Even then, as a young teen not yet aware of all the truths he would learn in the years ahead of him, he had been appalled at anyone laughing at anything related to a cleaning. But those stories always seemed to be limited to the young or those who had no personal feelings about the situation. Had he been smarter, perhaps a bit more cynical, he would have figured out more about this world before it was told to him. Maybe he would have understood before it was too late to avoid being a part of it.
Later, during his shadowing years, his uncle told him about the dosing and when it was done and how it worked. Then he understood the reactions, or lack of reactions, that he saw around him. There was more than one form of dosing and the stronger version was used only when true forgetting was needed. It worked on things one thought about that caused negative feelings, not everything in a person’s memory.
At least that is what it was supposed to do and had done until this most recent usage. If something didn’t concern you or cause a bad feeling, the memories stayed almost intact and just smoothed out a little. The memory was there, but it was one without emotion and he thought that probably explained why the young and uninvolved remembered events of import better than those that lived the events as adults.
Strong and long doses of the forgetting drug could be used to leave a person completely open to having their entire life re-written into a new story that the person would never question. Such hadn’t been done in Silo 49 that Graham was aware of, but in other silos it happened with regularity every generation or so. Then again, how would he even know if it had been done? What a thought that was.
There had been no uprisings of any kind during Graham’s tenure, or even during his shadowing, but he had been directed to use the dosing several times over the years when certain stressors were present. The Order was clear on almost every situation and dosing was often the first answer it provided. The words, ‘See Entry on Dosing,’ were the directions for IT Heads after more events then he thought possible.
It was almost funny, except that it wasn’t funny at all.
Conspiracy for Dinner
Graham dutifully went to the uppermost medical bay and had a meeting with the last medic still left to that station. He was a wonderfully caring young man—though forty really wasn’t that young except when compared with Graham’s more than sixty—and he did a fine job of taking care of the residents of the upper levels. His memory was affected, like so many others, but he was doing what he could to keep up. They talked in the level one cafeteria about the records and his intentions. It was a strange feeling to be there in the cafeteria, empty even during this prime period during the day.
The view, thrown on the wall in projection from the sensors outside, was dim and brown. The grit and dirt on the ablative film that kept the sensors from being eroded away was itself now pitted and hazy. A small hole worn into the film, its edges ragged, made it look like one was peering through a peephole. If the situation were normal inside Silo 49, then surely Graham knew he would be under a great deal of pressure to find a cleaner and set the view to rights.
All that he could see, beyond the brownish haze that obscured the sensors, was the same blowing dirt and dust he had seen his whole life. The sky was the sickly color of a bruise healed to the brown and yellow stage and the air itself seemed to boil with yet more dust being blown far harder than the breezes of the silo would ever blow. He flinched when a sudden gust threw a solid wall of deep brown grit toward the sensor. It was gone as quickly as it came, traveling toward what Graham knew were other silos. No one else knew that though.
The medic, who also watched the screen as they spoke, looked away from the sensors after that gust, as if he couldn’t bear the thought of seeing more obscuring dirt on the sensors. Graham coughed, like the dust was tickling his throat, and returned his wandering attention to the medic.
“So you can find all of those records?” he asked, hoping the young medic would say he couldn’t.
He nodded, smiling and happy to be of service.
Graham’s lips gave a twist but he dampened it quickly and cleared his throat. “Well, how long would it take?”
The medic considered, his eyes darting toward the view for a moment, then said, “Actually, I should say that I can locate them but they won’t all be there.” At Graham’s look, he added, “We don’t keep the whole record forever. That’s a lot of paper. After a few years, we create a summary sheet and then recycle the record. Just enough information to approve matches is what gets retained forever.”
Graham tried not to smile at that. A simple summary sheet for every person was retained for use in approving marriage matches as the generations passed, but they contained no details. That was good.
He wanted to take no chances that this energetic young man might start scanning in documents and perhaps give the others what they needed before he was ready for them, so he kept a serious face as he gave his directions. He had to be subtle about how he went about his delaying tactics. He wanted to give every impression that he was doing exactly what the voices in Silo One had instructed him to do despite the fact that he had absolutely no intention of ever finishing any such task to their satisfaction.
After the medic left, hurrying down that first spiral of stair and out of sight, Graham sat in the silent cafeteria by himself. He watched the view with its never ending display of filthy deadness outside and sipped from his canteen of tea. He thought about what he was doing, what he was planning and how he had come to this point.
Even if the conversation he’d overheard hadn’t been one that concluded with a decision to kill his silo, he would be delaying or not doing this tasking. He felt betrayed but not just for himself. He felt that betrayal for everyone that lived in Silo 49. He had been led to believe that each silo was precious and represented the last hope of mankind. He had been told that all they did was for the future. He had believed it all and justified every bad act, every cleaning and every lie because he believed it.
It turned out that wasn’t true at all. His people had become an interesting set of medical circumstances to be collected, collated and filed away. Silo One cared nothing for them as people. To them it wasn’t the legacy that mattered because these people, however sick, were still the seeds of that legacy. It was a perfect legacy that mattered to them and this silo was tainted based on their perfect standards. Tainted, no longer wanted and in need of discarding. He wouldn’t have it. He wouldn’t allow it.
He didn’t know the precise moment when he had stopped believing in the absolute rightness of Silo One. He thought it had eroded in stages, dropping off of him in layers like the rust that seemed to wear away the bones of the silo one thin flake at a time. That made it very hard for him to define any specific moment in time for the loss of his belief, but he did know that every shred of whatever faith had remained fell away with that overheard conversation. Now that he had heard them as they were, without whatever carefully chosen words they used to deceive and control, he realized that they were only madmen without scruples.
For Graham there was no other possible explanation other than madness of some sort. He had been raised for the position he held in the silo. He had shadowed from the early age of fifteen for it and for more than twenty years he had remained a shadow even as he watched others his age progress in their careers and gain authority and trust. He had been patient and remained true to his purpose through it all. When his uncle had succumbed to cancer, like so many others had after him, choking on blood and begging for death, Graham had slipped the key from his uncle’s neck and around his own. He had been secure in the knowledge of his place in this world.