Hugh Howey - Shift

The boy’s temperature was up. Donald could read it on the display. The operator and Eren were comparing notes and pointing to something. Donald checked the script. It listed easy questions everyone knew the answers to.

‘What is your primary duty to the silo?’ he asked, reading the line.

‘To maintain the Order.’

Eren raised a hand as the readouts spiked. When they settled, he gave Donald the sign to continue.

‘What do you protect above all?’ Even with the software helping, Donald tried to keep his voice flat. There was a jump on one of the graphs. Donald’s thoughts drifted to the news of the pilots gone from his space, a space that he felt belonged to him. He would get through this and set his alarm clock. Tonight. Tonight.

‘Life and Legacy,’ the shadow recited.

Donald lost his place. It took a moment to find the next line. ‘What does it take to protect these things we hold so dear?’

‘It takes sacrifice,’ the shadow said after a brief pause.

The comm head gave Donald and Eren an okay signal. The formal readings were over. Now to the baseline, to get off script. Donald wasn’t sure what to say. He nodded to Eren, hoping he’d take over.

Eren covered his mic for a second as if he was about to argue, but shrugged. ‘How much time have you had in the Suit Labs?’ he asked the shadow, studying the monitor in front of him.

‘Not much, sir. Bernar— Uh, my boss, he’s wanting me to schedule time in the labs after, you know…’

‘Yes. I do know.’ Eren nodded. ‘How’s that problem in your lower levels going?’

‘Um, well, I’m only kept apprised of the overall progress, and it sounds good.’ Donald heard the shadow clear his throat. ‘That is, it sounds like progress is being made, that it won’t be much longer.’

A long pause. A deep breath. Waveforms relaxed. Eren glanced at Donald. The operator waved his finger for them to keep going.

Donald had a question, one that touched on his own regrets. ‘Would you have done anything differently, Lukas?’ he asked. ‘From the beginning?’

There were red spikes on the monitors, and Donald felt his own temperature rise. Maybe he was asking something too close to home.

‘Nossir,’ the young shadow said. ‘It was all by the Order, sir. Everything’s under control.’

The comm head reached to his controls and muted all of their headsets. ‘We’re getting borderline readings,’ he told them. ‘His nerves are spiking. Can you push him a little more?’

Eren nodded. The operator on the other side of him shrugged and took a sip from his #1 mug.

‘Settle him down first, though,’ the comm head said.

Eren turned to Donald. ‘Congratulate him and then see if you can get him emotional. Level him out and then tweak him.’

Donald hesitated. It was all so artificial and manipulative. He forced himself to swallow. The mics were unmuted.

‘You are next in line for the control and operation of silo eighteen,’ he said stiffly, sad for what he was dooming this poor soul to.

‘Thank you, sir.’ The shadow sounded relieved. Waveforms collapsed as if they’d struck a pier.

Now Donald fought for some way to push the young man. The comm head waving at him didn’t help. Donald glanced up at the map of the silos on the wall. He stood, the headphone cord stretching, and studied the several silos marked out, the one there with the number ‘12’. Donald considered the seriousness of what this young man had just taken on, what his job entailed, how many had died elsewhere because their leaders had let them down.

‘Do you know the worst part of my job?’ Donald asked. He could feel those in the comm room watching him. Donald was back on his first shift, initiating that other young man. He was back on his first shift, shutting a silo down.

‘What’s that, sir?’ the voice asked.

‘Standing here, looking at a silo on this map, and drawing a red cross through it. Can you imagine what that feels like?’

‘I can’t, sir.’

Donald nodded. He appreciated the honest answer. He remembered what it felt like to watch those people spill out of twelve and perish on the landscape. He blinked his vision clear. ‘It feels like a parent losing thousands of children all at once,’ he said.

The world stood still for a heartbeat or two. The operator and the comm head were both fixated on their monitors, looking for a crack. Eren watched Donald.

‘You will have to be cruel to your children so as not to lose them,’ Donald said.

‘Yessir.’

Waveforms began to pulse like gentle surf. The comm head gave Donald the thumbs-up. He had seen enough. The boy had passed, and now the Rite was truly over.

‘Welcome to Operation Fifty of the World Order, Lukas Kyle,’ Eren said, reading from the script and taking over from Donald. ‘Now, if you have a question or two, I have the time to answer, but briefly.’

Donald remembered this part. He had a hand in this. He settled back into his chair, suddenly exhausted.

‘Just one, sir. And I’ve been told it isn’t important, and I understand why that’s true, but I believe it will make my job here easier if I know.’ The young man paused. ‘Is there…?’ A new red spike on his graph. ‘How did this all begin?’

Donald held his breath. He glanced around the room, but everyone else was watching their monitors as if any question was as good as another.

Donald responded before Eren could. ‘How badly do you wish to know?’ he asked.

The shadow took in a breath. ‘It isn’t crucial,’ he said, ‘but I would appreciate a sense of what we’re accomplishing, what we survived. It feels like it gives me — gives us a purpose, you know?’

‘The reason is the purpose,’ Donald told him. This was what he was beginning to learn from his studies. ‘Before I tell you, I’d like to hear what you think.’

He thought he could hear the shadow gulp. ‘What I think?’ Lukas asked.

‘Everyone has ideas,’ Donald said. ‘Are you suggesting you don’t?’

‘I think it was something we saw coming.’

Donald was impressed. He had a feeling this young man knew the answer and simply wanted confirmation. ‘That’s one possibility,’ he agreed. ‘Consider this…’ He thought how best to phrase it. ‘What if I told you that there were only fifty silos in all the world, and that we are in this infinitely small corner of it?’

On the monitor, Donald could practically watch the young man think, his readings oscillating up and down like the brain’s version of a heartbeat.

‘I would say that we were the only ones…’ A wild spike on the monitor. ‘I’d say we were the only ones who knew .’

‘Very good. And why might that be?’

Donald wished he had the jostling lines on the screen recorded. It was serene, watching another human being clutch after his vanishing sanity, his disappearing doubts.

‘It’s because… It’s not because we knew.’ There was a soft gasp on the other end of the line. ‘It’s because we did it .’

‘Yes,’ Donald said. ‘And now you know.’

Eren turned to Donald and placed his hand over his mic. ‘We’ve got more than enough. The kid checks out.’

Donald nodded. ‘Our time is up, Lukas Kyle. Congratulations on your assignment.’

‘Thank you.’ There was a final flutter on the monitors.

‘Oh, and Lukas?’ Donald said, remembering the young man’s predilection for staring at the stars, for dreaming, for filling himself with dangerous hope.

‘Yessir?’

‘Going forward, I suggest you concentrate on what’s beneath your feet. No more of this business with the stars, okay, son? We know where most of them are.’