Shadows

by Peter Cawdron

  Charlie stood up, adding, “Well, are you going to give it a go?”

  Sheriff Cann smiled. Susan figured he probably wasn’t used to being bossed around by anyone, let alone some upstart shadow from the dirt farms. The sheriff got gingerly to his feet. He looked pensive, as though he expected the brace to fail but didn’t want to let Charlie down.

  “Well?” Charlie asked, seeing the sheriff standing before him.

  Sheriff Cann flexed his leg, lifting his foot of the ground before stepping forward and walking around the office.

  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  He took several large strides.

  “That feels fantastic. Will it work on the stairs?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Charlie replied. “If this works, Doc Winters says she’s got at least five other people she could fit with these.”

  “OK, let's go give it a whirl.”

  The sheriff grabbed his keys and opened the door. Charlie grabbed his bag and followed Susan out into the open area in front of the cafeteria. The sheriff turned off the lights and locked the door behind him.

  “How much did this cost?” the sheriff asked as they walked over to the great staircase. “It’s aluminum. This must have cost you a hundred chits at least. I'd say, a hundred chits for each strut.”

  “Oh, it's nothing,” Charlie insisted, and Susan got the distinct impression he was lying. “They’re off-cuts from Supply.”

  “Did you steal these parts?” the sheriff asked. He wasn’t dumb, Susan figured. She was wondering the same thing.

  “Now, sheriff,” Charlie replied. “If I did, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to hand them over to you, now would I?”

  The sheriff laughed, slapping Charlie on the shoulder.

  “You’re good kid, Charlie. The silo needs more thinkers like you.”

  They stopped at the top of the stairs. Sheriff Cann looked at the two of them and said, “Well, I don’t know about you kids, but I’m turning in for the day.”

  Like the mayor, the sheriff lived on the second level, in what was considered prime real estate. Given his leg, he couldn’t get to the lower levels and there had been some talk of retirement, but the deputies did most of the stair climbing for him. Now, though, watching him scoot down the stairs, Susan figured he’d been given a new lease on life.

  “Woo hoo,” he cried, taking the stairs one at a time, something Susan had never seen him do before. “You, sir, are a genius!”

  Charlie had his hands out, calling for the sheriff to be careful. Susan had her heart in her throat. Even porters hesitated before running downstairs, but the sheriff was quite a character, surprising her with his vigor.

  “And he has the nerve to call us kids,” she said, taking Charlie’s hand.

  Down on the first landing, the sheriff called out, saying, “I love it. Thanks, Charlie.” He stuck his head out over the rails and waved before disappearing from sight. Charlie and Susan waved back.

  “Well,” Charlie said. “That went better than expected.”

  “That was a beautiful thing you did there,” Susan said, snuggling against his arm. She felt buoyant, as though she could have drifted on a breeze.

  “He’s a good man,” Charlie replied, putting his arm around her.

  “Did you steal that aluminum?”

  “I prefer the term, liberate. Hell, down there in Supply that brace was just a spare part gathering dust.”

  “How did you know the brace would work? How did you figure that out?” Susan asked, turning toward him.

  “Ah ... that is a very good question. Are you sure you want an answer?”

  “Absolutely,” Susan replied, suspecting there was something nefarious behind his invention, something other than having quick hands in Supply. Maybe that's why he was wearing blue coveralls, she thought, so as to not attract attention down there.

  “OK, but first I’ll need to get changed.”

  “Changed?” Susan asked, following back into the empty cafeteria. “You're not going back Down Deep?”

  Charlie grinned knowingly. She figured he knew she had most of this puzzle figured out, but there was something else he was taking delight in, some other hidden secret. He opened his backpack and pulled out a pair of white coveralls.

  “What do you think you're doing?” she asked.

  “The answer to your question is something you won't believe unless you see it for yourself.”

  He shimmied out of his blue coveralls and into the white IT coveralls.

  “Where did you get those?” Susan asked.

  “Doc Winters. She gets them without any markings and has to get someone from the garments level to add the red cross.”

  “And you liberated this as well?”

  “Yes.”

  “All for the common good, I suppose?” she asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Charlie,” she said, her voice taking a serious tone as he stuffed his old coveralls into his pack. “You’re scaring me.”

  Charlie just laughed and smiled. “Well, do you want to know, or not?”

  “I guess ...”

  In the back of her mind, Susan struggled with the internal conflict of all her parents had shared and their warning not to be frivolous with the rules of the silo. Charlie might not have any respect for arbitrary authority, but those that were in charge took impersonating another caste seriously.

  “Come on,” Charlie said, starting down the stairs.

  “You're not going to give me any clues?” Susan asked, gliding down the steps with a sense of grace Charlie could never match.

  “Nope. You're going to have to trust me.”

  She was nervous, but she was also curious, and she trusted him, perhaps more than she should have.

  The gently winding staircase gave way to landing after landing, always peeling off to the same side of the Great Fall. As they sunk lower, moving further down the shaft, Susan reminded herself that what seemed so easy in one direction would be far more arduous in reverse. Charlie was taking her to the IT floor on level 34, that much was clear. By the time they got there, it would be after midnight. Climbing back to her apartment on level six was going to be laborious.

  “Are you sure about this?” she asked as they passed the twentieth landing.

  “Yep.”

  “Couldn't we do this at some more civilized time?”

  “Nope.”

  “You do realize, it's going to be two or three in the morning before we get back to the Up Top.”

  “Yep.”

  With that, Charlie picked up the pace. They weren't taking two steps at a time, but they were moving at a considerable pace, and being a porter, Susan had learned the art of a foot-glide, knowing how to let the pull of gravity do the work and dictate the pace.

  Charlie stopped by the landing on level thirty-three.

  “How do I look?” he asked, straightening his coveralls and catching his breath.

  “Like a criminal,” Susan replied.

  “Perfect. Now, just play along with whatever happens down there.”

  “Charles,” Susan said, deploying his formal name in a hope of getting a serious response. “You're not going to get me into trouble, are you?”

  “Me?” Charlie replied, with a look of innocence on his face.

  Hand in hand, they walked casually down the last flight of stairs and up to the security turnstile leading into IT. Susan was surprised to find her hands were shaking. Charlie must have felt that as he squeezed her hand affectionately, as if to say, don't sweat it. He pulled an ID tag from his pocket and swiped the lock. The red light turned to green and he started to walk through when the security guard spoke.

  “Hey. You can't take her in there. She's gonna need to sign in and demonstrate a valid purpose for being on this floor.”

  Charlie leaned close to the guard. Under his breath, he said, “Look at the time. You don't seriously think I brought a beautiful, young, female porter down here for porting, do you?”

 
; The guard looked at Susan and smiled, but his wasn't a smile that felt warm and inviting, more one that spoke of hidden desires. He nodded with his head, silently signaling for her to follow Charlie.

  Susan scooted after Charlie, passing through the turnstile with him.

  “Thanks,” Charlie said to the guard.

  The guard nodded and turned back to his station.

  As they walked through the empty floor, Susan whispered, “Don't you ever worry about getting caught? What happens if you get busted? What then?”

  “Hey, it's OK,” Charlie assured her.

  “No, it's not,” she insisted, keeping her voice down even though the rows of computer workstations within the open plan floor were empty. “What if he'd stopped us. What if he'd turned us in?”

  “You're not thinking like a guy,” Charlie replied. “He thinks I've brought you down here to score, to impress you with where I work. Honestly, it was a safe bet he'd let us through. Guys are like that.”

  Susan batted him on the shoulder, saying, “This had better be good. And if you think you're getting any down here, you're sorely mistaken.”

  “Hah,” Charlie replied. “I wouldn't dream of it ... well, actually.”

  Susan batted his shoulder again, this time, more playfully.

  A series of meeting rooms dominated the far end of the floor. Charlie led her through to the back of the floor where a large metal door blocked off what could have been a storage room. Charlie punched a series of numeric buttons on a keypad and the door slid open.

  “What is this place?” Susan asked.

  “This is where Barney shadows,” Charlie replied. “He's brought me in here a couple of times. This place is beyond top secret. Oh, and the best is yet to come.”

  They stepped inside the room and the door slid shut behind them.

  A gentle hum filled the room, whispering of untold computing power busily undertaking some unknown task with lightning speed. There were several rows of computer servers encased in black towers, each of them reaching up to shoulder height. Above and below them, bundles of wiring and cabling wound its way into the floor and up to the ceiling. Susan had never seen anything like this before. Her world was one of primitive survival, of pots and pans, knives and needles, but never electronics, at least, nothing on this scale. The only computer terminals she'd ever seen were like those on the main floor. They looked old and strangely archaic, but the servers were pristine. They spoke of another time, when the world thrived on technology.

  “Come,” Charlie said. He led her to the end of the far row and removed a grate from the raised floor, only the grate lifted to reveal a darkened tunnel. A ladder led down below the floor.

  “You've noticed before, haven't you?” he asked as he began climbing down the ladder.

  “Yes,” Susan replied with a sense of dawning awareness. “The concrete slab that supports IT is thicker than all the others.”

  “Because it's hollow,” Charlie replied.

  Susan felt overwhelmed, in awe of what she was seeing. Charlie was right, he couldn't have told her this, she had to see it for herself or she would have never believed there was a secret level within the silo.

  “And Barney comes down here?” she asked as Charlie reached the bottom of the ladder and turned on the lights.

  “Yeah, pretty cool, huh? Sometimes, we'll come down here on a Friday night and sneak in a little distilled juice. Have a few drinks and bullshit into the wee hours of the morning.”

  “I don't get it,” Susan said, stepped off the bottom rung. “Why would there be a secret room?”

  Charlie replied, “Because our silo was built on secrets.”

  As they began walking down the tunnel, Charlie stopped and pointed up at the concrete ceiling. A thin join-line ran along the concrete, down the wall and across the floor.

  “Do you know what that is?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Think about it. Where were we within the silo?”

  Susan thought about it for a second before replying.

  “The far wall of the silo!”

  “Yep. You are now about to step OUT of the silo. Pretty cool, huh? The whole silo could collapse, and this apartment would remain intact.”

  “Wow,” she replied, stepping forward out of the tunnel and into the apartment. There was a neatly made cot to one side, along with several shelves full of books and binders and glossy folders. In front of her were two desks, while on the other side of the apartment there was a kitchenette complete with a large walk-in-pantry.

  “What is this place?” Susan asked.

  “Best we understand it,” Charlie continued. “It's designed to ensure the knowledge from before lives on.”

  “But why?” Susan asked as Charlie handed her a book.

  “Why?” Charlie repeated. “So that knowledge isn't lost forever.”

  “No,” Susan replied, flicking through the largest book she'd ever seen, seeing dozens of colored images flickering before her, their colors bursting before her eyes. “Why hide this?”

  “Ah, yes,” Charlie replied. “That is a very good question. Why indeed.”

  He pulled a chair over for her to sit in. Susan felt conflicted. On one hand, she wanted to read each page and carefully scrutinize every picture, on the other she wanted to flick through and take in the whole. There were animals she'd never dreamed existed, some with spots, some with stripes. She'd heard of birds, but never with the array of colors she saw before her, and there were fish that looked like they'd been painted in the brightest of reds and yellows.

  “I ... I.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie said. “I was the same when Barney first showed me this stuff. Takes a while to get your head around it all. Don't rush. Take your time.”

  Susan felt giddy. She lost track of time. She wasn’t sure how long she sat there looking through those books, picking up one after the other and losing herself in the glossy pages. Charlie was so engrossed reading something that on those rare occasions when she looked up she didn’t want to disturb him so she just kept browsing, feeling a sense of awe and astonishment at all she was seeing.

  Giraffes. Susan didn’t want to hazard a guess at how to pronounce such an unusual name, but there were several images of these lanky creatures. Their legs looked impossibly thin, with thigh muscles up high, but below their knees their their legs looked like bone wrapped in skin. The absurd length of their necks compared with their heads looked almost comical, as though they were the product of some child’s imagination. If she doodled with a crayon she couldn’t have come up with an animal this outlandish. The patches of color on the giraffe’s coat reminded Susan of the paint blistering and peeling off the wall in her parent’s apartment. How did animals like this arise? She would love to learn more about not only them but all the astonishing diversity she saw in the animal kingdom.

  She flicked through a few more pages.

  Snakes looked like coils of rope, but they had no arms or legs. How did they move? They seemed to be so astonishingly flexible she wondered if they had bones. And their eyes were like nothing she’d ever seen, matching the color of their skin but with a tiny black slit for a pupil. Susan wasn’t sure what was more bizarre, that these impossible creatures were covered in tiny plates that looked like fingernails or that their tongue split in two when they stuck it out.

  Charlie had put down one book and picked up another. Out of curiosity, Susan grabbed his old book, wondering what he’d been looking at.

  Rockets were long, thin cylinders that shot up into the sky, riding on a fiery, flaming tail that glowed like the sun. It was difficult to judge their size, but they looked huge. Some of them were clearly split into segments that served some obscure function that had been lost in time.

  There were photos of Earth as seen from space. White clouds floated below a night blacker than any she’d ever seen, even when the lights went out in the silo. Space seemed serene. Thinking about it, another equally applicable term sprang to mind: surreal. The id
ea of clouds floating beneath someone was like that of a children's tale. To soar above the clouds was the stuff of dreams. To float through space must have been surreal, she decided, at least as best she understood the word. The images before her were probing the limits of both her comprehension and her vocabulary.

  Susan particularly liked the images of people floating inside busy metal rooms with wires and computer consoles lining the walls. She wanted to ask Charlie about them, but the furrows on his brow as he read his book spoke of intense concentration so she went back to her book. At first, she thought these photos had been taken while the people were jumping, as how else could you float without being in water? Turning the page, she saw another photo of three people drifting within something called the space station, only they were floating at different angles. One of them, a woman, was completely upside down. Her hair drifted away from her head when both she and her hair should have fallen to the ground. What marvelous wonders there had once been, Susan thought.

  A few pages over, Susan found herself looking at wisps of vapor drifting in the pitch black of space. The array of colors was breathtaking to behold, a beautiful tapestry of reds and blues, yellows and greens slowly blending with each other. The caption said something about Orion, but like so many other words she’d seen, the term was meaningless. She wondered if she would ever see something so beautiful with her own eyes.

  The book called this ethereal cloud a nebula and said it spanned twenty-four light years, which was something that gave Susan a glimpse into how radically language had changed. She understood each of the components, twenty-four, light and years, but she had no idea what these words meant when run together. How could a year be a measurement of distance rather than time? And what did light have to do with a year?

  In the back of her mind, something was wrong, something ate away at her thinking, but she couldn't quite articulate what. After reading for what must have been a couple of hours the disconnect finally registered.

  “I don't understand,” she confessed, taking her hair band off and fiddling with it nervously. “Why keep this secret? Secrets are to protect something. There's nothing here to protect, only something beautiful to share.”