Ann Christy - Silo 49 - Deep Dark

Whatever the purpose of the fancy script on this clock, the effect was beautiful. She clicked the silver lid closed again and examined the watch case. On the side facing her was an animal in raised silver of such detail that Marina could not imagine how it was done. Being a worker in fine metals she knew that it had to have been poured into a mold but the detail was staggering. How could one create a mold like this? How much time would it take to carefully sculpt it from wax and then lose nothing in the series of transfers required before ending up with something like this?

She ran her fingers over the animal. It was familiar. It looked a bit like the animals from the children’s books she remembered from her own childhood as well as that of her daughter. It had a similar shape but instead of a round head like a puppy it had stern eyes. Great protrusions came up from the head, forked and then curved into the air above. With the chest thrust forward and a leg raised it looked as if it were about to charge at some foe.

She turned over the watch and found another scene, or perhaps it was a continuation of the scene on the other side. In the foreground was a man and over his arm he had a club of some sort, though it was clearly not a club. The thick end was closest to the man, the opposite of how one might hold a tool. There were tiny nubbins and details on the stick that had purposes invisible to Marina but she could see, even without knowing those details, that it was a weapon. She opened the watch again and turned it around, so that she could see both scenes on the watch together. The man was pointing the stick at the animal and now, with this added detail to consider, she saw how the two scenes came together.

The man was indeed pointing his stick at the animal but Marina saw a small bloom of cloud just above the end of the stick. She frowned at it. To her it looked like smoke from a small fire or that which rose from the end of a soldering iron. She could almost smell the sharp and acrid tang of metal and flux as it met the heat at the end of her iron. Following the line of the club toward the animal, she also saw that something disturbed the even lines of the outthrust chest of the animal. Like the ripples made when dropping a dollop of honey into a cup of tea, there was a tiny depression and small dots of raised silver arrayed around it.

Marina may have been a fabricator and not a medic but she knew a wound when she saw one. She looked at the man again, then back to the animal and saw the whole scene with fresh eyes. That animal wasn’t thrust forward to engage the man but rather it was being killed by him.

She peered at the man’s face. His expression seemed strangely empty. It made the scene darker, more ominous. Whereas before it had seemed strange and beautiful, now it was a cruel representation of one thing taking the life of another. It was no less beautiful, it was just beautiful in a way that made Marina feel bereft.

She put the watch down and rubbed her hands along the thighs of her coveralls, unconsciously wiping away her contact with the violence even as she considered the object. It was also at that moment she noted the small and perfectly round dark spot on the side of the watch opposite the clasp.

Instantly forgetting the dark scene, she took up the watch, peered at it closely under the strong light and found the dark spot to be a tiny hole. Such holes were usually ways to open things for repair. Reaching up, she found that she wasn’t wearing her magnifiers and uttered a mild curse.

She rummaged around in a drawer, loose tools and other debris rattling around on the metal bottom, until she found a handheld magnifier and the small container she sought. Getting a better look at the hole, she tried to see if there was a catch inside but no amount of twisting and turning brought the interior into view.

Abandoning the magnifier, she opened the case and selected one of the smallest of the probes within. Delicate yet quite strong, the probes were able to apply more pressure than their slender tips suggested when applied with exacting precision. They were handy tools but ones that required a deft hand.

Easing the tiny probe tip into the hole, Marina let her eyes lose focus so she could feel anything that might be a catch through the questing tip. At first there was nothing but as she withdrew and then reinserted it she felt something. A bit more adjustment and a tentative test convinced Marina it was the catch she wanted and she held her breath as she applied a steadily increasing pressure.

Just as she was about to give up she felt it give and the seam widened. Probe removed, she eased the back cover open. Something slipped out of the watch and onto the workbench. Marina glanced down at it, a simple round piece of paper and another folded paper, before she returned her focus to the watch.

The entire interior of the watch was revealed and she marveled at its beauty and detail. Tiny gears and springs filled the space with an elegance Marina found entrancing. Some of the works were covered by a plate of brass but what she could see was a marvel of mechanics.

At the top, the misalignment of a single spring drew her eyes and she realized that she could fix that single part if she wanted to. Perhaps that would even make this watch work again. “Huh,” she murmured and laid the watch down carefully to turn to the papers that had fallen from it.

The round paper was shaped like a shallow bowl from being mounted into the depression on the watch’s back cover. She turned it over and nearly dropped it in surprise. It was a mechanical image but unlike any other she had ever seen. All the photographic images she had seen were just arrays of black dots, the size of the dots and their spacing defining the image. For any good picture, one needed an artist to draw it. This image was nothing like that.

The colors were glorious and some of them she had no name for. Two smiling faces peered out at her, both of them young and happy. A third face, that of a puppy, gazed up at the man from the space between the two people.

They were flushed with color, perhaps a bit like Jason’s earlier that day. It reminded Marina of how the children in her class had looked after a field trip to the dirt farms when she was young. The lights there had put red and pink burns on their foreheads, noses and cheeks. Marina’s had peeled later, revealing new and even pinker skin underneath. Other children had not peeled but had burnished gold for a while. Some had sported dark freckles while others had a brownish look similar to what the people in the photo had.

But it wasn’t the people, or even the very strange looking puppy with big sad eyes and floppy ears that truly baffled Marina. It was all that was behind and around them. From the level of their ears to the top of the image was a shade of blue she had never seen before. It was strange and beautiful.

Wisps of white seemed to float through the blue. Marina wasn’t originally from the Down Deep and she knew, even though it had been years since she had stood in front of the view on Level 1, that what she was seeing was the sky. Just like the screen Up Top showed the brown and grey and black of the world outside the silo, this image showed a beautiful blue sky with people smiling beneath it.

There was more, though. Much more. Marina knew what a tree was. There were trees for fruit and other foods at different levels of the silo. In the background of the image and under that blue sky were trees beyond counting and if the size of the people were any judge, they looked as if they were much bigger than any tree in the silo.

And they were outside! This strange image was obviously made outside.

The sudden thought made Marina slap the image down on the bench and look around. That feeling of the silo watching or listening came over her just as it had in her childhood. She sat, stiff and still, on her stool and tried desperately not to think of the outside like that again.