Hugh Howey: First Shift: Legacy

Thurman leaned back in his chair and cleared his throat. “You’re a sharp young man, Donny. Not everyone sees what a boon to our state this’ll be. A real life-saver.” He smiled. “I’m sorry, you are still going by Donny, right? Or is it Donald, now?”

“Either’s fine,” Donald lied. He no longer enjoyed being called Donny, but changing names in the middle of one’s life was practically impossible. He returned to the folder and flipped the cover letter over. There was a drawing underneath, a drawing that struck him as being out of place. It was… too familiar. Familiar, and yet it didn’t belong there—it was from another life. It was as if he’d woken up and found in his bed some object he’d clutched in a dream.

“Have you seen the economic reports?” Thurman asked. “Do you know how many jobs this bill created overnight?” He snapped his fingers. “Forty thousand, just like that. And that’s only from Georgia. A lot will be from your district, a lot of shipping, a lot of stevedores. Of course, now that it’s passed, our less nimble colleagues are grumbling that they should’ve had a chance to bid—”

“I drew this,” Donald interrupted, pulling out the sheet of paper. He showed it to Thurman as if the Senator would be surprised to see it had snuck into the folder. Donald wondered if this was the Senator’s daughter’s doing, some kind of a joke or hello-and-wink from Anna.

Thurman nodded. “Yes, well, it needs more detail, wouldn’t you say?”

Donald studied the architectural illustration and wondered what sort of test this was. He remembered the drawing. It was a last-minute project for his biotecture class his senior year. There was nothing unusual or amazing about it. His professor had given him a B, the red ink still tinged purple from where it had bled into the overlapping streaks of blue sky.

With an impartial eye, Donald would give the project a C+. It was spare where his classmates’ had been bold, utilitarian where he could’ve taken risks. Green tufts jutted up from the flat roof, a horrible cliché. Half the building was cut away to reveal the interspersed levels for housing, working, and shopping.

In sum, it was drab and boring. Donald couldn’t imagine a design so bare rising from the deserts of Dubai alongside the great new breed of self-sustaining skyscrapers. He certainly couldn’t see what the Senator wanted him to do with it, other than maybe burn it to the ground.

“More detail,” he murmured, repeating the Senator’s words. He flipped through the rest of the folder, looking for hints, for context.

“Hm.” Thurman sipped from his water bottle.

“Wait.” Donald studied a list of requirements written up as if by a prospective client. “This looks like a design proposal.” Words he had forgotten he’d ever learned caught his eye: interior traffic flow, block plan, HVAC, hydroponics —

“You’ll have to lose the sunlight.” Senator Thurman’s chair squeaked as he leaned over his desk. He moved Donald’s sweating bottle to a coaster and wiped the leather dry with his palm.

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s nothing. Forget about it.” Thurman waved his hand, obviously meaning the circle of moisture left by Donald’s bottle.

“No, you said sunlight.” Donald held the folder up. “What exactly are you wanting me to do?”

“I would suggest those lights like my wife uses.” He cupped his hand into a tiny circle and pointed at the center. “She gets these tiny seeds to sprout in the winter, uses bulbs that cost me a goddamned fortune.”

“You mean grow lights.”

Thurman snapped his fingers. “And don’t worry about the cost. Whatever you need. I’m also going to get you some help with the mechanical stuff. An engineer. An entire team.”

Donald flipped through more of the folder. “What is this for? And why me?”

“This is what we call a just-in-case building. Probably’ll never get used, but they won’t let us store the fuel rods out there unless we put this bugger nearby. It’s like this window in my basement I had to lower before our house could pass inspection. It was for… what do you call it—?”

“Egress,” Donald said, the word flowing back unaided.

Thurman snapped his fingers. “Right. Egress.” He pointed to the folder. “This building is like that window, something we’ve gotta build so the rest’ll pass inspection. This’ll be where—in the unlikely event of an attack or a leak—where facility employees can go. You know, like a shelter. And it needs to be perfect or this project’ll be shut down faster than a tick’s wink. Just because our bill passed and got signed doesn’t mean we’re home-free, Donny. There was that project out west that got okayed decades ago, scored funding. Eventually, it fell through.”

Donald knew the one he was talking about. A containment facility buried under a mountain. The buzz on the Hill was that the Georgia project had the same chances of success. The folder suddenly tripled in weight as he considered this. He was being asked to be a part of this future failure. He would be staking his newly won office on it.

“I’ve got Mick Webb working on something related. Logistics and planning, really. You two will need to collaborate on a few things. And Anna is taking leave from her post at MIT to lend a hand.”

“ Anna? ” Donald fumbled for his water, his hand shaking.

“Of course. She’ll be your lead engineer on this project. There are details in there on what she’ll need, space-wise.”

Donald took a gulp of water and forced himself to swallow.

“There’s a lot of other people I could call in, sure, but this project can’t fail, you understand? It needs to be like family . People I can trust.” Senator Thurman interlocked his fingers. “If this is the only thing you were elected to do, I want you to do it right. It’s why I stumped for you in the first place.”

“Of course.” Donald bobbed his head to hide his confusion. He had worried during the election that the Senator’s endorsement stemmed from old family ties. This was somehow worse. Donald hadn’t been using the Senator at all; it was the other way around . Studying the drawing in his lap, the newly elected congressman felt one job he was inadequately trained for melt away—only to be replaced by a different job that seemed equally daunting.

“Wait,” he said. “I still don’t get it.” He studied the old drawing. “Why the grow lights?”

Senator Thurman reached for his bottle and polished off his water, the empty plastic crinkling in his fist. He smacked his lips and turned to toss the bottle into a blue recycling bin. His profile, Donald saw, was every bit as chiseled and handsome as the face he presented to the cameras. He had barely changed in all the years Donald had known him.

“Because, Donny—” He turned and smiled. “This building I want you to design for me—it’s going to go below ground.”

Troy held his breath and tried to remain calm while the doctor pumped the rubber bulb. The inflatable band swelled around his bicep until it pinched his skin. He wasn’t sure if slowing his breathing and steadying his pulse affected his blood pressure, but he had a strong urge to impress the man in the white coveralls. He wanted his numbers to come back normal .

His arm throbbed a few beats while the needle bounced and the air hissed out.

“Eighty over fifty.” The band made a ripping sound as it was torn loose. Troy rubbed the spot where his skin had been pinched.

“Is that okay?”

The doctor made a note on his clipboard. “It’s low, but not outside the norm.” Behind him, his assistant labeled a cup of dark gray urine before placing it inside a small fridge. Troy caught sight of a half-eaten sandwich among the samples, not even wrapped.