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 only modify what was already seen? Holston’s mind spun with so many new facts and ideas. He was like an adult child, borne 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 use 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 to not 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 on 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 would be 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 only knew to do what he had been told, to follow the numbers on the pockets, to mechanically clean 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 scrubbed dutifully on 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 bespoil the gorgeous and healthy ground beneath his feet. Done, Holston stepped back, took one last look into 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 inside people, 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 lie.
7
Holston was a dozen paces up the hill, still marveling at the bright grass at his feet and the brilliant sky above, when the first pang lurched in his stomach. It was a writhing cramp, something like intense hunger. At first, he worried he was going too fast, first with the cleaning and now with his impatient shuffling in that cumbersome suit. He didn’t want to take it off until he was over the hill, out of sight, maintaining whatever illusion the walls in the cafeteria held. He focused on the tops of the skyscrapers and resigned himself to slowing down, to calming down. One step at a time. Years and years of running up and down thirty flights of stairs should make this nothing.
Another cramp, stronger this time. Holston winced and stopped walking, waiting for it to pass. When did he eat last? Not all yesterday. Stupid. When did he last use the bathroom? Again, he couldn’t remember. He might need to get the suit off earlier than he’d hoped. Once the wave of nausea passed, he took a few more steps, hoping to reach the top of the hill before the next bout of pain. He only got another dozen steps in before it hit him, more severe this time, worse than anything he’d ever felt. Holston retched from the intensity of it, and now his dry stomach was a blessing. He clutched his abdomen as his knees gave out in a shiver of weakness. He crashed to the ground and groaned. His stomach was burning, his chest on fire. He managed to crawl forward a few feet, sweat dripping from his forehead and splashing on the inside of his helmet. He saw sparks in his vision; the entire world went bright white, several times, like lightning strikes. Confused and senseless, he crawled ever upward, moving laboriously, his startled mind still focused on his last, clear goaclass="underline" cresting that hill.
Again and again, his view shimmered, his visor letting in a solid bright light before it flickered away. It became difficult to see. Holston ran into something before him, and his arms collapsed. He blinked and gazed forward, up the hill, waiting for a clear sight of what lay ahead, but saw only infrequent strobes of green grass.
And then his vision went away completely. All was black. Holston clawed at his face, even as his stomach tangled in a new torturous knot. There was a glow, a blinking in his vision, so he knew he wasn’t blind. But the blinking seemed to be coming from inside his helmet. He could see the blinking. It was his visor that had become suddenly blind, not him.