by Ann Christy
Some of the gatherers had clearly just woken after long shifts during the dimming, others rushed to gather theirs before they went to work. Still others looked to him as if they were in a perpetual state of having just discovered some unpleasant surprise. Eventually, he grew tired of waiting and was left with a collection of sacks lumped about on the floor. He took his to his rooms and then began the laborious process of delivering the rest. It took longer than he liked to finish this duty but he had volunteered and he was glad it was out of the way for a seven-day or four.
Back in his own rooms, he showered the exertion off but felt good about having an honest stink in the first place. So much of his work dealt with things less than honest that this was a refreshing change. Even the beginning pain of sore muscles in his arms from pulling the ropes across the squealing pulleys was strangely pleasant.
He set up the radio and sat looking at it rather than using it for a good long while. He was nervous. Up to now all the secret contact had been initiated by Silo 40 and he merely made himself available at the times they directed. His only calls were highly scheduled and arranged for the next time Silo 40 would blind Silo One to their actions. He had been told most firmly that anything outside those parameters would jeopardize them all and he believed it.
He had been given the instructions for altering one of the standard radios long ago, but had never done so. With these units, he could call anytime he wanted without facing the danger of discovery by Silo One unless it was simply because he was being monitored in some other way. Silo 40 had even thought of that eventuality though, and had given him a list of places he should avoid when using the radio. He knew they couldn't look or listen everywhere and this compartment was both anonymous and safe.
Now, he needed to work up the courage to actually use the radio and to tell the other silo that he fully intended to disable the remaining portion of the system that could be used to destroy his silo. He needed desperately to tell the other silo what was going on with his people and what he was facing so they could understand his position. What he needed most was their help and he hoped they would offer it.
Gathering his courage, he grabbed the radio and followed the instructions for calling Silo 40. He carefully checked the numbers for the frequency. Then he checked it again. When he clicked the button a buzzing noise came through that wasn't at all like the buzz of their normal communications. The hiss of static was very strong too, and punctuated with high wails like a distant cat having its tail stepped on.
He waited, listening to the buzz and the pops and crackles, his leg bouncing up and down on the floor anxiously as he did so. He was almost ready to twist the knob on the radio to off and stop the increasingly annoying whines when a sharp whistle sounded from the unit and a voice with a strange tenor and accent answered.
"Please tell me I've gotten silo 40. This is 49," Graham said, his voice sounded a little pleading to his own ears, but he couldn't help it.
"This is Nella, in 40. Let me clean up the signal. You're Graham?" The voice asked, a bit more clearly as the whine and the static began to fade. She had a high voice that sounded to Graham’s ears like that of a young girl.
"That's better. Nella? I don't know you..."
"Nah. I'm in the group too. I'm monitoring the comms today. You would know me if you had been using the radio," Nella said in a half-teasing voice and Graham could hear the smile in it. He had no idea who this person was yet she sounded as if talking to a stranger from another silo were the most normal thing in the world.
"Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. But I've got an emergency over here and need to talk to someone...well, someone in charge," Graham said.
"How much of an emergency?" she asked.
"What? It's an emergency, emergency." Graham realized his voice had shifted from pleading to a bit strident. He took a gulp of old tea from a cup left lying about and tried to calm down.
Nella's voice changed and she sounded like she was trying to lure an angry cat back into its compartment. "I don't mean to offend. I just need to know how urgent it is. If you need help in one minute, then you've got me. If you can wait for a call back, I can get you to your counterpart here."
"Oh, ah. I don't know. I'll just tell you and you decide. Can we do that?" Graham asked. He felt very strange speaking on a radio in his room, but at least he felt a bit less like panic was about to overtake him. To him, it sounded like his voice was echoing so loudly that people up and down this level must be able to hear him.
"Sounds good. I'm going to take some notes so you talk, I'll listen," she said, her voice still carrying a soothing tone.
"Silo One is going to blow up my silo." He hadn't meant to blurt it out like that, but there it was. He let the silence on the line hang for a moment. It didn't last long.
"Are you sure? How do you know? Do you know when?"
The questions came rapidly, one after another, from the other end of the radio. Nella's voice was crisp and all business now. Graham could hear the faint scratching of chalk on a board followed by the snapping of fingers on the other side of the line.
"I heard them specifically say that they were going to terminate us over an open microphone. Do you know about our problem over here? With the cancer and stuff?"
Nella grunted in the affirmative and Graham heard her say to someone else, "No, just go get him. Make up any excuse you have to. Go!"
She returned her attention to the line and answered, "Yes. I have a summary of the silo on a board right here in our control room. Why would they destroy your silo? I don't mean to be insensitive but it looks like your silo is going to be empty soon anyway. Why destroy it?"
"I don't know, exactly. Listen, this takes a long time to explain so I'll just give you the facts. I was given instructions to have our water tested at various levels for some specific compounds. They came back positive and I reported it. Someone over there had an open microphone so I heard their entire conversation, more or less, and they decided that once they got some additional medical information, they were going to terminate the silo. That was the exact word; terminate. We all know what happened to 12. As to why, I don't know everything so I can’t tell you that. I did hear one of them say that we should be spared the pain."
"Oh, how kind," Nella replied. Her voice sounded as if she had dipped it in sarcasm and then coated it in broken glass. Graham could tell Nella didn't carry a lot of love for Silo One and he decided he liked this stranger with her strange accent and high girlish voice.
"Yeah. That's basically what I thought too," Graham said. He considered for a moment and added, "I don't think that is why they are doing it though."
"What do you think?"
"I think it is because they look at us as damaged now. One of them said the effects of what we’re going through are teratogenic. I didn't know what that was so I looked it up in the Legacy. It means that what's happening to us might mess up babies we have in the future and make mistakes that can be passed on from one generation to the next. I think that is why the babies die and so many pregnant women die too."
For a moment, Graham thought he had lost the connection or something had gone wrong because nothing but the popping static replied. He was just about to try calling them back when Nella spoke.
"That is just so very horrible. I wish we could help you," she said, her voice coming softly through the hissing line. "How can you stand it?"
"Because I think I can see our way to fixing some part of it at least. Minimize it, maybe even find a permanent fix and then we can let things take their course. It may not work but I don't think those asses over there want to take a chance of us surviving and corrupting everyone else later on with whatever this is we now carry in our genes. I think they want to make sure we're all gone and that we take this with us. And I think you can help us. We really want to survive over here, you know."
Nella sighed on the other end of the line. "In only the most detestable of ways, I can almost understand what they fear, if only in the abstract. Bu
t it's still pig crap. You're thinking about stopping it from Level 72, aren't you? You don't have anything to worry about from above anymore."
Graham nodded and then remembered she couldn't see him so he said, "I’m considering exactly that. I know what your group said to everyone about that, but I think I don't have a choice. The delay I've got before they do this thing is quickly running out. They're going to figure out I'm stalling with what they want at some point. Then they'll really kill us just because they won't know what I know and won't want me putting a good suit on and going to bang on some doors!"
"Umm...exactly so," she said, obviously deep in thought. Graham heard tapping and could almost picture her fingernails hitting a desk as she took in all the implications.
"There's more to tell, obviously, but the bottom line is that I've got two others to help me and one has electrical skill so we can do this. I don't want to do it without guidance though. I really don't.”
"Don't do anything yet. I just sent someone down to get our head of IT to come speak with you. That might take some time. Things are coming to a head all around the place. We have reason to believe they know we're up to something here too."
"Shit! You have got to be kidding me," Graham's nervousness was quickly turning into something just a shade shy of a full blown dread that yet something else would go wrong.
"None of the other silos are reporting anything but there is definitely something up with Silo One and us. Too many questions. But that might work to your advantage so don't worry," Nella replied.
"Easier said than done."
"Listen, just stay there with the radio on standby. As soon as he gets here I'll get him briefed and on the line to you. Can you do that?" Nella asked, her voice kind.
"I can stay here. We all have multiple jobs now, even the head of IT, so one place will just assume I'm at another."
"Hang tight then, Graham. We're going to figure this out. Bye for now," Nella replied and then the line was back to a dead hiss again.
He switched the unit to standby, stood there a moment wondering what he should do while he waited and then made himself something to eat. It was an activity that didn't need a lot of thought and that was just what he needed. The morning's labor was making itself known through his growling belly and not even the jangling of his nerves was enough to dampen the hunger he felt.
He realized he would need to get water soon as he put yet another empty canister next to the door and cracked open his next to last full container to make tea. Water was just another chore made more laborious by their situation. When he finished eating, he wiped his plate and cup rather than use any of his good water to wash them in. He was just to the point of wondering if he would get a call back at all when the buzz of his radio sounded.
He rushed toward the unit and turned it on. When he answered he was relieved to hear a voice he knew. It was his counterpart in Silo 40, John, and a man that had won his trust over the years.
"Hey! It's Graham. It's happening." The words gushed out of him. He was so relieved to have someone who could truly grasp his situation.
"I'm here and I did get briefed by Nella. I'd like to hear it from you. But first, how much leeway do you think you have before they do this? Are we talking hours or days or more?"
Graham thought about the records and how long it would take to get all that data into computers and how many of them would be in before those in Silo One felt they had enough. "I would say at a minimum we have a few days but if we're lucky it could be a lot longer. I can only really confidently say a few days though."
"Hmm," came John’s reply. It was a grim sound to Graham's ears. "That would move up our timetable quite a bit and the others aren't even close to being ready."
"Ready? For what exactly?"
"Graham, we're going off line. All of the silos who have been able to establish communications with each other are considering the same. Since you hadn't communicated with us this way, your silo was actually the one we were most concerned with leaking information to Silo One if we did go offline. Until recently, we’d been rebuffed by your silo."
Graham was stunned at the thought of going offline. This was not at all what he had been expecting to hear from Silo 40. He had expected to have to make his case for just cutting the lines on Level 72. He knew that tampering with the control lines on Level 72, the ones that Silo One could use to remotely destroy a silo, was forbidden within the group of silos that knew their purpose and spoke with each other.
It was forbidden for good reason because there was a chance that Silo One would figure out a way to prevent anyone after that from doing the same. That would leave everyone, forever after, at the mercy of Silo One’s whim. It had been long agreed that if it was done at all, it needed to be coordinated between the many silos that had been having their own contact in these past years.
Coordination would ensure that others wouldn't pay whatever price Silo One would extract in blood to make absolutely positive no other silo thought of doing the same. But Graham had known nothing of any plan to go offline. How could the silos even go offline? Even now his plan for his own silo didn't call for anything other than removing the ability to destroy his world from the hands of another silo. He hadn't considered anything else past that point. He realized he probably should have thought of that. He was a terrible conspirator and had proved it yet again.
"Graham, are you there?"
"Uh, yeah. I'm just…well…just surprised," he swallowed loudly. His throat was suddenly parched again and he asked, "How can we go offline?"
"Think about it, Graham. What do they actually do for us over there? They keep us going around in the same cycle over and over and watch until something fails and a silo dies. Your own silo is a prime example! How long has this sickness been going on? It's been decades, right? This has been happening to your people since before we started talking. Tell me I'm not right."
Graham could hear the intensity in John’s words, the utter conviction. He keenly regretted that he hadn't had the guts to get this communications gear altered a long time ago. He might have been able to avert all of this current pain and horror. They might now be offline, whatever that might mean, and working on a way to save the silo with people who really wanted to help rather than just control. Those regrets were for later though, after this silo was safe.
"I see what you're saying, I really do. This has been going on for a long time. Since before I was born though we didn't know that then. What I want to do now is try to fix it if I can but first I just want to stop them from blowing us up or whatever they do. Can I do that?"
Graham could hear his counterpart take a deep breath over the line. The static was still hissing but less so now and the words came through loud and clear. "You can. We all can."
Waiting is the Hardest Part
Waiting was hard for Graham and he could see the difficulty it caused for Wallis as well. It was writ large in his nervous movements and stiff gait. What Grace was going through, he couldn't know. Their paths didn't cross in daily life and though he certainly had cause to contact her now, her being the de facto head of the electricians, he didn't. He wanted to reserve that for when he had something concrete to give her. He stuck with the regular forwarded emails as needed with the code for ‘nothing yet’ in each one.
While he waited, feeling helpless and with an ear halfcocked for the blast that would bring down his silo, the people in Silo 40 were busy. They were the hub and the coordinators for this great ‘going offline’ that would take place. Every twelve hours, as directed, he sat at the hacked radio and waited for their call. The buzz he had grown to love would come from the radio and then he took their updates and answered their questions with a growing sense of hope tinged with the ever present nervousness.
By the third day of this waiting, he had been required to give the medic and one of his IT technicians the order to begin scanning in medical records. His orders on which to start with and what kind of information to scan would, he hoped, mean that
the information Silo One so desperately wanted would not come quickly or comprehensively and thereby give the conspirators more time. It was a dangerous and close game to play and every bang that echoed up the column of the stairwell made him flinch.
During his fourth-day check in with Silo One, he was compliant and did his very best to convey his trust in them, in the Order he no longer believed in and to convey that their solutions were the answer he waited for. Inwardly, he cringed at the lies. So far, they seemed satisfied with the data coming in and to Graham that meant they were probably not examining it thoroughly. He thought, perhaps, that they felt like they had all the time in the world and had no reason to hurry.
He was both glad and worried that he had no further instances of an open microphone leaking information from that other silo. Glad because it meant it was less likely they would discover he had heard anything and worried because he couldn't know what new machinations were taking place there. His imagination ran wild when he considered the possibilities.
The buzz that signaled Silo 40 calling him woke him from a fitful sleep very late in the sleeping cycle on what would be his fifth day waiting. It wasn't the scheduled time for a call and he jumped from his bed, simultaneously groggy and unnerved. He fumbled the radio not once but twice as he tried to turn it on and answer. His whole body felt shaky as he pressed the microphone button and said hello.
"Graham, we've got resolution. How soon can you be ready to go?"
"Go? You mean disable the system on Level 72?"
"Yes, that. Listen. A whole lot has happened and I want to get you up to speed, just in case we lose contact for any reason. You good to listen?" John asked, his voice full of excitement.
"Yeah. I'm good. Let me get some paper for notes," Graham replied, hugging the radio under his arm and rooting about his messy sleep area for paper with any blank space remaining on it and a writing utensil.