Silo 49: Going Dark

Old Men and Baskets

What he wanted to do after he finished that call was run like a mad person and grab Wallis and then fly the rails all the way down to Grace right after. Once he had them in sight he wanted to sit tight, tools clutched and ready, by the access plates on Level 72. But he couldn’t do that. Regardless of what his intentions were, he knew he could easily tip off those in Silo One with strange behavior.

So he went to his computer and read the wires that, even now with the population dwindling, filled his inbox. He was looking for a likely candidate to forward to Grace with the code that let her know it was time to act. Most of his inbox was just copied to him automatically by the system based on keywords programmed in. He hated that invasion of the privacy of others and he supposed that made him a bad fit for this job, though he had always been good at it.

This is one of the first things that would go. Penance for all the past invasions of privacy and all the past manipulations of people would have to be made. But that was for later, if they succeeded. No, he corrected himself, after they succeeded.

Most of those automated ones he could delete quickly and he cleaned out a good portion of his inbox that way in just a few keystrokes. One piece of good news had filtered through. A baby girl had been born healthy and on time in the down deep to a pipe fitter, who had also come through in good health. The new baby’s name was Jewel. Before he had even added her number to the population tally, Graham saw another email that balanced out that birth. One of the technicians in the mids had called for the bottle last night and passed peacefully at the age of thirty-three. No family left to notify. Graham sighed heavily and deleted the email. The one for the birth he retained. That was the way of life, he thought, to want to keep the good and purge the bad. Maybe what Silo One wanted to do to them was no different except in the scale of the purging.

He couldn’t entertain thoughts that like right now. He needed to stay angry with them. He needed to keep that target full of blame pointed right where it belonged. They were the ones who were the arms and hands of the monster that put them down in these silos and took away the outside.

He clenched and unclenched a hand rhythmically on a little pillow filled with flax seed. The medic had given it to him to help with his stress. He clicked the mouse on his screen awkwardly with his left hand to retrieve the rest of his messages. He gave some instructions in response to requests from IT and forwarded others to the right person. So many people were gone that many things just got sent directly to him or to Wallis, their interim mayor, because no one knew who else to send requests to.

Once he felt calm he forwarded one specific request, this time for possible technical assist from IT for a busted control panel, to Grace. It was the perfect cover email and in his forward he used the coded phrase they had worked up. He included the time they were to meet as a time he would be available if she had questions. All his wires were considered important and she said that the dimming team would wake her if one came from him during that period. He hoped that was happening and she would be at their agreed upon place well before the time of their need. She had just twenty or so levels to climb, though that was plenty when you were in a hurry and moving on legs that were growing a little older.

He and Wallis, on the other hand, needed to get down almost seventy levels and they had to do it within the day. And to pile on more, they had to be fit enough to do what needed doing when they got there. Graham had an idea about that but getting Wallis to agree to it would be another matter.

He finished off his tea in one big swallow, got dressed in some relatively clean coveralls and stuffed his backpack with his radio, food and three canteens of water before heading out of his compartment. Into his pocket he slipped the three diagrams they would need for parsing out the correct wires.

He looked back before he closed the door behind him and his gaze fell on the charcoal portrait of his wife on the wall. Drawn when they were young and had the whole future of their lives ahead of them, she was smiling. In a few bold and spare strokes, the essence of her was captured in black and grey lines on that rough pulpy paper. He blew her a kiss and left, wondering if it would be the last time he would see it and hoping that it wasn’t.

Wallis didn’t need to be told anything once he opened his door and saw Graham standing there, backpack strapped on and hair combed. It wasn’t Graham’s habit to come knocking on his door before the lights came on to signal the start of a new day. Just woken and in his undershorts, Wallis merely grinned and waved him inside. With the door safely closed he asked, “Now? Tell me it’s now.”

Graham grinned back at him, his own nervousness fading in the presence of Wallis’ excitement. He said, “Yep. We have about ten hours to get down to 72.”

“Yikes! Crap.”

Wallis proceeded to tear about his compartment, first looking for a decent pair of coveralls and finally settling for some that were very wrinkled and faded, but didn’t stink too badly. Then he searched for his pack, which Graham eventually found stuffed under a cushion in Wallis’ chair. The only thing he didn’t have trouble finding were the radios he had liberated from the sheriff’s office.

Though it only took a few minutes, it was an extremely disorganized search and Graham was a little concerned with how hard Wallis was breathing by the time he had packed up his supplies and started to shrug into his pack. That huffing breath decided the matter for Graham.

“Wallis, umm, what do you think about… umm… using the lifts for some of the trip down?”

His friend stopped short, arms akimbo and backpack straps askew, “You mean, as in actually get inside the lifts?”

Graham nodded.

“No way. No! That is fine for fruit but that isn’t natural for humans. Are you kidding?”

“Wallis, think about it. We have to get down there and we need to be in good shape to do it. What’s the difference in me lowering you five levels or a few bags of apples? You weigh less than the food. Then you can use the same pulley to lower me. It can work!” Graham said earnestly, trying to convince his friend and himself too.

Wallis surprised him them. He finished adjusting his pack and said simply, “Fuck it. Let’s do it.”