Wool

by Hugh Howey

Page 21

 

  “You mean like a timing circuit? Like a—?”

  “No, for a computer. A programming language. It’s a—” He looked away. “I don’t want to say. Oh, Jules, I just want to go back to Mechanical. I want none of this to have happened. ”

  These words were like a splash of cold water. Scottie was more than frightened—he was terrified. For his life. Juliette got off the desk and crouched beside him, placed her hand on the back of his hand, which rested on his anxiously bouncing knee.

  “What does the program do?” she asked.

  He bit his lip and shook his head.

  “It’s okay. We’re safe here. Tell me what it does. ”

  “It’s for a display,” he finally said. “But not for like a readout, or an LED, or a dot matrix. There are algorithms in here I recognize. Anyone would…“

  He paused.

  “Sixty-four bit color,” he whispered, staring at her. “Sixty-four bit. Why would anyone need that much color?”

  “Dumb it down for me,” Juliette said. Scottie seemed on the verge of going mad.

  “You’ve seen it, right? The view up top?”

  She dipped her head. “You know where I work. ”

  “Well, I’ve seen it too, back before I started eating every meal in here, working my fingers to the bone. ” He rubbed his hands up through his shaggy, sandy-brown hair. “This program, Jules—what you’ve got, it could make something like that wallscreen look real. ”

  Juliette digested this. Then laughed. “But wait, isn’t that what it does? Scottie, there are sensors out there. They just take the images they see, and then the screen has to display the view, right? I mean, you’ve got me confused, here. ” She shook the printed scroll of gibberish. “Doesn’t this just do what I think it does? Put that image on the display?”

  Scottie wrung his hands together. “You wouldn’t need anything like this. You’re talking about passing an image through. I could write a dozen lines of code to do that. No, this, this is about making images. It’s more complex. ”

  He grabbed Juliette’s arm.

  “Jules, this thing can make brand new views. It can show you anything you like. ”

  He sucked in his breath, and a slice of time hung in the air between them, a pause where hearts did not beat and eyes did not blink.

  Juliette sat back on her haunches, balancing on the toes of her old boots. She finally settled her butt to the floor and leaned back against the metal paneling of his office wall.

  “So now you see—” Scottie started to say, but Juliette held up her hand, hushing him. It never occurred to her that the view could be fabricated. But why not? And what would be the point?

  She imagined Holston’s wife discovering this. She must’ve been at least as smart as Scottie—she was the one who came up with the technique he had used to find this in the first place, right? What would she have done with this discovery? Say something out loud and cause a riot? Tell her husband, the sheriff? What?

  Juliette could only know what she herself would do in that position, if she were almost convinced. She was by nature too curious a person to doubt what she might do. It would gnaw at her, like the rattling innards of a sealed machine, or the secret workings of an unopened device. She would have to grab a screwdriver and a wrench and have a peek—

  “Jules—”

  She waved him off. Details from Holston’s folder flooded back. Notes about Allison, how she suddenly went crazy, almost out of nowhere. Her curiosity must have driven her there. Unless—unless Holston didn’t know. Unless it was all an act. Unless Allison had been shielding her husband from some horror with a mock veil of insanity.

  But would it have taken Holston three years to piece together what she had figured out in a week? Or did he already know and it just took three years to summon the courage to go after her? Or did Juliette have an advantage he didn’t? She had Scottie. And she was, after all, following the breadcrumbs of someone else following more breadcrumbs, a much easier and more obvious trail.

  She looked up at her young friend, who was peering worriedly down at her.

  “You have to get those out of here,” he said, glancing at the printouts.

  Juliette nodded. She pushed up from the floor and tucked the scroll into the breast of her coveralls. It would have to be destroyed, she just wasn’t sure how.

  “I deleted my copies of everything I got for you,” he said. “I’m done looking at them. And you should do the same. ”

  Juliette tapped her chest pocket, felt the hard bulge of the flash drive there.

  “And Jules, can you do me a favor?”

  “Anything. ”

  “See if there’s any way I can transfer back to Mechanical, will you? I don’t want to be up here anymore. ”

  She nodded and squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll see what I can do,” she promised, feeling a knot in her gut for getting the poor kid involved at all.

  8

  Juliette arrived late at her desk the next morning exhausted, her legs and back sore from the late climb down to IT and from not getting an ounce of sleep. She had spent the entire night tossing and turning, wondering if she’d discovered a box that was better left unopened, worried she might be raising questions that promised nothing but bad answers. If she went out into the cafeteria and looked in a direction she normally avoided, she would be able to see the last two cleaners lying in the crook of a hill, almost as if in one another’s arms. Did those two lovers throw themselves into the rotting wind over the very thing Juliette was now chasing? The fear she’d seen in Scottie’s eyes made her wonder if she wasn’t being careful enough. She looked across her desk at her new deputy, greener even at this job than she, as he transcribed data from one of the folders.

  “Hey Peter?”

  He looked up from his keyboard. “Yeah?”

  “You were in Justice before this, right? Shadowing with a judge?”

  He tilted his head to the side. “No, I was a court assistant. I actually shadowed in the mids’ deputy office until a few years ago. I wanted that job, but none came up. ”

  “Did you grow up there? Or the up-top?”

  “The mids. ” His hands fell away from his keyboard to his lap. He smiled. “My dad was a plumber in the hydroponics. He passed away a few years ago. My mom, she works in the nursery. ”

  “Really? What’s her name?”

  “Rebecca. She’s one of the—”

  “I know her. She was shadowing when I was a kid. My father—”

  “He works in the upper nursery, I know. I didn’t want to say anything—”

  “Why not? Hey, if you’re worried about me playing favorites, I’m guilty. You’re my deputy now, and I’ll have your back—”

  “No, it’s not that. I just didn’t want you to hold anything against me. I know you and your father don’t—”

  Juliette waved him off. “He’s still my father. We just grew apart. Tell your mom I said hi. ”

  “I will. ” Peter smiled and bent over his keyboard.

  “Hey. I’ve got a question for you. Something I can’t figure. ”

  “Sure,” he said, looking up. “Go ahead. ”

  “Can you think of why it’s cheaper to porter a paper note to someone than it is to just wire them from a computer?”

  “Oh, sure. ” He nodded. “It’s a quarter chit per character to wire someone. That adds up!”

  Juliette laughed. “No, I know what it costs. But paper isn’t cheap, either. And neither is porting. But it seems like sending a wire would be practically free, you know? It’s just information. It weighs nothing. ”

  He shrugged. “It’s been a quarter chit a character since I’ve been alive. I dunno. Besides, we’ve got a fifty chit per day allowance from here, plus unlimited emergencies. I wouldn’t stress. ”

  “I’m not stressed, just confused. I mean, I understand why everyone can’t have radios like we carry, bec
ause only one person can transmit at a time, so we need the air open for emergencies, but you’d think we could all send and receive as many wires as we wanted. ”

  Peter propped his elbows up and rested his chin on his fists. “Well, think about the cost of the servers, the electricity. That means oil to burn and all the maintenance of the wires and cooling and what-not. Especially if you have a ton of traffic. Factor that against pressing pulp on a rack, letting it dry, scratching some ink on it, and then having a person who’s already heading that way walk it up or down for you. No wonder it’s cheaper!”

  Juliette nodded, but mostly for his benefit. She wasn’t so sure. She hated to voice why, but she couldn’t help herself.

  “But what if it’s for a different reason? What if someone made it expensive on purpose?”

  “What? To make money?” Peter snapped his fingers. “To keep the porters employed with running notes!”

  Juliette shook her head. “No, what if it’s to make conversing with each other more difficult? Or at least costly. You know, separate us, make us keep our thoughts to ourselves. ”

  Peter frowned. “Why would anyone want to do that?”

  Shrugging, Juliette looked back at her computer screen, her hand creeping to the scroll hidden in her lap. “I don’t know,” she said. “Forget about it. It’s just a silly thought. ”

  She pulled her keyboard toward her and was just glancing up at her screen when Peter saw the emergency icon first.

  “Wow. Another alert,” he said.

  She started to click on the flashing icon, heard Peter blow out his breath.

  “What the hell’s going on around here?” he asked.

  She pulled the message up on her screen and read it quickly, disbelieving. Surely this wasn’t the way of the job. Surely people didn’t die this often, her just not hearing about it because her nose was always in some crankcase or under an oil pan.

  The blinking number code above the message was one she recognized without even needing her cheat sheet. It was becoming sadly familiar. Another suicide. They didn’t give the victim’s name, but there was an office number. And she knew the floor and address. Her legs were still sore from her trip down there.

  “No—” she said, gripping the edge of her desk.

  “You want me to—?” Peter reached for his radio.

  “No, damnit, no. ” Juliette shook her head. She pushed away from her desk, knocking over the recycling bin, which spilled out all the pardoned folders across the floor. The scroll from her lap rolled into them.

  “I can—” Peter began.

  “I got this,” she said, waving him away. “Damnit. ” She shook her head. The office was spinning around her head, the world getting blurry. She staggered for the door, arms wide for balance, when Peter snapped back to his computer screen, dragging his mouse with its little cord behind, clicking something.

  “Uh, Juliette—?”

  But she was already stumbling out the door, bracing herself for the long and painful descent—

  “Juliette!”

  She turned to find Peter running behind her, his hand steadying the radio attached to his hip.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry— It’s— I don’t know how to do this—”

  “Spit it out,” she said impatiently. All she could think of was little Scottie, hanging by his neck. It was electrical ties in her imagination. That’s how her waking nightmare, her morbid thoughts, crafted the scene of his death in her head.

  “It’s just that, I got a private wire and—”

  “Keep up if you want, but I’ve got to get down there. ” She spun toward the stairwell.

  Peter grabbed her arm. Roughly. A forceful grip.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m supposed to take you into custody—”

  She whirled on him and saw how unsure of himself he looked.

  “What did you say?”

  “I’m just doing my duty, Sheriff, I swear. ” Peter reached for his metal cuffs. Juliette stared at him, disbelieving, as he snapped one link around her wrist and fumbled for the other.

  “Peter, what’s going on? I’ve got a friend I need to see to—”

  He shook his head. “The computer says you’re a suspect, ma’am. I’m just doing what it tells me to do—”

  And with that, the second link clicked around her other wrist, and Juliette looked down at her predicament, dumbfounded, the image of her young friend hanging by his neck unable to be shaken loose from her mind.

  9

  She was allowed a visitor, but who would Juliette want to see her like this? No one. So she sat with her back against the bars, the bleak view outside brightening with the rising of an unseen sun, the floor around her bare of folders and ghosts. She was alone, stripped of a job she wasn’t sure she ever wanted, a pile of bodies in her wake, her simple and easily understood life having come unraveled.

  “I’m sure this will pass,” a voice behind her said. Juliette leaned away from the steel rods and looked around to find Bernard standing behind her, his hands wrapped around the bars.

  Juliette moved away from him and sat on the cot, turning her back to the gray view.

  “You know I didn’t do this,” she said. “He was my friend. ”

  Bernard frowned. “What do you think you’re being held for? The boy committed suicide. He seems to have been distraught from recent tragedies. This is not unheard of when people move to a new section of the silo, away from friends and family, to take a job they’re not entirely suited for—”