Hugh Howey - Third Shift - Pact

“Locomotive,” Jimmy read. He knew these words. The first part meant “crazy.” The second part was a person’s reason for doing something. He studied this image, wondering what crazy reason someone would have of making this picture. It couldn’t be real. Jimmy flipped a handful of pages, hoping to find more on this loco motive—

He screamed and dropped the book when he saw the next picture. Jimmy hopped around and brushed himself with both hands, waiting for the bug to disappear down his shirt or bite him. He stood on his mattress and waited for his heart to stop pounding. Turning to the books for sleep was having the opposite effect. Jimmy eyed the flopped-open tome on the ground, expecting a swarm to fly out like the pests in the farms, but nothing moved. The radio quietly hissed.

He approached the book and flipped it over with his foot. The damn bug was a picture, the page folded over and creased where he’d dropped it. Jimmy smoothed the page, read the word “locust” out loud, and wondered just what sort of book this was supposed to be. It was nothing like the children’s books he’d grown up with, nothing like the pulp paper they taught with at school.

Flipping the cover over, Jimmy saw that this was different from the book on the desk, which had been embossed with the word “Order.” This one was labeled “Legacy.” He flipped through it a pinch at a time, bright pictures on every page, paragraphs of words and descriptions, a vast fiction of impossible deeds and impossible things, all in a single book.

Not in a single book, he told himself. Jimmy glanced up at the massive shelves bulging with metal tins, each one labeled and arranged in alphabetical order. He searched again for the locomotive, a machine on wheels that dwarfed a grown man. He found the entry and shuffled back to his mattress and his twisted tangle of sheets. A week of solitude was drawing to a close, but there was no chance that Jimmy would be getting any sleep. Not for a very long while.

Donald waited in the comm room for his first briefing with the Head of 18. To pass the time, he twisted the knobs and dials that allowed him to cycle through that silo’s camera feeds. From a single seat—like a throne but with torn upholstery and squeaky wheels—he had a view of all a world’s residents. He could nudge their fates from a distance if he liked. He could end them all with the press of a button. While he lived on and on, freezing and thawing, these mortals went through routines, lived and died, unaware that he even existed.

“It’s like the afterlife,” he muttered.

The operator at the next station turned and regarded him silently, and Donald realized he’d spoken aloud. He faced the man, whose bushy black hair looked like it’d last been combed a century ago. “It’s just that … it’s like a view from the heavens,” he explained, indicating the monitor.

“It’s a view of something,” the operator agreed. He took another bite of his sandwich. On his screen, one woman seemed to be yelling at another, a finger jabbed in the other woman’s face. It was a sitcom without the laugh track.

Donald worked on keeping his mouth shut. But it really did seem like an afterlife of sorts. He dialed in the cafeteria on 18 and watched its people huddle around a wallscreen. It was a small crowd. They gazed out at the lifeless hills, perhaps awaiting their departed cleaner’s return, perhaps silently dreaming about what lay beyond those quiet crests. Donald wanted to tell them that she wouldn’t be coming back, that there was nothing beyond that rise, even though he secretly shared their dreams. He longed to send up one of the drones to look, but Eren had told him the drones weren’t for sightseeing—they were for dropping bombs. They had a limited range, he said. The air out there would tear them to shreds. Donald wanted to show Eren his hand, mottled and pink, and tell him that he’d been out on that hill and back. He wanted to ask if the air outside was really so bad.

Hope. That’s what this was. Dangerous hope. He watched the people watch a wallscreen, feeling a kinship with them. This was how the gods of old got in trouble, how they ended up smitten with mortals and tangled in their affairs. Donald laughed to himself. He thought of this cleaner with her two-inch folder and how he might’ve intervened if he’d had the chance. He might’ve given her a gift of life if he were able. Apollo, doting on Daphne.

The comm officer glanced over at Donald’s monitor, that view of the wallscreen, and Donald felt himself being studied. He switched to a different camera. It was the hallway of what looked like a school. Lockers lined either side. A child stood on her tiptoes and opened one of the upper ones, pulled out a small bag, turned and seemed to say something to someone off-camera. Life going on as usual.

“The call’s coming through now,” the operator behind them said. The man with the sandwich put it away and sat forward. He brushed the crumbs off his chest and switched the soap opera scene to a room full of black cabinets. Donald grabbed a pair of headphones and pulled the two folders off the desk. The one on the top was two inches thick. It was about his doomed mortal, the missing cleaner. Beneath that was a much thinner folder with a potential shadow’s name on it. A man’s voice came through his headphones.

“Hello?”

Donald glanced up at his monitor. A figure stood behind one of the black cabinets. He was pudgy and short, unless it was the distortion from the camera lens.

“Report,” Donald said. He flipped open the folder marked Lukas . He knew from his last shift that the system would make his voice sound flat, make all their voices sound the same.

“I picked out a shadow as you requested, sir. A good kid. He’s done work on the servers before, so his access has already been vetted.”

How meek this man. Donald reckoned he would feel the same way, knowing his world could be smote at the press of a button. Fear like that puts a man at odds with his ego.

The operator beside Donald leaned over and peeled back the top page in the folder for him. He tapped his finger on something a few lines down. Donald scanned the report.

“You looked at Mr. Kyle as a possible replacement two years ago.” Donald glanced up to watch the man behind the comm server wipe the back of his neck.

“That’s right,” the Head of 18 said. “We didn’t think he was ready.”

“Your office filed a report on Mr. Kyle as a possible gazer. Says here he’s logged a few hundred hours in front of the wallscreen. What’s changed your mind?”

“That was a preliminary report, sir. It came from another … potential shadow. A bit overeager, a gentleman we found more suited for the security team. I assure you that Mr. Kyle does not dream of the outside. He only goes up at night—” The man cleared his throat, seemed to hesitate. “To look at the stars, sir.”

“The stars.”

“That’s right.”

Donald glanced over at the operator beside him, who polished off his sandwich. The operator shrugged. The silo Head broke the silence.

“He’s the best man for the job, sir. I knew his father. Stern sonofabitch. You know what they say about the treads and the rails, sir.”

Donald had no idea what they said about the treads and the rails. It was nothing but stair analogies from these silos. He was reminded of how city people used to make him feel, growing up in Savannah. He wondered what this Bernard would say if the man ever saw an elevator. It would be like magic. The thought nearly elicited a chuckle.

“Your choice of shadow has been approved,” Donald said. “Get him on the Legacy as soon as possible.”

“He’s studying right now, sir.”