this couldn’t last. Imagining the other servers covered in scratches was too much to bear. His dad had said there was enough food for ten years for some number of people. Maybe that meant twenty with him all alone. Twenty years. He stepped around the edge of the server and looked down the aisle between the rows. The massive silver door sat at the very end. At some point, he knew he would have to go out. He would go crazy if he didn’t. He was already going crazy. The days were much too full of the same.

He went to the door and listened for some sound on the other side. It was quiet, as it sometimes was. Quiet, but he could still hear faint bangs echo from some memory. Jimmy thought about entering the four numbers and peeking outside. It was the worst sensation imaginable, not being able to see what was on the other side. When the camera screens had stopped working, Jimmy felt a primal sense stripped away. He was partially blind, could now see only a small slice of his world, and that made him feel broken. The desire was strong to open the door, like cracking an eyelid held shut for too long. A year of counting days. Of counting minutes within those days. A boy could only count so long.

He left the keypad alone. Not yet. There were bad people out there, people who wanted in, who wanted to know what was in there, why the power on the level still worked, and who he was.

“I’m nobody,” Jimmy told them when he had the courage to talk. “Nobody.”

He didn’t have the courage often. He felt brave enough just listening to the men with the other radios fight. Brave to allow their arguments to fill his world and his head, to hear them argue and report about who had killed whom. One group was working on the farms, another was trying to stop the floods from creeping out of the mines and drowning Mechanical. One had guns and took whatever little bit the others were able to squeeze together. A lone woman called once and screamed for help, but what help was Jimmy? By his figuring, there were a hundred or more people out there in little pockets, fighting and killing. But they would stop soon. They had to. Another day. A year. They couldn’t go on like this forever, could they?

Maybe they could.

Time had become strange. It was a thing believed rather than seen. There was no dimming of the stairwell and lights-out to signify a night. No trips to the Top and the glow of sunshine to say that it was day. There were simply numbers on a computer screen counting so slowly one could scream. Numbers that looked the same day and night. It took careful counting to know a day had passed. The counting let him know he was alive. Every day like a school day, numbing with its foreverness, a feeling like he didn’t want to live any more, but he got hungry and ate. He got sleepy and slept. And so a life was lived accidental. It was lived because he wasn’t brave enough to do anything else.