by Hugh Howey
Donald remembered fumbling for a bottle of pills as the small room spun around him. He remembered wondering how those people could’ve gone along with it, could have seen what they were drawing and not known. How could they not know? Not see what it was for?
Blinking tears away, he noticed where he was standing. The pods in their neat rows were alien to him, but the walls and floor and ceiling were familiar enough. Donald had helped design this place. It was here because of him. And when he’d tried to get out, to escape, they had brought him back screaming and kicking, a prisoner behind his own walls. And he still didn’t know what it was all for.
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.
Jimmy thought about playing chase between the servers before he went to bed, but he had done that yesterday. He thought about arranging cans in the order he would eat them, but he already had three months lined up. There was target practice, books to read, a computer to fiddle with, chores to do, but none of that sounded like fun. He knew he would probably just crawl into bed and stare at the ceiling until the numbers told him it was tomorrow. He would think about what to do then.
18
Weeks passed, scratches accumulated, and the tip of the key around Jimmy’s neck wore down. He woke to another morning with crust in his eyes like he’d been crying in his sleep and took his breakfast—one can of peaches and one of pineapple—up to the great steel door to eat. Unshouldering his gun, Jimmy sat down with his back against server number eight, enjoying the warmth of the busy machine against his spine.
The gun had taken some figuring out. His father had disappeared with the loaded one, and when Jimmy discovered the crates of arms and ammo, the method of inserting the latter into the former had posed a puzzle. He made the task a Project, like his father used to make their chores and tinkering. Ever since he was little, Jimmy had watched his dad disassemble computers and other electronics, laying out all the pieces—each screw, every bolt, the nuts spun back onto the bolts—all arranged in a neat pattern so he knew where they went again. Jimmy had done the same with one of the rifles. And then with a second rifle after he’d accidentally knocked the pieces from the first with his boot.
With the second, he saw where the
ammo ended up and how it got there. The spring in the ammo holder was stiff, which made it difficult to load. Later, he learned that this was called a “clip,” after reading the entry for “gun” under “G” in the tins full of books. That had come weeks after he’d figured out how the thing worked on his own, with a hole in the ceiling to show for it.
He kept the gun in his lap, across his thighs, and balanced the cans of fruit on the wide part of the stock. The pineapple was his favorite. He had some every day and watched with sadness as the supply on the shelves dwindled. He’d never heard of such a fruit, had to look the thing up in another of the books. The pineapples had led him on a dizzying tour through the tins. “Be” for “Beach” had led to “Oa” for “Ocean.” This one confused him with its sense of scale. And then the “Fish” under “F.” He had forgotten to eat that day as he explored, and the room with the radio and his little mattress had become a hazard of open books and empty tins. It had taken him a week to get things back in order. Countless times since then, he had lost himself in such excursions.
Pulling his rusty can opener and favorite fork from his breast pocket, Jimmy worked the peaches open. There was the whispering pop of air as he made the first cut. Jimmy had learned not to eat the contents if it didn’t make that pop. Luckily, the toilets were still in operation back when he’d learned that lesson. Jimmy missed the toilets something fierce.
He worked his way through the peaches, savoring each bite before drinking down the juice. He wasn’t sure if you were supposed to drink that part—the label didn’t say—but it was his favorite. He grabbed the pineapples and his opener, was listening for the pop of air, when he heard the keypad on the great steel door beep.
“Little early,” he whispered to his visitors. He set the can aside, licked his fork, and put it back in his breast pocket. Cradling the gun against his armpit, he sat and watched for the door to move. One crack, and he would open fire.
Instead, it was four beeps from the keypad as a set of numbers was entered, followed by a buzz to signal that it was the wrong code. Jimmy tightened his grip on the gun while they tried again. The screen on the keypad only had room for four digits. That meant ten thousand combinations if you included all zeros. The door allowed three incorrect attempts before it wouldn’t take any more until the following day. Jimmy had learned these things a long time ago. He felt like his mom had taught him this rule, but that was impossible. Unless she’d done it in a dream.
He listened to the keypad beep with another guess and then buzz with the good news. Good news for him, anyway. Still, that was another number down, which meant time was running out. Twelve-eighteen was the number. Jimmy cursed himself for even thinking the code; his finger went to the trigger, waiting. But thoughts couldn’t be heard. You had to speak to be heard. He tended to forget this, because he heard himself thinking all the time.
The third and final attempt for the day began, and Jimmy couldn’t wait to eat his pineapples. He and these people had this routine, these three tries every morning. It was a bit of human contact, if scary. On the server behind him, he had done the math. He assumed they’d started at 0000 and were working their way up. That’s how he would do it. Three a day meant they would stumble on the right code on day 406 on the second try. That was less than a month away.
But Jimmy’s counting didn’t figure for everything. There was the lingering fear that they might skip some numbers, that they had started somewhere else, or that they might get lucky if they were going random. For all Jimmy knew, more than one code could open the door. And since he didn’t pay attention to how his father had changed the code, he couldn’t move it higher. And what if that only got them closer? Maybe they started at 9999. He could move it lower, of course, hoping to pass one they’d already tried, but what if they hadn’t tried it yet? To take action and let them in by accident would be worse than doing nothing and then dying. And Jimmy didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to die, and he didn’t want to kill anyone.
This is how his brain whirled as the next four digits were entered. When the keypad chirped angrily at the good news, he was slow to relax his grip on the gun. Jimmy wiped his sweaty palms off on his thighs, and picked up his pineapples.
“Hello, pineapples,” he whispered. He bent his head toward his lap and punctured the can, listening closely.
The pineapples whispered back. They told him they were safe to eat.
19
Life at its essence, Jimmy learned, was a series of meals and bowel movements. There was some sleep mixed in as well, but little effort was required for that. He didn’t learn this great Rule of the World until the water stopped flushing. Nobody thinks about their bowel movements until the water stops flushing. And then it’s all one thinks about.
Jimmy started going in the corner of the server room, as far from the door as possible. He peed in the sink until the tap ran out of water and the smell got bad. Once that happened, he tapped into the cistern. The Order told him which page to look on and what to do. It was a boring book, but handy at times. Jimmy figured that was the point. The water in the cistern wouldn’t last forever, though, so he took to drinking as much of the juice in the bottom of the cans as he could. He hated tomato soup, but he drank a can every day. His pee turned bright orange.
Jimmy was draining the last drops out of a can of apples one morning when the keypad beeped. It didn’t buzz. It didn’t bark or scream or sound angry. It beeped. And a light long red—red for as long as Jimmy could remember—flashed brilliant and scary green.
Jimmy startled. The open can of peaches on his knee leaped away and tumbled to the ground, juice splashing everywhere. It was two days early for this. It was two days early.
The time had gone by so fast, and now it decided to go slowly. The great steel door made noises. Jimmy dropped his fork and fumbled with the gun. Safety off. A click with his thumb, a thunk from the door. Voices, voices. Excitement on one side, dread on the other. Jimmy felt the need to pee. He pulled the gun against his shoulder and wished he’d practiced yesterday. Tomorrow. Tomorrow was when he was gonna get ready. They were two days too early.
The door made noises, and Jimmy wondered if he’d missed a day or two. There was the time he’d gotten sick and had a fever. There was the day he fell asleep reading and couldn’t remember what day it was when he woke. Maybe he’d missed a day. Maybe the people in the hall had skipped a number. The door opened a crack. The slow time gave him all sorts of space to fill with dread.
Jimmy wasn’t ready. His palms were slick on the gun, his heart racing. This was one of those things expected and expected. Expected so hard, with so much fervor and concentration, like blowing up a plastic bag over and over, watching it stretch out big and thin in front of your eyes, knowing it was about to burst, knowing, knowing, and when it comes, it scares you like it’d never been expected at all.
This was one of those things. The door opened further. There was a person on the other side. A person. And for a moment, for the briefest of pauses, Jimmy reconsidered a year of planning, a calendar of fear. Here was someone to talk to and listen to. Someone to take a turn with the screwdriver and hammer now that the can opener was broke. Someone with a new can opener, perhaps. Here was a Project Partner like his dad used to—
A face. A man with an angry sneer. And a year of planning, of shooting empty tomato cans, of ringing ears and reloading, of oiling barrels and reading, reading—and now a human face in a crack in the door.
Jimmy pulled the trigger. The barrel leaped upward like barrels do. And the angry sneer turned to something else: startlement mixed with sorrow. Jimmy had done a sad, sad thing. The man fell down, but another was pushing past him, bursting into the room, something black in his hand.
Again, the barrel leaped and leaped, and Jimmy’s eyes blinked with the bangs. Three shots. Three bullets. The running man kept coming, but he had the same sad look on his face, a look fading as he fell, crumbling just a few paces away.
Jimmy waited for the next man
. He heard him out there, cursing and cursing. And the first man he’d shot was still moving around, like an empty can that danced and danced long after it was hit. The door was open. The outside and the inside were connected. The man who had opened the door lifted his head, something worse than sorrow on his face, and suddenly it was his father out there. His father lying just beyond the door, dying in the hallway. And Jimmy didn’t know why that would be.
The cursing grew faint. The unseen man out in the hallway was moving away. Jimmy took his first full breath since the door beeped and the light turned green. He didn’t have a pulse; his heart was just one long beat that wouldn’t stop. A thrumming like the insides of a whirring server.
He listened to the last man slink away, slink away, and now Jimmy could close the door. He got up and ran around the dead man who had fallen inside the server room, a black pistol near his lifeless hand. Lowering his gun, Jimmy prepared to shoulder the door shut, when the thought of tomorrow, or that night, or the next hour occurred to him.
The retreating man now knew the number. He was taking it with him.
“Twelve-eighteen,” Jimmy whispered.
He poked his head out the door for a quick look. There was a brief glimpse of a man disappearing into an office. Just a flash of green coveralls, and then an empty hall, impossibly long and bright.
The dying man outside the door groaned and writhed. Jimmy ignored him. He pulled the gun against his arm and braced it like he’d practiced how. The little notches lined up with each other and pointed toward the edge of the office door. Jimmy imagined a can of soup out there, hovering in the hall. He breathed and waited. The groaning man on the other side of the threshold crawled closer, bloody palms slapping a spot of floor that made Jimmy feel funny to look at. There was that ache in the center of his skull, an ancient scar across his memories. Jimmy aimed at the nothingness in the hallway and thought of his mother and father. Some part of him knew they were gone, that they had left somewhere and would never return, and the notches became unaligned as his barrel trembled.