by Ann Christy
Silo 49: Going Dark
Book One of the Silo 49 Series
A Wool Universe Series
by Ann Christy
Copyright Information
All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. All resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and the product of a fevered imagination.
Copyright 2013 Ann Christy
Cover Art
Torrey Cooney - http://torriecooney.blogspot.com
Table of Contents
Lying Can Be A Good Thing
Eavesdropping on Death
Any Normal Day
Conspiracy for Dinner
You Might Want to Sit Down
What Would Wallis Do?
Radios and Bread Crumbs
Waiting is the Hardest Part
Old Men and Baskets
Ghosts in the Wall
Goodbye, Friend
Buried Treasures
Epilogue – Silo One
Epilogue- Silo 49
Thank You
Author’s Foreword
This series has been written primarily for readers already familiar with the world of WOOL, that deliciously dystopian world created by author, Hugh Howey. While I’ve tried to make it accessible and enjoyable for readers who have not yet plunged into WOOL, much of what happens may not be understood in context unless one knows of the dark depths of the Silo world.
For those of us who do know the bleak joy of WOOL, there must surely be sympathy between fans now that his series is over. The Silo 49 series is for those fans that still want more.
Silo 49 came about almost the very moment I finished the last line of the story in which we met Juliette (no spoilers here). I began to wonder about human nature. What might have happened if ruthlessness, a desire for power and control and a lack of kindness were replaced with true goodness and a desire to do right rather than follow the rules?
I told the story to myself, adding and editing in my head as the new chapters of WOOL emerged to keep my own corner of the world true to Hugh’s. One day I wrote that shorter version out so another WOOLian could read it. I got the email response with a single word on it, “MOAR!” This series was written from that encouragement.
With many thanks to Hugh Howey for giving his generous permission to publish this series set in his world of WOOL and with affection for my fellow WOOLians,
Ann Christy
This volume is dedicated to the WOOLians of the world
and to Hugh Howey.
Lying Can Be A Good Thing
Graham Newton tossed down the note just delivered from IT. He gnawed at a lip already gnawed raw and watched the note float lazily down to join the other litter scattered on the floor of his compartment. The note didn’t say much, but it didn’t need to. ‘Flashing Red Lights’ were the only words on the slip of rough and bumpy paper. It shouldn’t mean much but for Graham, the head of IT, it meant he needed to get ready to lie his tail off.
The workers in IT—the ones that were left anyway—were under the impression that the flashing red lights signaled a specific malfunction within the servers that required the singular intervention of the Head. With his passcodes and card keys, he was the only one who could restore the delicate balance within the all-important servers.
It went without saying that was all so much crap. It meant that someone was calling him from another silo and most likely the call was from Silo One. He needed to get down there, a lengthy trip of 29 levels downward, and do it quickly. First, he would need to get ready.
His preparations for speaking with Silo One had graduated almost to the level of ritual. That didn’t surprise Graham at all. He understood ritual better than most of the residents of the Silo, perhaps better than any of them. His whole role in this world was to ensure things went the same way all the time, to ensure that the ritual of life was continuous, smooth and undisturbed. And when it was disturbed, it was his duty to disperse the ripples through another, much darker, set of rituals. Inside the silo, all that mattered was continuity because continuity meant survival. There was no room for error under the ground, no room for change.
He performed the same actions before every communication with Silo One. He had no idea if he was just a really good liar or if this little ritual worked, but he’d been lucky so far. Why skate the rails? He’d been lying more and more over the years and lately, his communications with them were hair-raisingly dishonest. It was necessary, though. Of that there was no question. It was only a matter of doing it skillfully and believably that presented the challenge.
During his very first communication with Silo One, so many decades in the past now, his uncle had given his teenaged self a final and imperative piece of advice before they’d opened the cabinet and gone down into the hidden spaces that changed his life forever. That advice had been to be sure to tell the absolute truth.
His uncle had looked straight into his eyes, a hand firmly set on each of Graham’s shoulders, and said, “Graham, I’m serious. They will know if you lie. Just tell the truth.”
Graham had agreed, more embarrassed about having to be reminded to be honest than afraid of consequences. It was only after that call, after he was accepted as official shadow to the head of IT, that his uncle had told him the reasons behind his serious warning. It was only then that he realized his uncle had been prepared to quietly kill him with a poisoned cup of tea if he had failed that all important interview. He would have done it regretfully, but he would have done it as was required by the Order and the rules set forth in its pages. It had given Graham a great deal to think about in terms of this new career when he had learned that painful truth.
Of course, the truthfulness issue was one that almost immediately had to be re-thought. His uncle, once he knew he had a confidant and partner, trained Graham on all the things that needed lying about and how to go about doing it. His predecessor had, apparently, done the same for his uncle in his turn. It was a tradition almost exactly as old as the silo itself, it seemed.
For his uncle, a big man with the rather odd name of Newt Newton, the tricks that worked were to wear boots that were much too tight, put a drop or two of the calming drugs used in the water supply for the silo into his tea or put small pads between his headset and his head. Sometimes a combination of all of those things was required when he knew he would be telling whoppers.
On one rather serious occasion, he had confessed with some shame, he actually dosed himself with the forgetting drug, the one rarely used in the silo and powerful in its effect. His wife had supervised the process. He told Graham how much he had used and how to make it work. Just a dose or two and then a constant repetition of the events he wanted to forget run through his mind or even recited aloud were all that was needed. It didn’t work completely but it did take all the stress out of it, made the events hazy and dreamlike. That made it very easy to lie about whatever it was.
His wife, according to Uncle Newt, wasn’t supposed to know anything but she was a sharp woman with observant eyes and she knew far more than she should have. That same uncle—the one who couldn’t keep secrets from his own wife—had cautioned Graham to be a better head of IT and keep his secrets. Better yet, just don’t get married, he had told him with a laugh.
It turned out, in the course of time, that Graham didn’t need most of the tricks his uncle had relied upon. Instead, it turned out that he was a natural. His trick was simply to rationalize a way that what he said could be construed as the truth. It was shockingly easy, but it did require preparation.
He paced his room on Level 5, kicking the debris littering his messy space out of the way on each circuit until he had made an inadvertent path of dirty, but clear, floor for his pacing. The problem he had was that he couldn’t prepare for what he didn’t know was coming. Most certainly they would want the results of the water tests. He had those and he figured that the answers were bad news but he would be truthful about them. They might have the solution he needed for getting rid of whatever compounds were tainting their water. So, no lies were needed there.
As far as the rest, well, he didn’t know what he should and shouldn’t lie about for best effect. Over the last couple of years they had been far too interested in the rate of the silo’s population decline. The way they wanted details was almost salacious, like gossiping busybodies in the Fabric District or on a landing, trading secrets like chits. It appeared to Graham to be more of a clinical interest than one that bespoke of caretaking, like they were more interested in what was happening and what it was like rather than interested so that they might help them correct the problem. Caretaker was the role that Graham had mentally assigned to Silo One all those decades ago and one that had been withering away ever since.
Should he be truthful about the strange effects of the forgetting drugs he had been directed to start dosing the silo with? Should he tell lies about the cancers still sweeping the silo population? It was a fine line to walk. But since Silo 12 had been terminated by Silo One, he had a growing fear that his problems here might result in the same final treatment. Listening to that over the comms—as he assumed every other silo had—had been eye opening. They had destroyed a silo, bringing it down and killing everyone inside simply because they could no longer control them. Because they had done something not in line with the Order and Silo One’s enigmatic interpretation of that book.
He paced a few minutes longer, running the mantra through his head that helped to calm him, helped him to get into the mood to rationalize and helped him to keep on being that unflappable bit of bedrock it was safe to rest a silo on.
It turned out to be completely useless.
Eavesdropping on Death
Graham bustled through the mess that was IT but stopped short when he met Tony the Toady coming out of one of the workrooms. Tony’s eyes—the greedy eyes of a man with more ambition than was healthy—lit up when he saw Graham.
“Boss!” he exclaimed, his slick smile settling into place. “So glad you could make it in today. That error has been blinking all day.” He jerked a thumb down the hallway toward the server room doors. He lifted his ubiquitous clipboard and ran a perfectly groomed fingernail down the page.
Before Tony could get started, Graham needed to nip this in the bud. Tony had become almost nauseatingly efficient and in-his-face obsequious in the years since Graham’s shadow had died. The man had a nose for advancement and while he didn’t know the details of what the Head of IT did, he knew it was more than it seemed. And it was clear that he wanted it for himself and was angling for the shadow position, knowing that eventually it would have to be filled. Graham was old and couldn’t live forever, after all. To Graham’s way of thinking, anyone who wanted this job was exactly the sort of person who shouldn’t have it.
“Tony, we’re going to need to meet later. I’ve got to get that error fixed soon or we’ll have a server backup.” There was no such thing but that was enough to strike alarm into Tony, who believed—like everyone else—that the servers kept them alive. It worked again.
“Of course, boss, of course! I should have realized that. Shall I meet you afterward?” he asked, all politeness and conciliation, his finger poised over his clipboard. “We have quite a list,” he added.
Graham nodded even as he began walking, brushing past Tony without another word. The few workers on shift were all busy and overworked. He had no intention of disturbing whatever they were engaged in, so he merely waved as he passed the open doors where they toiled. At the outer server room door, he saw blinking red lights casting a lurid red glow into the hallway through the small pane of thick glass. At least whoever it was still waited on the line.
He used his card and key code to unlock the thick door and let it swing open just enough to slip inside. Stopping the momentum of the door once it got moving in a direction was impossible so he left that to the machines, slapping the red button that would close it again. He waited for the slow process to complete, tapping a foot impatiently as he did so. It was a major rule that one didn’t leave the door untended while opened even the barest sliver. He was half convinced that the red lights would stop blinking just before he got there.
He looked up at the camera, certain that Silo One would be watching if that was, in fact, who was calling him. He gave a little wave toward the dark eye of glass. He held up a finger to indicate it would be just a moment longer and pointed at the closing door. He took a deep breath and tried to recapture a feeling of calm while the door creaked closed. The final soft thud of closure closed Graham off from the last sounds of IT except the servers behind him and set his feet into motion.
Once he scrambled down into the lair under IT, making a great show of hurrying for the cameras in the server room, he grabbed the headset and slipped the jack into the slot for Silo One. He checked his nerves again, decided he wasn’t quite where he liked to be in terms of calm and then adjusted the headset so the pads were pushed back a bit, barely resting on the outer curves of his ears.
He jacked up the volume to make up for the distance, cleared his throat and said, “This is 49."
"Standby. You will be contacted shortly," answered a flat, tinny voice. It was cold and distant, then cut the connection without waiting for an answer.
Above him, the red lights winked out and didn’t return. The short response and the time it took him to get down to the lair probably meant that whoever had been trying to call him got tired of waiting and now had to be fetched again. He imagined some person—not quite male or female in his mind—wriggling in their seat with a need to pee while they waited. He felt vaguely satisfied with the image but suppressed a smile.
That satisfaction didn’t quell the disquiet he felt entirely. The hair on his neck stood on end whenever he heard that cold and sexless voice. It always had. Graham barely suppressed the urge to peer into the corners of the room once again as he settled in for the wait. He'd searched this area beneath IT at least a hundred times, looking for whatever they used to watch him in here. He had not been successful at finding it, if such actually existed.
It would be reasonable to assume there was no camera after so much fruitless searching. But Graham didn't feel very reasonable and he knew they watched him here. Why wouldn’t they? He could feel their eyes itching across his skin in the way they asked questions that always seemed to mirror what he felt. Unless they lived in his body alongside him, he had to assume they knew these things because they watched.
He remained curious, though. No number of rules could completely eliminate that inside him. He knew that sometime soon, when enough time had passed after this call, when no contact was expected and any interest they had in him had waned, he would search again for cameras down here. The fact that most cameras in the silo were plainly visible if one chose to look but could be almost invisibly hidden in spaces like the cafeteria, kept him looking and kept him from being too much himself down here in the private domain of the Head of IT.
The wait for their return call seemed to last for days, though in truth it was only a few short minutes. To Graham, time always seemed to drag so very slowly when he was in these rooms beneath IT. Here he felt most exposed even though this was certainly the most hidden place in the entire silo.
A sudden lurching buzz behind him gave him a start and he almost fell off the little stool he was sitting on, yanking the cord out of the jack in the process of scrambling to keep his seat. He fumbled for his cord and jammed the jack home under the flashing light. "This is Silo 49, Graham Newton speaking," he said in a carefully modulated voice.
&n
bsp; "You have the report?" asked a slightly different voice, this one equally tinny and flat.
In all the years he had been participating in calls with Silo One, every voice sounded almost exactly the same. There were differences for a careful listener to catch though. Some spoke quickly and others slowly, some used strange flat tones on some words while others drew out vowels. He never mentioned the differences. He had the feeling they wanted him to always think it was the same person speaking, some ultimate authority he could rely on. But people needed sleep over there as much as here, didn't they? It seemed to him he might relate better to them, perhaps be a little less nervous, if they acted more human with him.
"Yes, I do," he said aloud and paused while he settled the headset more firmly around his head, yet still not quite on his ears. "It's about the water quality issue I brought up before. I have the results."
"Go ahead."
"It's confirmed. The water table has been contaminated by the toxins matching the information you provided. The results are mixed though."
"Mixed? Explain," the voice, so eerily distant, sounded no more moved than it would if Graham had announced that his favorite color was yellow. This was, in fact, his favorite color and probably why he always had a soft spot for Supply.
"Water intakes are receiving water from the ground at different levels, of course. The ones in the down deep have very little contamination but it is still present at low levels in the source water. Regular filtration doesn't change the levels," he said and paused again as some distant sound tickled his ears through the headset.
He could clearly hear the rustle of paper on the other end of the line and the faintest whisper of conversation in the background. The man at the other end of the line didn't appear to notice so he hurried on. "The contamination levels increase in different water plants as we rise in the silo towards the Up-Top, with very high levels present after processing at the uppermost plant. We did the correlation that you asked for based on the levels present and..."