Silo 49: Deep Dark

Chapter Eighteen

Her trip back to the maintenance closet seemed to take forever and the pack on her back seemed to weigh as much as a person, maybe as much as the silo itself. It almost burned through her clothes and crisped her skin as it silently called for her to look. It whispered for her to just peek once. She shut herself into the closet and realized there was no lock. She cursed and wondered if she should risk it, but her anticipation was only trumped by her desire not to get caught. She settled for a peek inside her pack and a quick reassuring touch that it was all real.

She almost flew down the stairs. She needed privacy and she discarded each level she passed with increasing frustration. She stopped at the infirmary but was thwarted by the presence of a man resting up from the same holiday malady she had suffered. It was an excruciating twenty-nine levels to 34 that she finally went and asked again for a room to rest in. There was a window there, just like before, but a flap in front of the window on the outside let people know it was occupied. Only the rudest of people would lift that flap and look in so she felt relatively secure.

She nestled into the corner nearest the door, pulling all but her extended legs out of view, and opened the pack. She started to withdraw the contents, stacking them after examination right next to her.

The book was huge and it reminded her of the burned remains she had seen not too far from here. The title was ‘Legacy’ and the spine had the letters, ‘Sh-St’, on it. That was tempting but she put it aside. There were three other books, small ones with faded black fabric covers and curled edges. Many pages were missing from them and she knew, even from the second that she opened one to glance inside, that the pages were the exact ones that were hung in the Memoriam to explain the Tenets. It was only with the greatest reluctance that she put them aside.

The rest was all paper. A sheaf of papers held together with a metal clip. A bundle of letters tied with a faded purple ribbon. Many other individual items, a few in envelopes made of other sheets of paper, had also been stuffed inside. She selected one of these at random, a thick one with no hint of the contents, and opened it. It seemed to just keep unfolding until it was the largest piece of paper she had ever seen. It was like the whole version of the partial one Greta showed her in the archives. But what was depicted was not the same.

In a beautifully precise arrangement there were circles and inside each was a number. The title of the piece was machine printed in bold letters across the top. It read, ‘Silo Field Diagram’. The edges were torn in a precise match to the remains she had seen down below in the burned room. It wasn’t immediately clear what the diagram meant until she spotted the circle labeled ‘49’ with the single word, ‘Us’, next to it. Then her eyes took in all the other circles, all the other numbers. All the other silos.

Marina felt her face grow hot and her vision pinpoint down until all she could see was that 49 and that word — us. Us. We. The jacks down below, the communications destroyed that went to unknown places. The fifty slots with one of them just a space and not a jack. The next to the last one. The 49th one.

How long she was frozen like that, those numbers running through her mind and her breathing making a ragged racket in the silent room, she had no idea. It seemed impossible that she could simply return to normal but that is what happened. Her vision stopped dancing and her breathing slowed down and the jitters that made her boots clack together in front of her slowed and then stopped. There are other silos but I am okay. There are forty-nine other silos but I am awake and alive and will not die from knowing it. It was a strange feeling.

She laid the paper on the floor and looked at the details. Faded red X’s marked a few of the circles. No, a few silos, she mentally corrected. Numbers that didn’t mean anything to Marina ran along those X’s. A large grayish-blue blob with uneven edges encroached on the paper from the end closest to the one marked 49 and the one marked 50. There was a notation inside that was difficult to decipher but it appeared to read, ‘Catchment Lake’. She didn’t know what that was. Lake?

There was so much more to see but she became keenly aware of how much time had passed when the lights beyond the privacy flap blinked to half-dim. That meant she had two hours until the dimming and she was far from the Memoriam. It was with sharp reluctance that she packed her finds back up and secured her pack. She took another dose of pills after she stood and her legs screamed with the effort of the day. Her pale and sweaty face, her shaky voice and her hurried gait earned her a few looks as she thanked the IT reception worker and made her way out.

On the stairs she misjudged the steps or caught a toe more than once. She had to stop and pull herself together on Level 36 before continuing on. They had just lost Piotr and she could easily wind up the same way if she kept being so clumsy. It hit her as she passed Level 40 that Piotr would not see this. He wouldn’t get to know. He missed it by just a single day. Less than that, really.

It was heartbreaking and the tears she hadn’t shed earlier threatened to come when she most needed them to stay away. Her grip tightened on the central post and she hugged the center until she felt more in control. A curious look or two was cast her way from others climbing the stairs but no one said anything and she was able to pick up her pace once more.

On Level 70 she stopped at the deputy station. Joseph and Sela were long off duty by then so she made her greetings, secretly amazed that she was able to do so, and left him a note. She wrote that she had made it back late and would probably sleep in. He had made a habit of stopping by, having a chat and stealing a kiss on his way to work each morning. Tomorrow she knew she wouldn’t be capable of such. She might not ever sleep again until all of this had been gone through and the secrets revealed. The cadence of her steps had been consistent the whole way down. There — step — are — step — other – step — silos.

She made her way to her room inside the Memoriam and stuffed her pack under her bed. She was almost faint with fatigue and she knew a big part of that was lack of food. She had eaten nothing since that morning and expended a great deal of energy since. She checked the hallway clock and thought that she might be able to go and grab something without meeting anyone given the late hour.

The last person she wanted to see was sitting in the near darkness of the kitchen and dining hall when she entered. Greta cradled a cup in her hands and was bent over it like it was the last warmth in the silo. She turned dull and glazed eyes toward Marina as she entered. She gave her a weak attempt at a smile but it was sadder than if she hadn’t tried at all.

Marina joined her and rested a hand on her arm. “How are you holding up?”

Greta tried that smile again but it came off as a grimace. Her voice was ragged when she answered, “I’m better. Taylor is bad, though.”

There was no helpful reply to give to that so Marina just nodded in understanding.

“I don’t know why I’m taking it this bad,” Greta said. “I mean, aside from this project, we just sort of were,” she paused and searched for the words. “I guess you could say we were friendly strangers.”

Again Marina nodded. She understood this well. Everyone had people like that in their lives. This time she added, “But we aren’t anymore. You were his friend and he yours. We all shared something special, right?”

Greta looked up at Marina, her eyes grateful at the understanding. “Exactly,” she said. “And the way it happened.”

“Don’t think about that, Greta. Just don’t,” Marina said firmly. “I don’t know what you’ve been told, but Joseph told me it would have been so fast he wouldn’t have felt pain or known what was happening. That is more than many can hope for in this life.”

Greta’s expression said she did know that but she was not getting past the graphic after-effects of the death. Those were hard things to get past and sometimes, like this time, they were too hard to put aside. After a few minutes, Greta took her leave and Marina was left alone, her stomach growling and the memory of that unfolded sheet of circles flying around in her head. She grabbed some handy leftovers, refilled her flask and hurried back to her room. She knew she should go and see Taylor and that she was being a very bad friend. She rationalized that he was probably asleep by now and it would be worse to disturb him.

She gobbled the food as fast as her mouth would let her chew and her stomach would accept it. She was a bundle of nerves and her suddenly loaded stomach actually felt worse than the fluttery emptiness of before. She belched and giggled, entirely inappropriately considering the day just past, but there had been too much and she wasn’t reacting right. Other silos. Other people. Others?

In her room, she emptied her pack and sorted the contents on her bed. She was careful with the fragile papers but the pack hadn’t been so kind. Crumbles of paper drifted out along with the contents. The chart, back in its envelope, she left alone. There was so much more. She selected a few others and found a diagram she immediately recognized as something a Fabber would use for reconstruction or repair. She examined it, read the notations and understood it was for a radio.

She thought back but couldn’t remember the details of the various handheld radios she had repaired or made parts for in the past to compare with, but this one struck her as different in any case. On the back, in careful letters, were the instructions for frequencies to contact forty. She had to assume that was for Silo 40 and not Level 40. The former seemed more likely than the latter, given the situation.

There was so much it was almost overwhelming. On her way in she had carefully looked at a few of the pages displayed beneath the tenets. Many of them were just as she remembered and a quick look inside the fabric books confirmed that these books were their origin. In times past, the non-visible side of the page had been copied onto another sheet and hung in protective frames alongside the originals. Those were different, obviously, but the originals had the same writing as these books. Eventually she, or the group, would need to figure out where in each book the pages came and put it all into context.

The big book was something else entirely. It was machine printed, just like the little volume that led her to the box. She knew what to look for now so she opened the cover and the first few pages until she came to the one that had the numbers. There she found what she was looking for, ‘Legacy, Inc. 2045, 2048, 2051’. She touched the letters. The first book, so old that it was almost indecipherable, had numbers in the 1800s and 1900s. This book had numbers in the 2000s. The records upstairs, the ones furthest back and least useful had numbers only slightly higher than these.

And those records had recorded things in terms of drafts, initial plantings, testing and dry runs. These were terms she understood. They signified a trial of something before it became the accepted way of doing things. Marina felt very sure, in a place deep inside her, that she knew the answer to their questions.

Outside, the world had not cycled their years in batches of fifty. They had been there at least 2051 years and then they had tried things inside the silo. They had dry runs and tests of the systems.

And then they had come inside and everything had changed.

She opened the book at a random page, ignoring the many little metal clips that marked specific pages, and discovered the existence of Shorelines, Shoreline Management and part of Shoreline Usage. She flipped again and revealed the hideous beauty of Skinks. Again and she was faced with the Solar System. A metal clip on the next page led her to Earth and the note there told her that this was what they lived on. It was a ball, much like the sun looked in those rare instances when the fiery orange gleam could be seen clearly when it set. They lived on a ball but this one was beautiful, and shone blue and green and brown and white.

A tiny dot marred the surface and a hand drawn arrow pointed to the words, ‘We are here’. She bent her head to try to see closer but all she saw was a swath of green partially covered with a swath of white. So tiny were they against all that space.

Marina couldn’t really take in any more. She wasn’t taking it in now, merely piling un-absorbable facts over already unbelievable facts. She felt dizzy with it, like she was walking around in a dream and no one but she could see that. She lay down on the bed and pulled all the wonderful things toward her. She spooned them like a child and fell asleep.