by Ann Christy
She took one quick step toward him and looked up at him. She ran her hands along his arms and then cupped his face in her hands. She said, “I have a chance to change what we know of history. I want to do this.”
His own hands came up and wrapped gently around her wrists. He pulled her hands away from his face slowly and she let her arms come down. There was hurt on his face.
“We’ve never had secrets between us. Never. Secrets never help anyone. I should know,” he said, referring to his job. “Is this really something you can’t tell me?”
She nodded. It hurt her to do this to him. “You’ll understand. I promise you that. I gave my word not to tell.”
It was his turn to sigh then. He stepped back from her and picked up the stack of undershirts she had tossed to the bed. He ran a hand across them and then placed them with care inside her pack. It was a kind of acceptance and Marina was grateful for it.
*****
In the Memoriam archives, the four workers were busy and getting increasingly frustrated and exhausted. They took few breaks and none of them were getting enough sleep. Meals were rushed affairs they escaped from quickly since they couldn’t speak of their joint effort in the dining hall. The dimming was usually long past by the time they broke and sought out their beds.
Dust filled the air as they dragged through box after box and cabinet after cabinet. Marina sneezed regularly and Taylor’s eyes were perpetually watering and red. It didn’t help that Greta, in whose domain they were, kept correcting them or shoving gloves at them or chirping about Piotr licking the end of a finger before he turned pages. It had been a seven-day of solid work and they had next to nothing to show for it.
Marina slammed shut a giant tome filled with numbers about farm produce during a time long past and undefinable. It earned her a sharp look from Greta, who squatted on the floor at the other end of their current row. She was organizing a box of loose papers into neat and very precise stacks in an array on the floor.
As she reached for the next book on the shelf, this one equally big and probably filled with yet more numbers for squash and beans and olives, she let out a loud sigh. She heard a faint, “I hear ya!”, of agreement from Piotr a few rows away and gave a wry smile.
She called out, “There has got to be a better way.”
“You’ve said that a hundred times and for the hundredth time I’ll tell you there isn’t,” Greta said from the other end of the row. She didn’t even bother looking up. Instead she added another crinkled paper to one of her stacks with delicate precision.
They had made progress and Marina, despite her impatience, was proud of that. Greta had started their project by directing each of them to get a random sampling of what records or objects they found in the deep stacks and cabinets beyond the few well organized ones at the entrance. With that information, she put a label on the chalkboard at the end of each of the main rows. As they emptied the stacks and rows, the material was sorted and then put in these newly labeled rows.
Deciding on when something happened was very difficult. When one only identified time in generic ways, one had to look a lot harder to place things in time. For her, each year belonged in a cycle of fifty years. Each year had 365 days, plus the null day before the new year every fourth year.
Maybe if they didn’t cycle the years after the fiftieth year they wouldn’t have so much trouble. She had been born in the 34th year and it was now the 24th year. It was only now that she realized how little sense such a system made. No matter where she looked or what kind of record she found, they all used this system. Except farm records.
Farm records seemed to be the most complete of all the types of records. Everything about them was recorded. From when things were planted to how many plants of each type reached maturity to how much was produced. Seed selection, cross pollination results and even pest activity was scrupulously recorded.
Often years were referenced in what Marina had come to call ‘Orchard Years’. The orchards were interspersed throughout the dirt farms and many of the dirt farm entries started out a new section with a reference to the trees.
On one the heading might be ‘30th Year of Oranges’ along with some location designation in one of the farms. It made sense in a way. The orange trees at that location would be there from year to year. From there the entire year for that whole dirt farm might be recorded. But when was the 30th year of the oranges?
When she had mentioned her idea of Orchard Years to the others, Greta had perked up and said that might be a good place to find out how long they had been down the silo overall. She explained that if they could collate all the orchards and all their years over the successive generations of trees, then perhaps they could count backward until they reached a point in which all the orchards started at year one.
They had all been excited and galvanized into action by the thought but after the endless books and binders and an increasing certainty that they were missing almost as much material as they had, the work had descended back into drudgery. She had found a single year that seemed promising and that was in the first year of some other olives on some other level. The entry stated that the previous trees had endured through 65 years and that the new trees planted in their stead were twelve years old when they were decanted from their growing pots.
She had flipped forward in the book until she came to the next year and her heart sank a little. It started with the trees being designated as in their thirteenth year. How old were the previous trees when they were planted? How old were the ones before them? Greta was dutifully tallying anything found by any of them in hopes of working it out anyway.
As she went through the book it was just as she thought it would be. Only there seemed to be an obsession with beets and corn in this book as they passed through one Olive Year after another. As she flipped past a mind-numbing report on the amount of beet greens that could be harvested per beet before the size of the root was affected a name caught her eye. She returned to the page and located it again.
It was a burial record. It gave the specific area of the dirt farm and the date, though not the year. It was the name and the little blurb next to it that caught her eye. It was Graham Newton and the blurb said that the body was brought for planting by Mayor Wallis Short. Graham and Wallis.
There were a lot of men named Graham and Wallis recorded in these books of the past. She had seen that herself. Most were called something else along with it, needing three names to distinguish them from the myriad others. It was usually a Graham-Scott or Wallis-Peter or something like that. It was only in the last few generations that the council passed a resolution that no more children could be named Grace, Graham or Wallis because it had become too confusing.
But this was different. This Graham’s death was recorded with an age of sixty and his profession listed as ‘Head of IT, Level 34’. That and the title of Mayor in front of the name Wallis sent a shiver of certainty up Marina’s spine. It was the delightful shiver of having found something combined with the strange feeling of having touched someone so much a part of the silo that he was almost superhuman.
When she went to call out to the others, her voice came out a tiny squeak so she cleared her throat and called, “Hey! Guys! I found something. Something good!”
The tone in her voice must have spoken more eloquently than her words because Greta looked over her shoulder in Marina’s direction. She held up the book and the look on her face caused Greta to put down her stack of papers and rise from her knees. She scattered one of her precise stacks as she turned to make her way down the row towards Marina.
“What? What is it?” asked Greta.
“You’ll never believe it unless you look.” She handed it over carefully and reverently. Though she didn’t realize it, that care more than anything alerted Greta that there was something very special.
Taylor and Piotr came around the corner and into their row just as Greta found the passage and gave a gasp of shock. Greta completely ignored the men and looke
d at Marina and asked, “Do you think it’s them?”
Marina shrugged but the grin on her face was huge and unmistakable. “I don’t know. You’re the expert. It sure looks like it to me, though.”
Piotr stepped around Marina, still cross-legged on the floor and asked, “For Silo’s sake, what is it?” He craned his neck to try to read over Greta’s shoulder but she was too tall and at the moment, completely absorbed in looking at the book.
“It’s a burial entry,” Marina said, a gleam in her eye. At Piotr’s ‘so-what’ expression, the gleam became a teasing one and she said, “It’s for a Graham. A head of IT. Body brought in by the Mayor, Wallis.”
Marina was gratified to see Piotr’s expression drop along with his lower jaw as his mouth fell open. His fingers plucked at the edge of the book to turn it a little and he asked, “The Graham and the Wallis?”
Greta had kept on examining the book and the entries around it while the others babbled but she looked up at them, apparently satisfied with what she found. The expectant look on the faces of her fellow searchers varied in intensity, with Piotr’s looking almost angry with impatience, Marina’s a bit smug and Taylor’s tinged with confusion. She turned the book toward the impatient Piotr and said, “I don’t know for sure if it is them.”
Marina burst out laughing as if she expected that answer but saw that Piotr had gone vaguely purple. He gritted his teeth and said, “You’ll never be sure. You could have a signed letter from him that specifically declares it and you would still find some reason not to be sure.” He stopped himself there, pursing his lips and clearly making an effort not to say anything really nasty.
The historian seemed to retreat a little into herself at his outburst. She didn’t step back or change expression or anything, but Marina sensed the retreat nonetheless. When she spoke, she sounded more distant. It was clear to Marina that Greta’s feelings were hurt. “You’re probably right. I’ve only spent my whole life training myself not to jump to conclusions so perhaps I’m a just a tad more cautious than you might like,” Greta said flatly.
Piotr deflated a little, clearly realizing his hastily spoken words had created a rift and were far ruder than he had probably intended. He handed the book off to Taylor and turned back to Greta before he said, “I apologize. That was really rude and uncalled for. I just got very excited and I’m not as…as…”
“Patient?” Marina supplied from her spot on the floor.
Piotr nodded and confirmed, “That’s it exactly. I’m not as patient as you or as patient as I need to be. I’m very sorry.” He ended with a little inclination of his head toward Greta. Just the quickest dip of the head that might have gone missed by many but Marina recognized it for what it was. It was the assenting nod of a shadow being corrected by their caster. It was a humble gesture.
Marina thought she saw the stiff stance of the historian loosen a little but if she did, it was so slight as to be indefinable. Greta said, “Let’s say nothing more about it, then.”
Taylor had stayed back a step or two from the others and studiously looked over the page in the book while the outburst was going on. As Piotr reached back for the book, Taylor didn’t give it up to his caster but instead stepped forward with it and joined the little circle of people. He said, “So what if it is them? What does that do for us? Other than it being a nifty tidbit to find out.”
Marina stood up, feeling very odd looking up at everyone on the floor. She brushed the dust off of her backside, creating a little cloud and said, “Because it gives us a time for the First Heroes! If we can find that, then we can maybe find the time of the First People. Don’t you see?”
Taylor gave an uncertain nod and handed the book back to Piotr. He accepted the book like it was a delicate baby he didn’t want to jostle awake.
Greta pointed toward the bottom of the next page and said, “You see here. This gives the information on the burial itself. Note that a Grace attended. Also, go back and page through till you find the year. It gives the year as the 13th Year of the Olive.” She paused a moment and asked Marina, “And did you say that the year before those olives were twelve years old and just planted to replace old ones?”
“It was 65 years, I think,” she answered.
All three of the others nodded almost in unison as understanding came and Marina smiled. “If we can narrow down the other orchard entries for that farm, the one that counts in olive years, then we can find out our timeline. Who knows what else we might figure out?”
Greta asked, “How many of the books for this farm have you found?”
“This is just the second. The other one is the one I just finished with,” Marina answered and pointed at the book she had so recently slammed shut with such frustration.
Greta accepted the other heavy book from Piotr, who looked reluctant to give it up, and told them, “I’m going to go through these and see about collating a timeline.” To Marina she said, “You keep on at this row. You’ve had good luck with it.”
“Do you want help?” Piotr asked, clearly wanting Greta to say yes.
Greta saw this yearning too and smiled. But she shook her head and said, “It only takes one to do this thoroughly and right now you’re more important as a searcher for more of the same.”
Without another word, she turned toward table and chairs on the very far end of the archives. Piotr looked crestfallen. Taylor gave him a pat on the shoulder and said, “We might find more.”
Piotr looked at the pile of discarded and yet to be searched materials on the floor where Marina had been sitting. He said, “Our stuff is boring old mechanical and maintenance reports. Manufacturing!”
Marina gave Taylor a little smile. He raised his eyebrows in return.
To Piotr he said, “But maybe we’ll find something else we can’t even imagine now. Marina certainly didn’t expect to find the burial of a First Hero in a farm book. Right?”
He perked up a bit then, not so much satisfied as mollified. He gave Taylor a hearty clap on the back and said, “You’re right. This is no time for dawdling.”
She dropped back into her sitting position on the floor and tugged her leg in close for better balance. She lugged the next of the farm books into her lap. It was for another section of dirt farm, this one counting years in apples. More fascinating entries on the cross breeding of carrots and the attractiveness of the brussel sprout heads competed in trying to put her to sleep but she found nothing that might date the book concretely and it carried no burial records of note.
She found nothing save a discontinuity that she jotted on a piece of the scrap paper and put inside the book to mark the page. The handwriting for this farm became erratic and almost illegible for a period of time. Words were misspelled that shouldn’t be. Carot written in place of carrot and other words that were used over and over in previous entries were wrong. It was almost like they were being spelled phonetically by someone who forgot how to spell and could write only by sounding out the words.
Marina flipped through the pages and found the errors lasted for a few months in total. They started suddenly, then increased until the writing and spelling were almost unreadable and then very slowly returned to normal. There were strange additions to the sentences too. Things like, ‘Her name is Callie,’ or ‘I live in compartment 22’ peppered the entries.
As she looked at the entries and their random additions, Marina thought it looked like whoever this was might be undergoing Remediation. Could that be possible? She had never heard of anyone going through the treatment and still going to work or living at home during the process. She knew that the process helped to order memories and restore balance but that the side effects were often holes in the rest of a person’s memories.
She flipped through the rest of the big book and paid close attention, but she found nothing. She set that book aside for Greta to look at, just in case. She had run out of farm books for the moment. As she looked at a messy stack of porter logs, she sighed. There was always more to choose from.
Chapter Fourteen
The farm books had turned out to be an unexpected bonanza of information once they knew what to look for and the majority of the pile for the historian’s attention was made up of those thick, dirty volumes. Taylor had found an entire box of logs from IT. The green fabric covers hid a surprising array of information about IT’s past, including the almost unbelievable number of computers that used to be in active use. At one time, more than six thousand computers had hummed throughout the silo. Now they had, at best, two thousand.
It was at the end of another long day of dust, sneezing and endless books and records that they gathered at the table. It was quickly becoming custom that Greta gave them an update on her progress to close the day’s work. She had drawn rough timelines on one of her chalkboards and tried to match dates along those various lines using the references they brought her.
Greta filled them in on the various tiny additions to the timeline, but soon she started to look nervous, even twitchy. What Marina noted even as she realized that Greta’s discomfort was increasing was that all of the six lines representing distinct dirt farms were now connected by a single line at one point. She peered at it but couldn’t make out the numbers from this distance. What she could tell was that it wasn’t as far back as it should be if it referred to First People or First Heroes.
Greta retracted her pointing finger back into her fist as she reached the line and gave a little cough. When she extended her finger again, it was pointing directly at the joining line for all the various timelines. She ran it down the jagged path that joined them and said, “And this appears to be the events outlined in the time of the First Heroes.” She paused as they all gaped at her. She looked uncomfortable and added, “But I can’t be absolutely sure of it.”
Taylor rolled his eyes but focused immediately again on the timeline. He was closest to it and had the youngest and best eyes of the three listening to Greta. He said, “But that is what, maybe a hundred and twenty years ago. That isn’t possible. Is it?”