Hugh Howey - Third Shift - Pact

He went to the door and listened for some sound on the other side. It was quiet, as it sometimes was. Quiet, but he could still hear faint bangs echo from some memory. Jimmy thought about entering the four numbers and peeking outside. It was the worst sensation imaginable, not being able to see what was on the other side. When the camera screens had stopped working, Jimmy felt a primal sense stripped away. He was partially blind, could now see only a small slice of his world, and that made him feel broken. The desire was strong to open the door, like cracking an eyelid held shut for too long. A year of counting days. Of counting minutes within those days. A boy could only count so long.

He left the keypad alone. Not yet. There were bad people out there, people who wanted in, who wanted to know what was in there, why the power on the level still worked, and who he was.

“I’m nobody,” Jimmy told them when he had the courage to talk. “Nobody.”

He didn’t have the courage often. He felt brave enough just listening to the men with the other radios fight. Brave to allow their arguments to fill his world and his head, to hear them argue and report about who had killed whom. One group was working on the farms, another was trying to stop the floods from creeping out of the mines and drowning Mechanical. One had guns and took whatever little bit the others were able to squeeze together. A lone woman called once and screamed for help, but what help was Jimmy? By his figuring, there were a hundred or more people out there in little pockets, fighting and killing. But they would stop soon. They had to. Another day. A year. They couldn’t go on like this forever, could they?

Maybe they could.

Time had become strange. It was a thing believed rather than seen. There was no dimming of the stairwell and lights-out to signify a night. No trips to the Top and the glow of sunshine to say that it was day. There were simply numbers on a computer screen counting so slowly one could scream. Numbers that looked the same day and night. It took careful counting to know a day had passed. The counting let him know he was alive. Every day like a school day, numbing with its foreverness, a feeling like he didn’t want to live any more, but he got hungry and ate. He got sleepy and slept. And so a life was lived accidental. It was lived because he wasn’t brave enough to do anything else.

Jimmy thought about playing chase between the servers before he went to bed, but he had done that yesterday. He thought about arranging cans in the order he would eat them, but he already had three months lined up. There was target practice, books to read, a computer to fiddle with, chores to do, but none of that sounded like fun. He knew he would probably just crawl into bed and stare at the ceiling until the numbers told him it was tomorrow. He would think about what to do then.

Weeks passed, scratches accumulated, and the tip of the key around Jimmy’s neck wore down. He woke to another morning with crust in his eyes like he’d been crying in his sleep and took his breakfast—one can of peaches and one of pineapple—up to the great steel door to eat. Unshouldering his gun, Jimmy sat down with his back against server number eight, enjoying the warmth of the busy machine against his spine.

The gun had taken some figuring out. His father had disappeared with the loaded one, and when Jimmy discovered the crates of arms and ammo, the method of inserting the latter into the former had posed a puzzle. He made the task a Project, like his father used to make their chores and tinkering. Ever since he was little, Jimmy had watched his dad disassemble computers and other electronics, laying out all the pieces—each screw, every bolt, the nuts spun back onto the bolts—all arranged in a neat pattern so he knew where they went again. Jimmy had done the same with one of the rifles. And then with a second rifle after he’d accidentally knocked the pieces from the first with his boot.

With the second, he saw where the ammo ended up and how it got there. The spring in the ammo holder was stiff, which made it difficult to load. Later, he learned that this was called a “clip,” after reading the entry for “gun” under “G” in the tins full of books. That had come weeks after he’d figured out how the thing worked on his own, with a hole in the ceiling to show for it.

He kept the gun in his lap, across his thighs, and balanced the cans of fruit on the wide part of the stock. The pineapple was his favorite. He had some every day and watched with sadness as the supply on the shelves dwindled. He’d never heard of such a fruit, had to look the thing up in another of the books. The pineapples had led him on a dizzying tour through the tins. “Be” for “Beach” had led to “Oa” for “Ocean.” This one confused him with its sense of scale. And then the “Fish” under “F.” He had forgotten to eat that day as he explored, and the room with the radio and his little mattress had become a hazard of open books and empty tins. It had taken him a week to get things back in order. Countless times since then, he had lost himself in such excursions.

Pulling his rusty can opener and favorite fork from his breast pocket, Jimmy worked the peaches open. There was the whispering pop of air as he made the first cut. Jimmy had learned not to eat the contents if it didn’t make that pop. Luckily, the toilets were still in operation back when he’d learned that lesson. Jimmy missed the toilets something fierce.

He worked his way through the peaches, savoring each bite before drinking down the juice. He wasn’t sure if you were supposed to drink that part—the label didn’t say—but it was his favorite. He grabbed the pineapples and his opener, was listening for the pop of air, when he heard the keypad on the great steel door beep.

“Little early,” he whispered to his visitors. He set the can aside, licked his fork, and put it back in his breast pocket. Cradling the gun against his armpit, he sat and watched for the door to move. One crack, and he would open fire.

Instead, it was four beeps from the keypad as a set of numbers was entered, followed by a buzz to signal that it was the wrong code. Jimmy tightened his grip on the gun while they tried again. The screen on the keypad only had room for four digits. That meant ten thousand combinations if you included all zeros. The door allowed three incorrect attempts before it wouldn’t take any more until the following day. Jimmy had learned these things a long time ago. He felt like his mom had taught him this rule, but that was impossible. Unless she’d done it in a dream.

He listened to the keypad beep with another guess and then buzz with the good news. Good news for him, anyway. Still, that was another number down, which meant time was running out. Twelve-eighteen was the number. Jimmy cursed himself for even thinking the code; his finger went to the trigger, waiting. But thoughts couldn’t be heard. You had to speak to be heard. He tended to forget this, because he heard himself thinking all the time.

The third and final attempt for the day began, and Jimmy couldn’t wait to eat his pineapples. He and these people had this routine, these three tries every morning. It was a bit of human contact, if scary. On the server behind him, he had done the math. He assumed they’d started at 0000 and were working their way up. That’s how he would do it. Three a day meant they would stumble on the right code on day 406 on the second try. That was less than a month away.

But Jimmy’s counting didn’t figure for everything. There was the lingering fear that they might skip some numbers, that they had started somewhere else, or that they might get lucky if they were going random. For all Jimmy knew, more than one code could open the door. And since he didn’t pay attention to how his father had changed the code, he couldn’t move it higher. And what if that only got them closer? Maybe they started at 9999. He could move it lower, of course, hoping to pass one they’d already tried, but what if they hadn’t tried it yet? To take action and let them in by accident would be worse than doing nothing and then dying. And Jimmy didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to die, and he didn’t want to kill anyone.