Shift (silo) Read online

  He wondered if this was some kind of debriefing. Why had the Senator asked him if he could keep a secret? Was this a security initiation? The Senator remained silent.

  ‘They’re not real,’ Donald finally said. He watched for any twitch or hint. ‘Are they?’

  The old man cracked a smile. ‘That’s the thing,’ he said. ‘If they are or they aren’t, the chatter out there would be the same. Would you be surprised if I told you they’re very much real?’

  ‘Hell, yeah, I’d be surprised.’

  ‘Good.’ The Senator slid a folder across the desk.

  Donald eyed it and held up a hand. ‘Wait. Are they real or aren’t they? What’re you trying to tell me?’

  Senator Thurman laughed. ‘Of course they’re not real.’ He took his hand off the folder and propped his elbows on the desk. ‘Have you seen how much NASA wants from us so they can fly to Mars and back? We’re not getting to another star. Ever. And nobody’s coming here. Hell, why would they?’

  Donald didn’t know what to think, which was a far cry from how he’d felt less than a minute ago. He saw what the Senator meant, how truth and lies seemed black and white, but mixed together they made everything grey and confusing. He glanced down at the folder. It looked similar to the one Mick had been carrying. It reminded him of the government’s fondness for all things outdated.

  ‘This is denial, right?’ He studied the Senator. ‘That’s what you’re doing right now. You’re trying to throw me off.’

  ‘No. This is me telling you to stop watching so many science fiction flicks. In fact, why do you think those eggheads are always dreaming of colonising some other planet? You have any idea what would be involved? It’s ludicrous. Not cost-effective.’

  Donald shrugged. He didn’t think it was ludicrous. He twisted the cap back onto his water. ‘It’s in our nature to dream of open space,’ he said. ‘To find room to spread out in. Isn’t that how we ended up here?’

  ‘Here? In America?’ The Senator laughed. ‘We didn’t come here and find open space. We got a bunch of people sick, killed them and made space.’ Thurman pointed at the folder. ‘Which brings me to this. I’ve got something I’d like you to work on.’

  Donald placed his bottle on the leather inlay of the formidable desk and took the folder.

  ‘Is this something coming through committee?’

  He tried to temper his hopes. It was alluring to think of co-authoring a bill in his first year in office. He opened the folder and tilted it towards the window. Outside, storms were gathering.

  ‘No, nothing like that. This is about CAD-FAC.’

  Donald nodded. Of course. The preamble about secrets and conspiracies suddenly made perfect sense, as did the gathering of Georgia congressmen outside. This was about the Containment and Disposal Facility, nicknamed CAD-FAC, at the heart of the Senator’s new energy bill, the complex that would one day house most of the world’s spent nuclear fuel. Or, according to the websites Thurman had alluded to, it was going to be the next Area 51, or the site where a new-and-improved superbomb was being built, or a secure holding facility for libertarians who had purchased one too many guns. Take your pick. There was enough noise out there to hide any truth.

  ‘Yeah,’ Donald said, deflated. ‘I’ve been getting some entertaining calls from my district.’ He didn’t dare mention the one about the lizard people. ‘I want you to know, sir, that privately I’m behind the facility one hundred per cent.’ He looked up at the Senator. ‘I’m glad I didn’t have to vote on it publicly, of course, but it was about time someone offered up their backyard, right?’

  ‘Precisely. For the common good.’ Senator Thurman took a long pull from his water, leaned back in his chair and cleared his throat. ‘You’re a sharp young man, Donny. Not everyone sees what a boon to our state this’ll be. A real lifesaver.’ He smiled. ‘I’m sorry, you are still going by Donny, right? Or is it Donald now?’

  ‘Either’s fine,’ Donald lied. He no longer enjoyed being called Donny, but changing names in the middle of one’s life was practically impossible. He returned to the folder and flipped the cover letter over. There was a drawing underneath that struck him as being out of place. It was… too familiar. Familiar, and yet it didn’t belong there — it was from another life.

  ‘Have you seen the economic reports?’ Thurman asked. ‘Do you know how many jobs this bill created overnight?’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Forty thousand, just like that. And that’s only from Georgia. A lot will be from your district, a lot of shipping, a lot of stevedores. Of course, now that it’s passed, our less nimble colleagues are grumbling that they should’ve had a chance to bid—’

  ‘I drew this,’ Donald interrupted, pulling out the sheet of paper. He showed it to Thurman as if the Senator would be surprised to see that it had snuck into the folder. Donald wondered if this was the Senator’s daughter’s doing, some kind of a joke or a hello and a wink from Anna.

  Thurman nodded. ‘Yes, well, it needs more detail, wouldn’t you say?’

  Donald studied the architectural illustration and wondered what sort of test this was. He remembered the drawing. It was a last-minute project for his biotecture class in his senior year. There was nothing unusual or amazing about it, just a large cylindrical building a hundred or so storeys tall ringed with glass and concrete, balconies burgeoning with gardens, one side cut away to reveal interspersed levels for housing, working and shopping. The structure was spare where he remembered other classmates being bold, utilitarian where he could’ve taken risks. Green tufts jutted up from the flat roof — a horrible cliché, a nod to carbon neutrality.

  In sum, it was drab and boring. Donald couldn’t imagine a design so bare rising from the deserts of Dubai alongside the great new breed of self-sustaining skyscrapers. He certainly couldn’t see what the Senator wanted with it.

  ‘More detail,’ he murmured, repeating the Senator’s words. He flipped through the rest of the folder, looking for hints, for context.

  ‘Wait.’ Donald studied a list of requirements written up as if by a prospective client. ‘This looks like a design proposal.’ Words he had forgotten he’d ever learned caught his eye: interior traffic flow, block plan, HVAC, hydroponics—

  ‘You’ll have to lose the sunlight.’ Senator Thurman’s chair squeaked as he leaned over his desk.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Donald held the folder up. ‘What exactly are you wanting me to do?’

  ‘I would suggest those lights like my wife uses.’ He cupped his hand into a tiny circle and pointed at the centre. ‘She gets these tiny seeds to sprout in the winter, uses bulbs that cost me a goddamned fortune.’

  ‘You mean grow lights.’

  Thurman snapped his fingers again. ‘And don’t worry about the cost. Whatever you need. I’m also going to get you some help with the mechanical stuff. An engineer. An entire team.’

  Donald flipped through more of the folder. ‘What is this for? And why me?’

  ‘This is what we call a just-in-case building. Probably’ll never get used, but they won’t let us store the fuel rods out there unless we put this bugger nearby. It’s like this window in my basement I had to lower before our house could pass inspection. It was for… what do you call it… ?’

  ‘Egress,’ Donald said, the word flowing back unaided.

  ‘Yes. Egress.’ He pointed to the folder. ‘This building is like that window, something we’ve gotta build so the rest will pass inspection. This will be where — in the unlikely event of an attack or a leak — facility employees can go. A shelter. And it needs to be perfect or this project will be shut down faster than a tick’s wink. Just because our bill passed and got signed doesn’t mean we’re home free, Donny. There was that project out west that got okayed decades ago, scored funding. Eventually, it fell through.’

  Donald knew the one he was talking about. A containment facility buried under a mountain. The buzz on the Hill was that the Georgia project had the same chances of success. The folder suddenly tripled in
weight as he considered this. He was being asked to be a part of this future failure. He would be staking his newly won office on it.

  ‘I’ve got Mick Webb working on something related. Logistics and planning. You two will need to collaborate on a few things. And Anna is taking leave from her post at MIT to lend a hand.’

  ‘Anna?’ Donald fumbled for his water, his hand shaking.

  ‘Of course. She’ll be your lead engineer on this project. There are details in there on what she’ll need, space-wise.’

  Donald took a gulp of water and forced himself to swallow.

  ‘There’s a lot of other people I could call in, sure, but this project can’t fail, you understand? It needs to be like family. That’s why I want to use people I know, people I can trust.’ Senator Thurman interlocked his fingers. ‘If this is the only thing you were elected to do, I want you to do it right. It’s why I stumped for you in the first place.’

  ‘Of course.’ Donald bobbed his head to hide his confusion. He had worried during the election that the Senator’s endorsement stemmed from old family ties. This was somehow worse. Donald hadn’t been using the Senator at all; it was the other way around. Studying the drawing in his lap, the newly elected congressman felt one job he was inadequately trained for melt away — only to be replaced by a different job that seemed equally daunting.

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I still don’t get it.’ He studied the old drawing. ‘Why the grow lights?’

  ‘Because this building I want you to design for me — it’s going to go underground.’

  2

  2110

  • Silo 1 •

  TROY HELD HIS breath and tried to remain calm while the doctor pumped the rubber bulb. The inflatable band swelled around his bicep until it pinched his skin. He wasn’t sure if slowing his breathing and steadying his pulse affected his blood pressure, but he had a strong urge to impress the man in the white overalls. He wanted his numbers to come back normal.

  His arm throbbed a few beats while the needle bounced and the air hissed out.

  ‘Eighty over fifty.’ The band made a ripping sound as it was torn loose. Troy rubbed the spot where his skin had been pinched.

  ‘Is that okay?’

  The doctor made a note on his clipboard. ‘It’s low, but not outside the norm.’ Behind him, his assistant labelled a cup of dark grey urine before placing it inside a small fridge. Troy caught sight of a half-eaten sandwich among the samples, not even wrapped.

  He looked down at his bare knees sticking out of the blue paper gown. His legs were pale and seemed smaller than he remembered. Bony.

  ‘I still can’t make a fist,’ he told the doctor, working his hand open and shut.

  ‘That’s perfectly normal. Your strength will return. Look into the light, please.’

  Troy followed the bright beam and tried not to blink.

  ‘How long have you been doing this?’ he asked the doctor.

  ‘You’re my third coming out. I’ve put two under.’ He lowered the light and smiled at Troy. ‘I’ve only been out myself for a few weeks. I can tell you that the strength will return.’

  Troy nodded. The doctor’s assistant handed him another pill and a cup of water. Troy hesitated. He stared down at the little blue capsule nestled in his palm.

  ‘A double dose this morning,’ the doctor said, ‘and then you’ll be given one with breakfast and dinner. Please do not skip a treatment.’

  Troy looked up. ‘What happens if I don’t take it?’

  The doctor shook his head and frowned, but didn’t say anything.

  Troy popped the pill in his mouth and chased it with the water. A bitterness slid down his throat.

  ‘One of my assistants will bring you some clothes and a fluid meal to kick-start your gut. If you have any dizziness or chills, you’re to call me at once. Otherwise, we’ll see you back here in six months.’ The doctor made a note, then chuckled. ‘Well, someone else will see you. My shift will be over.’

  ‘Okay.’ Troy shivered.

  The doctor looked up from his clipboard. ‘You’re not cold, are you? I keep it a little extra warm in here.’

  Troy hesitated before answering. ‘No, doctor. I’m not cold. Not any more.’

  Troy entered the lift at the end of the hall, his legs still weak, and studied an array of numbered buttons. The orders they’d given him included directions to his office, but he vaguely remembered how to get there. Much of his orientation had survived the decades of sleep. He remembered studying that same book over and over, thousands of men assigned to various shifts, tours of the facility before being put under like the women. The orientation felt like yesterday; it was older memories that seemed to be slipping away.

  The doors to the lift closed automatically. His apartment was on thirty-seven; he remembered that. His office was on thirty-four. He reached for a button, intending to head straight to his desk, and instead found his hand sliding up to the very top. He still had a few minutes before he needed to be anywhere, and he felt some strange urge, some tug, to get as high as possible, to rise through the soil pressing in from all sides.

  The lift hummed into life and accelerated up the shaft. There was a whooshing sound as another car or maybe the counterweight zoomed by. The round buttons flashed as the floors passed. There was an enormous spread of them, seventy in all. The centres of many were dull from years of rubbing. This didn’t seem right. It seemed like just yesterday the buttons were shiny and new. Just yesterday, everything was.

  The lift slowed. Troy palmed the wall for balance, his legs still uncertain.

  The door dinged and slid open. Troy blinked at the bright lights in the hallway. He left the lift and followed a short walk towards a room that leaked chatter. His new boots were stiff on his feet, the generic grey overalls itchy. He tried to imagine waking up like this nine more times, feeling this weak and disoriented. Ten shifts of six months each. Ten shifts he hadn’t volunteered for. He wondered if it would get progressively easier or if it would only get worse.

  The bustle in the cafeteria quietened as he entered. A few heads turned his way. He saw at once that his grey overalls weren’t so generic. There was a scattering of colours seated at the tables: a large cluster of reds, quite a few yellows, a man in orange; no other greys.

  That first meal of sticky paste he’d been given rumbled once more in his stomach. He wasn’t allowed to eat anything else for six hours, which made the aroma from the canned foods overwhelming. He remembered the fare, had lived on it during orientation. Weeks and weeks of the same gruel. Now it would be months. It would be hundreds of years.

  ‘Sir.’

  A young man nodded to Troy as he walked past, towards the lifts. Troy thought he recognised him but couldn’t be sure. The gentleman certainly seemed to have recognised him. Or was it the grey overalls that stood out?

  ‘First shift?’

  An older gentleman approached, thin, with white and wispy hair that circled his head. He held a tray in his hands, smiled at Troy. Pulling open a recycling bin, he slid the entire tray inside and dropped it with a clatter.

  ‘Come up for the view?’ the man asked.

  Troy nodded. It was all men throughout the cafeteria. All men. They had explained why this was safer. He tried to remember as the man with the splotches of age on his skin crossed his arms and stood beside him. There were no introductions. Troy wondered if names meant less amid these short six-month shifts. He gazed out over the bustling tables towards the massive screen that covered the far wall.

  Whirls of dust and low clouds hung over a field of scattered and mangled debris. A few metal poles bristled from the ground and sagged lifelessly, the tents and flags long vanished. Troy thought of something but couldn’t name it. His stomach tightened like a fist around the paste and the bitter pill.

  ‘This’ll be my second shift,’ the man said.

  Troy barely heard. His watering eyes drifted across the scorched hills, the grey slopes rising up towards the dark and menacin
g clouds. The debris scattered everywhere was rotting away. Next shift, or the one after, and it would all be gone.

  ‘You can see further from the lounge.’ The man turned and gestured along the wall. Troy knew well enough what room he was referring to. This part of the building was familiar to him in ways this man could hardly guess at.

  ‘No, but thanks,’ Troy stammered. He waved the man off. ‘I think I’ve seen enough.’

  Curious faces returned to their trays, and the chatter resumed. It was sprinkled with the clinking of spoons and forks on metal bowls and plates. Troy turned and left without saying another word. He put that hideous view behind him — turned his back on the unspoken eeriness of it. He hurried, shivering, towards the lift, knees weak from more than the long rest. He needed to be alone, didn’t want anyone around him this time, didn’t want sympathetic hands comforting him while he cried.

  3

  2049

  Washington, DC

  DONALD KEPT THE thick folder tucked inside his jacket and hurried through the rain. He had chosen to get soaked crossing the square rather than face his claustrophobia in the tunnels.

  Traffic hissed by on the wet asphalt. He waited for a gap, ignored the crossing signals and scooted across.

  In front of him, the marble steps of Rayburn, the office building for the House of Representatives, gleamed treacher-ously. He climbed them warily and thanked the doorman on his way in.

  Inside, a security officer stood by impassively while Donald’s badge was scanned, red unblinking eyes beeping at bar codes. He checked the folder Thurman had given him, made sure it was still dry, and wondered why such relics were still considered safer than an email or a digital copy.

  His office was one floor up. He headed for the stairs, preferring them to Rayburn’s ancient and slow lift. His shoes squeaked on the tile as he left the plush runner by the door.

  The hallway upstairs was its usual mess. Two high-schoolers from the intern programme hurried past, most likely fetching coffee. A TV crew stood outside Amanda Kelly’s office, camera lights bathing her and a young reporter in a daytime glow. Concerned voters and eager lobbyists were identifiable by the guest passes hanging around their necks. They were easy to distinguish from one another, these two groups. The voters wore frowns and invariably seemed lost. The lobbyists were the ones with the Cheshire Cat grins who navigated the halls more confidently than even the newly elected.