Ann Christy: Silo 49: Going Dark

Graham looked around and saw she was right. The truth was that he had become used to it and only really saw it when it started to become really rank. Burlap bags of vegetable material ready to be taken to composting littered the hallway. Crowded in amongst those were bags of other recycling or just plain trash, some of them weeping dark stains onto the floor. The big brown bags meant for dirty laundry stood sentry beside each compartment door, some with their contents spilling out into the walkway between. Burned out or flickering lights gave the entire hallway the disused look of someplace soon to be abandoned.

“It’s pretty bad, isn’t it?” It was a lame response and he knew it.

“I’ve tried to talk to Wallis about it but he’s always busy, too. Besides, I don’t think we should need the mayor just to get people to clean up their own level. We should be able to do it ourselves.” It was a reasonable thing to say but Graham could see the frustration on her face and hear it in her voice.

“Would you be willing to set up a roster? Could you check the work schedules and talk to people? You can certainly put me on the roster.” He thought for a moment and added, “There really aren’t enough maintainers to push the issue.”

She tapped a finger on her chin, evaluating the hallway with her lips pursed. Finally, she gave one firm nod and straightened. “You’re right. We have to take care of anything we can take care of.”

Maribelle paused and looked up at Graham, her expression earnest. Her voice was soft when she spoke again. “We have to take care of each other, don’t we?”

That did it for Graham though Maribelle had no way of knowing that. She was so right. Her words went to the heart of the matter even if she didn’t realize it. If they didn’t do for each other, who would do for them? It was his turn to do for these people and instead of thinking—getting to work—he had been sitting in his compartment playing cards and feeling sorry for himself. He wanted to say something profound but when he tried to respond, the urge to blurt out what he was trying to hide was so strong he choked. He pulled the kerchief from his pocket and pressed it to his mouth with so much force it looked like he was trying to stuff it into his mouth, past his gritted teeth.

The moment passed, the urge with it. Maribelle looked at him first with concern and then with the beginnings of alarm. He tried to explain it away. “Sorry,” he choked out, his voice as tight as a drum. “I thought I was going to sneeze all over you for a minute there.” It was stupid but it was all he could think of.

Maribelle’s gaze was an evaluating one and he tried to smooth any strain from his face. From her expression, he wasn’t doing well. Finally, she gave a little shake of her head and said, “Graham, don’t worry about it. It’s not so bad. I’ll take care of it. You go on.”

He did his best to ignore the lingering cautious look she gave him and shuffled off in a hurry after one last wave. That had been embarrassing as well as dangerous, and he kept his head down as he made his way toward administration to check in and get the list of jobs he needed to parse out for his crew in IT. Taking up a little slack wherever he could was all he had to offer, though it was going to require a little selling on his part to add yet more to the work list in IT.

As he entered IT, his lists in his hands, Tony appeared. It was almost as if he had some sort of sensor that was specifically tuned to Graham. He got exactly one step past the turnstiles when the Toad made his irritating throat clearing noise and said, “Hiya, Boss.”

Graham felt his jaw go tight. It was an effort, but he plastered a distant smile—the smile of a boss—on his face and kept walking toward his office. He inclined his head for Tony to follow and the younger man hurried after him, his clipboard at high ready.

He knew it wasn’t fair of him to dislike Tony the way he did. He was very good at what he did and probably did deserve to take the shadow spot Silo One had been after him to fill from almost the very moment of his former shadow’s death.

That was a moot point now, since he had other plans but even before then, there was something about Tony that made him cringe. To have someone like him be the next in line almost seemed like a defeat, like the absolute power of Silo One had found a perfect receptacle for the wielding of their will.

“Have a seat, Tony,” Graham said as he took his seat behind the desk and picked up a stack of messages from the surface. “We’ve got a lot to do, I’m sure, but I’m going to add to that list so we’d best get started.”

Less than ten minutes later, a flustered Tony left with a much expanded work list and a whole lot of arranging to do. It made Graham feel something close to normal to know that nothing else was going wrong and necessary things were getting done even without him.

After that, things went well so it wasn’t an entirely lost day. As long as he was able to do what needed doing remotely, using the impersonal communications of the wires, then he was able to keep that façade in place. He could do things without a person to look at and backspace when his fumbling caused mistakes. Also, writing the words ‘inarticulate scream’ didn’t carry the same impact as actually doing it so he felt no temptation to do that in a wire.

It was with relief that he wired down to each of the water plants to lower the additive levels. They had no idea what it was, of course. It was labeled as a water additive just like every other additive, but the regular water workers could adjust the concentrations on the conditioning machines. It was good that they could because he had enough worries just trying to figure out how the last remaining IT agent that worked in chemistry would be able to manufacture and deliver the next load of additives, let alone how that same fellow would get to every plant just to twiddle a knob or push a button.

He knew from a lifetime of experience how fast the dosing took effect when it was turned on and how quickly it faded when turned off. He could expect some slight improvement right away, but the improvement was often a dubious form of goodness. There was always someone who would break from remembered grief or whose confusion might manifest in an act against the Order.

His experience of dosing was both personal and professional. As a child he had been no different from any other member of the silo up until the moment his uncle had decided he would make a good successor. Until that moment he had been subject to whatever might be added to the water just like everyone else.

The minor uprising that happened when he was small hadn’t affected him personally nor done anything more than bring about some confusion to his young mind. It was a mostly verbal confrontation, punctuated by distant skirmishes, over power between almost identical factions within administration and law. But it had resulted in a lot of cleanings.

The water had been dosed with calmatives during the event, which did end it more quickly than it might otherwise have. Afterwards, a minor dose of the forgetting drugs had been administered and, as a child not much impacted by the uprising, it did little but smooth out the memories Graham carried. That was not true of others, including his parents, whose foggy memories of that time had been a puzzle to his childhood self.

He remembered hearing about one of those cleanings—there were several over a period of a few days—when whoever was outside decided revenge didn’t stop with death. Apparently, the cleaner had done all that was expected, but had then stumbled around like a blind man, feeling about on the ground like a person looking for a lost chit in the dark. Eventually, he had found and then fallen down on top of another recent cleaner and proceeded to beat and kick the corpse until he finally succumbed in his turn. According to the story he heard later, when he was old enough to understand it, it had caused equal amounts mirth and anger in the population but nothing came of it in the end.