Silo 49: Going Dark by Ann Christy Page A

way of dealing with what must be an incredible strain. Was he really that confident? He wasn't betting a few chits on a game. He was betting the lives of his entire people.
    "Nah. We'll talk about that some other time. It's not like I can come over and borrow some tools or a few baskets of seed, is it?" John dismissed the notion, sounding embarrassed. Then he laughed and said, "Though I would like to take you up on that offer to taste the corn hooch you were talking about. We don't get a whole lot of that around this part of the neighborhood."
    "What about the other silos?" Graham asked, worried about the answer.
    John sighed, "They just aren't ready for different reasons. Some only have a few people that even know what’s going on and they are, naturally, having a hard time making the decision for everyone else. You can bet though, that they'll become a lot more willing if trouble starts brewing. No one wants to be another silo 12."
    "Yeah, or another Silo 49."
    "Don't worry, Graham. We're going to do this before this day is done. Get your people in position and ready within," he paused and Graham heard tapping on a distant keyboard, "by my clock you have eleven hours and seventeen minutes. Got that? Can you get there in time?"
    Graham wiggled the mouse on his computer and made a note of the time. "Got it. We'll be ready."
     

Old Men and Baskets
    What he wanted to do after he finished that call was run like a mad person and grab Wallis and then fly the rails all the way down to Grace right after. Once he had them in sight he wanted to sit tight, tools clutched and ready, by the access plates on level 72. But he couldn't do that. Regardless of what his intentions were, he knew he could easily tip off those in Silo One with strange behavior.
    So he went to his computer and read the wires that, even now with the population dwindling, filled his inbox. He was looking for a likely candidate to forward to Grace with the code that let her know it was time to act. Most of his inbox was just copied to him automatically by the system based on keywords programmed in. He hated that invasion of the privacy of others and he supposed that made him a bad fit for this job, though he had always been good at it.
    This is one of the first things that would go. Penance for all the past invasions of privacy and all the past manipulations of people would have to be made. But that was for later, if they succeeded. No, he corrected himself, after they succeeded.
    Most of those automated ones he could delete quickly and he cleaned out a good portion of his inbox that way in just a few keystrokes. One piece of good news had filtered through. A baby girl had been born healthy and on time in the down deep to a pipe fitter, who had also come through in good health. The new baby's name was Jewel. Before he had even added her number to the population tally, Graham saw another email that balanced out that birth. One of the technicians in the mids had called for the bottle last night and passed peacefully at the age of thirty-three. No family left to notify. Graham sighed heavily and deleted the email. The one for the birth he retained. That was the way of life, he thought, to want to keep the good and purge the bad. Maybe what Silo One wanted to do to them was no different except in the scale of the purging.
    He couldn't entertain thoughts that like right now. He needed to stay angry with them. He needed to keep that target full of blame pointed right where it belonged. They were the ones who were the arms and hands of the monster that put them down in these silos and took away the outside.
    He clenched and unclenched a hand rhythmically on a little pillow filled with flax seed. The medic had given it to him to help with his stress. He clicked the mouse on his screen awkwardly with his left hand to retrieve the rest of his messages. He gave some instructions in response to requests from IT and forwarded others to the right person. So many people were gone