by Ann Christy
"Okay. This is what I think we've got to figure out and I really don't think we have a whole lot of time to do it in. First, Silo 40 already took care of the lines outside that Silo One could have used to start the self-destruct Up-Top," he said and held up his hands to forestall questions when Wallis' mouth opened.
"And before you ask, I have no idea how they did it. It was long before my time. That's only half the system, though and it's that other part we have to worry about."
"That's the stuff on Level 72 you were talking about, right?" Wallis asked.
Graham nodded, "Yep. But here's where it gets tricky. If we start disabling things they might figure out we're up to something. The whole system, for the whole silo, has to be disabled at once. And just like 40 did when they disabled the topside lines, it probably needs to be coordinated with the other silos or whatever else they did to make it unnoticeable. We don't know, and have no real way to find out, how much Silo One knows about us down in here. I think we can be sure they won't allow themselves to lose control of us without a fight."
"And your plan is to not give them the ability to fight, huh?"
"Exactly,” replied Graham. “That means we need one more person and I need to get on the comms."
Radios and Bread Crumbs
Three days after Wallis had been brought into this secret side of silo life the duo of conspirators became a trio. Grace, one of the last really experienced electricians left in the silo became their third person and they were lucky to have her at all.
She was dying, but slowly, and it wasn't exactly what the two men had been hoping for. What she lacked in future longevity she made up for in experience and stability in the here and now, however. According to Wallis, Grace was bedrock suitable for building a silo on, steady and unflappable.
Graham stood by the switch-box one level below IT as she muttered about someone taking a sledgehammer to the innards of the switch-box she was working on. He felt bad about that because that was, in fact, exactly what he had done. There were still bits of mattress stuffing drifting about on the landing from the one he’d used as a cushion to deaden the sound of the blows.
He kicked a few of the fluffy bits away guiltily with the toe of his boot when she said that and felt like he probably had what he’d done written across his forehead. It was a crucial safety switch for lines leaving IT so he had been able to summon the best tech up to repair it and do it quickly. So, busting that unit had been a perfect choice for his needs. And though it made him feel even guiltier, there had been more than a little fun involved in wielding that sledgehammer.
He hadn't known she was sick when the two men decided she was the right fit for their needs. Wallis knew her well but Graham had only a few professional dealings with her to consider. All of them were positive but still only professional and relatively distant. He felt terrible about her tromping up so many levels to fix this thing he didn't care one whit for anymore and was having a hard time figuring out how to go about approaching the subject. It was much harder to tell this sort of thing to a stranger.
She apparently sensed something amiss because she gave a few pointedly suspicious glances at his uncharacteristic hovering about while she worked. At one point, while she was stripping insulation from a few wires with quick, sharp flicks of her wrist, she flat out commented that he looked like he had bees in his pants.
She had caught on almost immediately that he was holding some secret as Graham looked around with a decidedly guilty air at her comment. It was obvious that he was looking to see if he were being watched and he might as well have held a sign above his head that read, ‘I'm Up to Something’. She had just shaken her head in disgust and stopped talking to him after that.
With pursed lips and a grim, business-like expression on her face, she stayed mum until the unit was repaired. When she slammed the bent lid home she turned toward Graham, hands on her hips, and considered him for a moment. Her shrewd appraisal made Graham nervous and he shuffled his feet like a child being scrutinized by a displeased parent. He knew he was doing it but was powerless to stop himself and that just made it worse. The red cheeks that followed spoke even more eloquently of him being up to something. He realized he was a terrible conspirator. It was no wonder no one from Silo 40 ever told him much.
Grace was being dosed, at least Graham assumed she was, but her gaze was sharp and clear. She finally broke the silence, cleared her throat and told him she wanted to discuss some labor swaps with him as some of his folks could address electrical problems in a pinch. The steady gaze she had held him with and the little twitch of an eyebrow gave him to understand that she knew he was up to something and would play along for the moment.
Graham was grateful she opened the door for him, even if she didn't know what he really wanted, and he wasted no time. He rushed her down several hallways, a hurrying hand on her elbow, and then pushed her toward a broom closet. It was dark and smelled of sour old mops and even older cleaning supplies.
Both of them were a little out of breath by the time they reached the closet and Grace gave him a very strange look when he opened the door to the dank little room. After a moment, she shrugged and stepped inside, neatly disengaging his touch on her arm as she did so. Graham follow close behind and shut them into a darkness broken only by the thinnest strip of light cutting the bottom edge of the door.
He took a deep breath and began by asking her how far she would go to save the silo from what was happening inside it if she knew there was a way to do it.
Given that she was of an age with him, Graham figured she must understand what he was saying to mean the sickness. She was silent for so long that Graham feared he and Wallis had chosen wrongly after all. A dark feeling of failure started to descend upon him when she finally spoke.
"I can't think of a single thing I wouldn't do," she answered. Her voice was soft and sincere as it came from the thick blackness around them.
In that darkness, Graham smiled and told her everything.
*****
The trio was almost ready to act and fear of failure had turned Graham's belly to water. Old habits, the ones that spoke to obedience and the need for absolute order, had lost their validity but doing this many things completely against all those habits was still a difficult prospect for him. He hadn't been back to Level 34 since that last fateful conversation with Silo One and his stomach gurgled when he thought about talking to them.
He had gone so far as to filch the tiniest dose of the calming additive for the water and mix it in his morning tea. It wasn’t the forgetting drug, but the less intrusive calming one that simply stopped a person from caring too much about anything. He felt it was a good foil against detecting deception or undue stress when he finally did contact Silo One later on in the day. It was an unavoidable duty.
He sipped at his flask as he walked around IT, giving clarification where questions existed, orders when such were needed and encouragement to all. And avoiding Tony wherever possible. He gave him his instructions, which sent him off and running. Whatever else there was to say about Tony, in every aspect of IT except the important parts, he knew what he was doing. When he finally did manage to duck into the server room with enough privacy to go below, he knew they must have tried to reach him at some point and he took a few minutes to calm himself.
It turned out that wasn’t hard to do at all and he looked at his canteen, thinking perhaps he put just a little too much happy juice in it. He felt really good at the moment and that was probably not the mood he was going for. He shrugged and took another sip.
He made his way down the little hallway and into the kitchen facilities, dumping the remaining tea from his canteen and giving it a good wash to avoid the temptation of further indulgence. He didn’t have to worry about the water here, since by design it was pumped from the pre-conditioned water and utterly un-dosed. He cleared his throat and gave himself a stern mental talking to on the importance of remaining serious.
When he reached Silo One, he sensed
a great deal of consternation at the long days since he had last called given the situation. Apparently, Silo One had tried to reach him several times but he had never been notified. He reiterated that they had only a fraction of the personnel they needed and he had to do many other jobs. That was entirely true and he felt the tension on the line ease.
He, in turn, had to suppress a giggle. He definitely had way too much of the calming additive. Negotiations ensued, though Graham doubted the voice at the other end would have called them that, and in the end, he had promised to come to check once per four days from that day on.
The reason for their repeated calls had been to ask why no records were yet available on computer. Graham thought he did a passable job of listing the enormous number of emergencies they were dealing with and then at sounding completely sincere when he apologized. He told them he would get right on it.
He figured they would be watching him until he actually took steps to do as they instructed, so he had gone from his lair beneath the servers and made a public show of compliance by sending a wire to the medic and asking him his progress in his collection of records. He decided to add a little flourish to end the message by writing that he was anxious to finalize the plan and get started.
As he hit send, Graham hoped the medic wouldn't be equally anxious and actually start scanning records. He hoped the medic in question would be busy enough trying to tend to too many jobs and blow him off entirely for a day or so. Maybe Graham could arrange for the medic to get a dose of that calming additive too. It was great for feeling no sense of urgency. It was something to consider.
The trio needed a few more days to get their act together and he didn't want Silo One to get any notion they had all that they needed. There was just so much to do. Talking to the right people in the other silos needed to be next on his agenda and he would need all his wits. No more happy juice for him, he decided.
For this he finally procured the right communications gear, tailored using favors and bribes and detailed instructions provided by Silo 40 long ago but never acted upon. He needed to smuggle it to his rooms on Level 5 before turning it on, just in case they were watching.
He could have just stuck it in a bag and walked up but that was a bit of a waste of a long trip, so he volunteered for food duty. After removing rubbish, this was the least favored job for the residents on any residential level. While the rubbish required sorting and movement of loads, it was all downward movement and a quick shower before returning upward made for a fresh climb past shopping and other sights. Food, on the other hand, was much heavier and all of it was moved upward. It was perfect for Graham's needs.
Hidden inside a sack filled with flat amaranth bread destined for the residents of his level, all the many parts of his new radio made the trip innocuously and raised no suspicion. Food had to find its way up and into individual hands now that the cafeteria on Level 1 was closed. It hadn't closed for lack of food, because the farms produced far more than they needed even with very few people doing the actual work of farming. It needed to close for lack of porters to bring the food up and workers to man it.
There were not nearly enough people to spare just for cooking. There were also fewer people going that far just to eat. People couldn’t make it all the way up or down to whatever cafeteria was assigned to them for their meals simply because there was so much to do aside from eat. The lower cafeterias were being used but Level 1 had been as easy cut for administration to make.
Since then, food found its way to people, not the other way around. These large lumpy bags of vegetables, fruits, breads and even meats were common enough to be unremarkable now and Graham knew that many a forbidden thing had made this trip hidden in much the same way his radio was now. He had heard the slosh of liquid and caught a whiff of corn hooch on occasion when it was only meant to be vegetables coming up. His little radio was nothing compared to trying to hide bottles of high grade hooch.
It was said that private messages were going up and down this way more and more, too, though Graham had seen no proof of that. He had taken all cost levies off the wire system, with much grumbling from Silo One, but it was probable that people just got used to the idea of nothing being private other than what passed from hand to hand. He hadn’t reported anything to Silo One when he first heard of it and had pointedly never asked about it happening or had it investigated. He thought such messaging was a good thing, but that was a private thought.
He and a young man from the upper farms that had been sent to assist him used the forbidden, but absolutely necessary, lifts that had been strung up in the spaces around the stairwell. Where landings matched up or jutted out too far, the lifts were interrupted and the two men were required to shift their burdens from one sturdy reinforced cloth bag under one set of ropes and pulleys to another. None of the lifts went more than five levels this close to the Up Top, some only spanning one or two levels. As a result, there were quite a few transfers of goods required before they finally reached the landing on five.
Any potential worry about private messages paled in comparison to what he had faced when Silo One confronted him about the lifts as they were being built. It had been the first time he ever stood up to them, using logic and the words of the Order itself to beat their demands back.
After all, he had argued, if I can’t actually use a porter to do this thing or that thing, how can I comply with this or that part of the Order? He had prevailed for what the voice had referred to as, ‘the duration of this setback’, so long as he complied with certain rules and ensured people didn’t use the lifts more than absolutely necessary. And as a primary rule they were to never, under any circumstances, allow actual people to use it as a means of transportation for themselves.
An interesting side effect of their little lift installation was that one couldn't really jump from many of the levels anymore. The big cloth bags, constantly in motion with the breezes of the silo, swung to and fro in empty spaces that might have once tempted a potential jumper. One would have to go much further down the silo to be sure of not getting scooped up by an errant bag and painfully breaking all ones limbs but surviving the process. It might not be a deterrent to someone very determined but it certainly made a jump difficult for anyone suddenly overtaken by the urge but not committed to the act.
Graham was sweating and his hands were raw and sore from the ropes as he unloaded the last of the produce from the lift bag on his level. He thanked the farmer for his help and watched as the younger man almost skipped away, the metal of the stairs ringing with his rapid descent and quick, easy steps. Graham almost felt envious for a moment but that feeling was replaced with a hope that the young man would one day be as old as he and living in a silo where there was life and noise and not just sadness and impending death.
He pulled his attention away from the energy of youth and back to the problem at hand. He needed to get the radio out of the bread bag discreetly before the others came for their portions. He decided the best way to do this without raising a spectacle was to just do it. He pulled his own empty pack out of the messy pile by the double doors, opened the bread bag and fished out his radio. He gathered all the other pieces that went with it, along with a hefty helping of crumbs, and put those in his pack too. He kept his back to the landing and hoped that it looked like he was dividing the food up just as he was supposed to.
Then he started the sorting and filling of everyone else's sack in earnest. It was mostly guess work since he never knew how many sacks would be out on the landing or how big that person might be. Each sack was an old produce bag and marked somehow with a name and compartment number. Everyone could put one out no matter if they were a little child or a full size adult and the food would be divided the same. There just wasn't enough manpower to get too fussy with the details and this seemed to work best. Graham knew that other levels, ones still fairly thick with residents, had more problems and tighter controls on food portions, but his level had no need of that.
There was no
meat in this load but there was an entire plastic bin full of hard boiled eggs, two eggs packed per hard shell case. No wonder the load had been so heavy. He put a couple of those in each sack as well as a few rounds of bread and a smaller sack of breakfast grains with dried fruit bits. He estimated the oranges, tomatoes and other vegetables and put those in the sacks too. It wasn't a small amount this time and he was surprised that he had actually been able to get those lifts up so many levels.
Even using the pulleys that vastly increased the amount of weight one person could lift, he wasn't a young man and this was a lot of food. It was enough to eat for several days if people didn't gorge, and then someone else would make the trip and do it all over again. Individuals did go to the farms or aquaponics or anywhere else they wanted to get more or different foodstuffs, but this main lift was what they had come up with to replace the convenience of the cafeteria, however inadequately.
Once the bags were filled and he checked the sacks one more time, he grabbed one of the two metal bars that hung suspended from a pipe near the ceiling. He rapidly smacked it against a metal plate attached to the pipe and winced at the loud clanging that echoed all around him. It created a clang very different from the dinging of the bells they had installed on the lifts, and it would echo along the pipe as it ran the length of the hall in the residential area. It was a surprisingly effective method for rough communication. He let the bar go and it rang discordantly as it swung against its mate a few times before it eventually came to rest. Whoever brought the lift was also responsible for ensuring the bags were distributed. Graham hoped that a lot of people would answer his clanging call so he wouldn't have to walk around the level knocking and dropping off sacks as he went.
He waited and tried not to think about the radio in his sack. People did make their way out of the interior to gather their sacks, some grabbing sacks for other people or families and showing the notes that gave them the right to do so. It was just one more way the neighbors of Level 5 tried to make life a little easier for each other. Plus the fact that many were having trouble even remembering food deliveries at all.