part 1 holston
6
present time
the first year without her, holston had waited, buying into her insanity, distrusting the sight of her on
that hill, hoping she’d come back. he’d spent the first anniversary of her death scrubbing the holding
cell clean, washing the yellow airlock door, straining for some sound, some knock, that would mean
the ghost of his wife was back to set him free.
when it didn’t happen, he began to consider the alternative: going out after her. he had spent
enough days, weeks, months going through her computer files, reading some of what she had pieced
together, making sense of half of it, to become half-mad himself. his world was a lie, he came to
believe, and without allison in it he had nothing to live for even if it were truth.
the second anniversary of her departure was his year of cowardice. he had walked to work, the
poisonous words in his mouth—his desire to go out—but he had choked them down at the last
second. he and deputy marnes had gone on patrol that day with the secret of how near he’d come to
death burning inside of him. that was a long year of cowardice, of letting allison down. the first
year had been her failure; last year had been his. but no more.
now, one more year later, he was alone in the airlock, wearing a cleaning suit, full of doubts and
convictions. the silo was sealed off behind him, that thick yellow door bolted tight, and holston
thought that this was not how he’d thought he’d die, or what he had hoped would become of him. he
had thought he would remain in the silo forever, his nutrients going as the nutrients of his parents
had: into the soil of the eighth-floor dirt farm. it seemed a lifetime ago that he had dreamed of a
family, of his own child, a fantasy of twins or another lottery win, a wife to grow old with—
a klaxon sounded on the other side of the yellow doors, warning everyone but him away. he was
to stay. there was nowhere else for him to go.
the argon chambers hissed, pumping the room full of the inert gas. after a minute of this, holston
could feel the pressure of the air as it crinkled the cleaning suit tight around his joints. he breathed
the oxygen circulating inside his helmet and stood before the other door, the forbidden door, the one
to the awful outside world, and waited.
there was a metal groan from pistons deep within the walls. the sacrificial plastic curtains
covering the interior of the airlock wrinkled from the pressure of the built-up argon. these curtains
would be incinerated inside the airlock while holston cleaned. the area would be scrubbed before
nightfall, made ready for the next cleaning.
the great metal doors before him shuddered, and then a shaft of incredible space appeared at their
joint, widening as the doors withdrew into the jamb. they wouldn’t open all the way, not like they
were once designed to—the risk of invading air had to be minimized.
an argon torrent hissed through the gap, dulling to a roar as the space grew. holston pressed
close, as horrified at himself for not resisting as he’d previously been perplexed by the actions of
others. better to go out, to see the world one time with his own eyes, than to be burned alive with the
plastic curtains. better to survive a few moments more.
as soon as the opening was wide enough, holston squeezed through, his suit catching and rubbing
at the doors. there was a veil of fog all around him as the argon condensed in the less pressurized air.
he stumbled forward blindly, pawing through the soft cloud.
while he was still in that mist, the outer doors groaned and began closing. the klaxon howls
behind were swallowed by the press of thick steel against thick steel, locking him and the toxins out
while cleansing fires began to rage inside the airlock, destroying any contamination that had leaked
its way inside.
holston found himself at the bottom of a concrete ramp, a ramp that led up. his time felt short—
there was a constant reminder thrumming in the back of his skull—hurry! hurry! his life was ticking
away. he lumbered up the ramp, confused that he wasn’t already aboveground, so used as he was to
seeing the world and the horizon from the cafeteria and lounge, which were on the same level as the
airlock.
he shuffled up the narrow ramp, walls of chipped concrete to either side, his visor full of a
confusing, brilliant light. at the top of the ramp, holston saw the heaven into which he’d been
condemned for his simple sin of hope. he whirled around, scanning the horizon, his head dizzy from
the sight of so much green!
green hills, green grass, green carpet beneath his feet. holston whooped in his helmet. his mind
buzzed with the sight. hanging over all the green, there was the exact hue of blue from the children’s
books, the white clouds untainted, the movement of living things flapping in the air.
holston turned around and around, taking it in. he had a sudden memory of his wife doing the
same; he had watched her awkwardly, slowly turning, almost as if she were lost or confused or
considering whether to do the cleaning at all.
the cleaning!
holston reached down and pulled a wool pad from his chest. the cleaning! he knew, in a
dizzying rush, a torrent of awareness, why, why. why!
he looked where he always assumed the tall circular wall of the uppermost silo floor would be,
but of course that wall was buried. all that stood behind him was a small mound of concrete, a tower
no more than eight or nine feet tall. a metal ladder ran up one side; antennae bristled from the top.
and on the side facing him—on all the sides he saw as he approached—were the wide, curving, fish-
eye lenses of the silo’s powerful cameras.
holston held out his wool and approached the first. he imagined the view of himself from inside
the cafeteria, staggering forward, becoming impossibly large. he had watched his wife do the same
thing three years ago. he remembered her waving, he had thought at the time for balance, but had she
been telling him something? had she been grinning like a fool, as wide as he was grinning now,
while she remained hidden behind that silver visor? had her heart been pounding with foolish hope
while she sprayed, scrubbed, wiped, applied? holston knew the cafeteria would be empty; there was
no one left who loved him enough to watch, but he waved anyway. and for him, it wasn’t the raw
anger he imagined many might have cleaned with. it wasn’t the knowledge that they in the silo were
condemned and the condemned set free; it wasn’t the feeling of betrayal that guided the wool in his
hand in small, circular motions. it was pity. it was raw pity and unconstrained joy.
the world blurred, but in a good way, as tears came to holston’s eyes. his wife had been right:
the view from inside was a lie. the hills were the same—he’d recognize them at a glance after so
many years of living with them—but the colors were all wrong. the screens inside the silo, the
programs his wife had found, they somehow made the vibrant greens look gray, they somehow
removed all signs of life. extraordinary life!
holston polished the grime off the camera lens and wondered if the gradual blurring was even
real. the grime certainly was. he saw it as he rubbed it away. but was it simple dirt, rather than some
toxic, airborne grime? could the program allison discovered modify only what was already seen?
holston’s mind spun with so many new facts and ideas. he was like an adult child, born into a wide
world, so much to piece together all at once that his head throbbed.
the blur is real, he decided as he cleaned the last of the smear from the second lens. it was an
overlay, like the false grays and browns the program must have used to hide that green field and this
blue sky dotted with puffy white. they were hiding from them a world so beautiful, holston had to
concentrate not to just stand still and gape at it.
he worked on the second of the four cameras and thought about those untrue walls beneath him,
taking what they saw and modifying it. he wondered how many people in the silo knew. any of
them? what kind of fanatical devotion would it take to maintain this depressing illusion? or was this
a secret from before the last uprising? was it an unknown lie perpetuated through the generations—a
fibbing set of programs that continued to hum away on the silo computers with nobody aware?
because if someone knew, if they could show anything, why not something nice?
the uprisings! maybe it was just to prevent them from happening over and over again. holston
applied an ablative film to the second sensor and wondered if the ugly lie of an unpleasant outside
world was some misguided attempt to keep people from wanting out. could someone have decided
that the truth was worse than a loss of power, of control? or was it something deeper and more
sinister? a fear of unabashed, free, many-as-you-like children? so many horrible possibilities.
and what of allison? where was she? holston shuffled around the corner of the concrete tower
toward the third lens, and the familiar but strange skyscrapers in the distant city came into view.
only, there were more buildings than usual there. some stood to either side, and an unfamiliar one
loomed in the foreground. the others, the ones he knew by heart, were whole and shining, not
twisted and jagged. holston gazed over the crest of the verdant hills and imagined allison walking
over them at any minute. but that was ridiculous. how would she know he’d been expelled on this
day? would she remember the anniversary? even after he’d missed the last two? holston cursed his
former cowardice, the years wasted. he would have to go to her, he decided.
he had a sudden impulse to do just that, to tear off his helmet and bulky suit and scamper up the
hill in nothing but his carbon undersuit, breathing in deep gulps of crisp air and laughing all the way
to his waiting wife in some vast, unfathomable city full of people and squealing children.
but no, there were appearances to keep, illusions to maintain. he wasn’t sure why, but it was what
his wife had done, what all the other cleaners before him had done. holston was now a member of
that club, a member of the out group. there was a press of history, of precedent, to obey. they had
known best. he would complete his performance for the in group he had just joined. he wasn’t sure
why he was doing it, only that everyone before him had, and look at the secret they all shared. that
secret was a powerful drug. he knew only to do what he had been told, to follow the numbers on the
pockets, to clean mechanically while he considered the awesome implications of an outside world so
big one couldn’t live to see it all, couldn’t breathe all the air, drink all the water, eat all the food.
holston dreamed of such things while he dutifully scrubbed the third lens, wiped, applied,
sprayed, then moved to the last. his pulse was audible in his ears; his chest pounded in that
constricting suit. soon, soon, he told himself. he used the second wool pad and polished the grime
off the final lens. he wiped and applied and sprayed a final time, then put everything back in its place,
back in the numbered pouches, not wanting to spoil the gorgeous and healthy ground beneath his
feet. done, holston stepped back, took one last look at the nobodies not watching from the cafeteria
and lounge, then turned his back on those who had turned their backs on allison and all the others
before her. there was a reason nobody came back for the people inside, holston thought, just as there
was a reason everyone cleaned, even when they said they wouldn’t. he was free; he was to join the
others, and so he strolled toward that dark crease that ran up the hill, following in his wife’s
footsteps, aware that some familiar boulder, long sleeping, no longer lay there. that, too, holston
decided, had been nothing more than another awful pixelated lie.
