Hugh Howey - Shift

‘You on duty, son?’ Mr Wyck studied the porter’s ’chief knotted around Mission’s neck. He was a tall man with a tidy beard and bright eyes. Mission had to crane his neck to meet Wyck’s gaze.

‘Yessir,’ he said, hiding the note from Rodny behind his back. He pressed it into his pocket with his thumb, like a seed going into soil. ‘You need something moved, sir?’

‘I do.’ Mr Wyck studied him for a moment, stroked his beard. ‘You’re the Jones boy, right? The zero.’

Mission felt a flash of heat around his neck at the use of the term, a reference to the fact that no lottery number had been pulled for him. ‘Yessir. It’s Mission.’ He offered his hand. Mr Wyck accepted it.

‘Yes, yes. I went to school with your father. And your mother, of course.’

He paused to give Mission time to respond. Mission ground his teeth together and said nothing. He let go of the man’s hand before his sweaty palms had a chance to speak for him.

‘Say I wanted to move something without going through Dispatch.’ Mr Wyck smiled. His teeth were white as chalk. ‘And say I wanted to avoid the sort of nastiness that took place last night a few levels up…’

Mission glanced over at Jeffery, who seemed disinterested in the conversation. It was strange to hear this sort of offer from a man of authority, especially in front of a member of Security, but there was one thing Mission had discovered since emerging from his shadowing days: things only got darker.

‘I don’t follow,’ Mission said. He fought the urge to turn and see how far they were from the security gate. A woman emerged from an office down the hall, behind Mr Wyck. Jeffery made a gesture with his hand and she stopped and kept her distance, out of earshot.

‘I think you do, and I admire your discretion. Two hundred chits to move a package a half-dozen levels from Supply.’

Mission tried to remain calm. Two hundred chits. A month’s pay for half a day’s work. He immediately feared this was some sort of test. Maybe Rodny had gotten in trouble for flunking a similar one.

‘I don’t know—’ he said.

‘It’s an open invitation,’ Wyck said. ‘The next porter who comes through here will get the same offer. I don’t care who does it, but only one will get the chits.’ Wyck raised a hand. ‘You don’t have to answer me. Just show up and ask for Joyce at the Supply counter. Tell her you’re doing a job for Wyck. There’ll be a delivery report detailing the rest.’

‘I’ll think about it, sir.’

‘Good.’ Mr Wyck smiled.

‘Anything else?’ Mission asked.

‘No, no. You’re free to go.’ He nodded to Jeffery, who snapped back from wherever he’d checked out to.

‘Thank you, sir.’ Mission turned and followed the chief.

‘Oh, and happy birthday, son,’ Mr Wyck called out.

Mission glanced back, didn’t say thanks, just hurried after Jeffery and through the security gate, past the crowds and out onto the landing, down two turns of stairs, where he finally reached into his pocket for the note from Rodny. Paranoid that he might drop it and watch it bounce off the stairs and through the rail, he carefully unfolded the scrap of paper. It looked like the same rag blend Mrs Crowe’s note had been written on, the same threads of purple and red mixed in with the rough grey weave. For a moment, Mission feared the note would be addressed to the Crow rather than to him, maybe more lines of old nursery rhymes. He worked the piece of paper flat. One side was blank; he turned it over to read the other.

It wasn’t addressed to anyone. Just two words, which reminded Mission of the way his friend’s smile had quivered when they shook hands.

Mission felt suddenly alone. There was a burning smell lingering in the stairwell, a tinge of smoke that mixed with the paint from drying graffiti. He took the small note and tore it into ever smaller pieces. He kept tearing until there was nothing left to shred, and then sprinkled the dull confetti over the rail to drift down and disappear into the void. The evidence was gone, but the message lingered vividly in his mind. The hasty scrawl, the shadowy scratch the edge of a coin or a spoon had made as it was dragged across the paper, two words barely legible from his friend who never needed anybody or asked for anything.

Help me.

And that was all.

FINDING THE RIGHT silo was easy enough. Donald could study the old schematic and remember standing on those hills, peering down into the wide bowls that held each facility. The sound of grumbling ATVs came back, the plumes of dust kicked up as they bounced across the ridges where the grass had not yet filled in. He remembered that they had been growing grass over those hills, straw and seed spread everywhere, a task hindsight made both unnecessary and sad.

Standing on that ridge in his memory, he was able to picture the Tennessee delegation. It would be silo two. Once he had this, he dug deeper. It took a bit of fumbling to remember how the computer program worked, how to sift through lives that lived in databases. There was an entire history there of each silo if you knew how to read it, but it only went so far. It went back to made-up names, back to the orientation. It didn’t stretch to the Legacy beyond. The old world was hidden behind bombs and a fog of mist and forgetting.

He had the right silo, but locating Helen might prove impossible. He worked frantically while Anna sang in the shower.

She had left the bathroom door open, steam billowing out. Donald ignored what he took to be an invitation. He ignored the throbbing, the yearning, the hormonal rush of being near an ex-lover after centuries of need, and searched instead for his wife.

There were four thousand names in that first generation of silo two. Four thousand exactly. Roughly half were female. There were three Helens. Each had a grainy picture taken for her work ID stored on the servers. None of the Helens matched what he remembered his wife looking like, what he thought she looked like. Tears came unbidden. He wiped them away, furious at himself. From the shower, Anna sang a sad song from long ago while Donald flipped through random photos. After a dozen, the faces of strangers began to meld together and threaten to erode the vision he held of Helen in his memory. He went back to searching by name. Surely he could guess the name she would’ve chosen. He had picked Troy for himself those many years ago, a clue leading him back to her. He liked to think she would’ve done the same.

He tried Sandra, her mother’s name, but neither of the two hits were right. He tried Danielle, her sister’s name. One hit. Not her.

She wouldn’t come up with something random, would she? They had talked once of what they might name their kids. It was gods and goddesses, a joke at first, but Helen had fallen in love with the name Athena. He did a search. Zero hits in that first generation.

The pipes squealed as Anna turned off the shower. Her singing subsided back into a hum, a hymn for the funeral they were about to attend. Donald tried a few more names, anxious to discover something, anything. He would search every night if he had to. He wouldn’t sleep until he found her.

‘Do you need to shower before the service?’ Anna called out from the bathroom.

He didn’t want to go to the service, he nearly said. He only knew Victor as someone to fear: the grey-haired man across the hall, always watching, dispensing drugs, manipulating him. At least, that’s how the paranoia of his first shift made it all seem.

‘I’ll go like this,’ he said. He still wore the beige overalls they’d given him the day before. He flipped through random pictures again, starting at the top of the alphabet. What other name? The fear was that he’d forget what she looked like. Or that she’d look more and more like Anna in his mind. He couldn’t let that happen.