by Hugh Howey
“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 anymore.”
••••
Troy entered the lift at the end of the hall, his legs still weak, and studied the 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; it was other items that seemed to be slipping away.
Memory wasn’t supposed to work like this. He felt as though he were on a ship beset by fog. There were breaks where he could spot the shoreline, the recent past, but much of what lay inland was obscured. Voices rang out, drifting over the water. Troy sensed bad things happening to the people deep in the woods.
The doors to the lift closed automatically, and he shook away the image. 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 button for the top floor clicked and glowed to life as he applied pressure. Something loomed above him. He could feel an attraction upward, a thread running clear through the top of his skull and yanking him like a puppet. There was something there he needed to see, something he’d left behind.
Troy struggled to remember as the lift lurched upward. He groped for this gossamer and fading dream, this glimpse through the mist—but the bitterness in his throat and the pills in his stomach were a tide tugging him away from the shore. Why had he been crying earlier? Or had he cried? He couldn’t remember. His stomach grumbled around the shake he’d been forced to drink. He shivered but was not cold.
The elevator accelerated up the shaft. There was a whooshing sound as another car or maybe the counterweight zoomed by. He knew these things. The round buttons flashed as the floors passed. There was an enormous spread of them, seventy in all. The centers of many were dull from years of rubbing. This didn’t seem right. Just yesterday, the buttons were shiny and new. Just yesterday, everything was.
The elevator 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 elevator and followed a short walk toward a room leaking chatter. His new boots were stiff on his feet, the generic gray coveralls itchy. He tried to imagine four more times of waking up like this, feeling this weak and disoriented. Five shifts of six months each. Five 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 seemed to modulate as he entered. A few heads turned his way, utensils pausing. He saw at once that his gray coveralls weren’t so generic. There was a scattering of colors seated at the tables, forks paused between plate and mouth. A large cluster of reds, quite a few yellows. No other grays.
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 his orientation. His orientation after—
He couldn’t remember. It was there, but he was losing it. And the food he had once grown tired of suddenly seemed appetizing.
“Sir.”
A young man nodded to Troy as he walked past, angling for the elevators. Troy thought he recognized the man, couldn’t be sure. Dreams intervened. The gentleman certainly seemed to have recognized him. Or was it the gray coveralls that stood out?
“First shift?”
An older gentleman approached, thin, with white and wispy hair that circled his head from temple to temple. 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 the short shifts and long dreams. He gazed out over the bustling tables toward the massive screen that covered the far wall.
Here was the shoreline and the edge of the woods—some part of the thing that was wrong. And sure enough, a real mist roamed the view, whirls of dust and hanging clouds over a field of scattered and half-eaten debris. A few metal poles bristled from the ground and sagged lifeless, the tents and flags long vanished. Troy remembered. He couldn’t name it, but his stomach twisted in recognition; it 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 lifeless hills, the gray slopes rising up toward dark clouds full of menacing and invisible things. The debris scattered everywhere was rotting away, molecules taking flight. Next shift, or the one after, 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.
“No, but thanks,” he stammered. Troy waved him off. “I think I’ve seen enough.”
Curious faces returned to their trays; 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, toward the elevator, knees weak with 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, D.C.
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 crosswalk signals, and scooted across.
Rayburn’s marble steps gleamed treacherously wet. A woman in a black dress clopped up them in heels, an umbrella held low, and Donald wondered how this mad dash of his made more sense than the carpeted hallway beneath the streets. By avoiding an irrational fear, he was putting himself in real danger. Slick steps and cutting through traffic—the banal claimed far more than the subject of strange phobias.
A doorman in a red jacket stood on the portico, out of the rain. He reached for the long brass handle, grabbed a dark patch of patina, and pulled the door open for the woman in the heels. She shook the rain loose from her umbrella, brushed her hair back, and ducked inside. Donald thanked the doorman and followed. He caught a glimpse of his matted and dripping hair in the glass.
Inside, a Security officer stood impassively while badges were scanned, red unblinking eyes beeping at barcodes. The woman spun through the turnstile, and then Donald. He checked the folder Thurman had given him, made sure it was still dry, and wondered why such archaic things were 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 page program hurried past, most likely fetching coffee. A TV crew stood outside of 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 grins who navigated the halls more confidently than even the newly elected.
Donald opened the folder and pretended to read as he made his way through the chaos, hoping to avoid conversation. He squeezed behind the cameraman and ducked into his office next door.
“Mr. Keene.”
Margaret, his secretary, stood up from her desk. She grabbed a pack of mail and held it out, a handful of notes stuck to the top.
Donald took the envelopes and piled them onto his folder. Margaret lowered her voice.
“Sir, you have a visitor.”
Donald glanced around the waiting room. It was empty. He saw that the door to his office was partway open.
“I’m sorry I let her in.” Margaret mimed carrying a box, her hands at her waist and her back arched. “She had a delivery. Said it was from the Senator.”
Donald waved her concerns aside. Margaret was older than him, in her mid-forties, and had come highly recommended, but she did have a conspiratorial streak. Perhaps it came with the years of experience.
“It’s fine,” Donald assured her. He found it interesting that there were a hundred senators, two from his state, but only one was referred to as the Senator. “I’ll see what it’s about. In the meantime, I need you to free up a daily block in my schedule. An hour or two in the morning would be ideal.” He flashed her the folder. “I’ve got something that’s going to eat up quite a bit of time.”
Margaret nodded and sat down in front of her computer. Donald turned toward his office.
“Oh, sir—?”
He looked back. She pointed to her head. “Your hair,” she hissed.
He patted his head and remembered the glimpse he’d caught earlier. He ran his fingers through hair matted down by the rain, and drops of water leapt off him like startled fleas. Margaret frowned and lifted her shoulders in a helpless shrug. Donald gave up and pushed his office door open, expecting to find someone sitting in one of the chairs across from his desk.
Instead, he saw someone wiggling underneath it.
“Hello?”
The door had bumped into something on the floor. Donald peeked around and saw a large box with a picture of a computer monitor on it. He glanced at the desk, saw the display was already set up.
“Oh, hey!”
The greeting was muffled by the hollow beneath his desk. Slender hips in a herringbone skirt wiggled back toward him. Donald knew who it was before her head emerged. He felt a flush of guilt, of anger at her being there unannounced.
“You know, you should have your cleaning lady dust under here once in a while.” Anna Thurman stood and smiled. She slapped her palms together, brushing them off before extending one his way. Donald shifted the folder and envelopes; he dropped a few of the latter as he fumbled to shake her hand.
“Hey, stranger.”
“Yeah. Hey.” He bent to retrieve the mail, losing a few more pieces in the process. Rain dribbled down his cheek and neck, hiding any sudden flush of perspiration. “What’s going on?” He stood and dumped the mail on his desk, walked around it to create some space between them—some room so he could breathe. The monitor sat there looking at him innocently, a film of protective plastic blurring the screen.
“Dad thought you might need an extra one.” Anna tucked a loose clump of auburn hair behind her ear. She still possessed the same alluring and elfin quality when they poked out like that. “I volunteered,” she explained, shrugging.
“Oh.” He placed the folder on his desk and thought about the drawing of the building he had briefly suspected was from her. And now, here she was. Checking his reflection in the new monitor, he saw the mess he had made of his hair. He reached up and tried to smooth it.
“Another thing,” Anna said. “Your computer would be better off on your desk. I know it’s unsightly, but the dust is gonna choke that thing to death. Dust is murder on these guys.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
He sat down and realized he could no longer see the chair across from his desk. He slid the new monitor to one side while Anna walked around and stood beside him, her arms crossed, completely relaxed. As if they’d seen each other yesterday and all the days before.
“I think you’ll want one more.” She pointed to the other side of his original monitor. She wasn’t standing there to make him uncomfortable—she’d been surveying his workspace. “I can bring a splitter and set it up for you. Maybe untangle those wires while I’m at it.”
“Oh. Okay.”
He halfway expected her to tousle his hair while she patronized him. He flinched at the thought. Just conjuring the image made it feel as though it were bound to happen—or already had. He rolled his chair away and made a show of adjusting the other monitor.
“So,” he said. “You’re in town.”
“Since last week. I was gonna stop by and see you and Helen on Saturday, but I’ve been so busy getting settled into my apartment. Unboxing things, you know?”
“Yeah.” He accidentally bumped the mouse, and the old monitor winked on. His computer was running. The terror of being in the same room with an ex subsided just enough for the timing of the day’s events to dawn on him.
“Wait.” He turned to Anna. “So you were over here installing this while your father was asking me if I was interested in his project?”
She raised an eyebrow. Donald realized it wasn’t something one learned—it was a talent her clan passed from parent to child.
“He practically gift-wrapped the election for you,” she said flatly.
Donald reached for the folder and riffed the pages like a deck of cards. “You know,” he said, “the illusion of free will would’ve been nice. That’s all.”
Anna laughed. She was about to tousle his hair, he could feel it. Dropping his hand from the folder and patting his jacket pocket, he felt for his phone. It was like Helen was there with him. He felt the urge to call her.
“Was Dad at least gentle with you?”
He looked up to see that she hadn’t moved. Her arms were still crossed, his hair untousled, nothing to panic about.
“What? Oh, yeah. Your father was fine. Like old times. In fact, it’s like he hasn’t aged a day.”
Smiling, she picked up something from his desk. A twist tie. From the monitor’s cord, perhaps. “He doesn’t really age, you know.” She crossed the room and picked up large molded pieces of foam and slid them noisily into the empty box. Donald found his eyes drifting toward her skirt and forced himself to look away.
“He takes nano treatments almost religiously. Started because of his knees. The military covered it for a while. Now he swears by them.”
“I didn’t know that,” Donald lied. He’d heard rumors, of course. It was “Botox for the whole body,” people said. Better than testosterone supplements. It cost a fortune, and you wouldn’t live forever, but you could sure as hell delay the pain of aging. He’d read a story recently about a guy who had died in the middle of a triathlon. A hundred-and-ten years old. His grandkids didn’t sound upset at all, said he was doing what he loved right up to the end.
Anna narrowed her eyes. “You don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, do you?”
“What? No. It’s fine, I guess. I just wouldn’t. Wait, why? Don’t tell me you’ve been—?”
Anna rested her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side. There was something oddly seductive about the defensive posture, something that whisked away the years since he’d last seen her.
“Do you think I would need to?” she asked him.
“No, no. It’s not that—” He waved his hands.
“It’s just that I don’t think I ever would.”
A smirk thinned her lips. Maturity had hardened Anna’s good looks, had refined her lean frame, but the fierceness from her youth remained. “You say that now,” she said, “but wait until your joints start to ache and your back goes out from something as simple as turning your head too fast. Then you’ll see.”
“Okay. Well.” He clapped his hands together. “This has been quite the day for catching up on old times.” Peeking again at the shiny new monitor, he gave his hair another minor adjustment.
“Yes, it has. Now, what day works best for you?” Anna interlocked the flaps on the large box and slid it toward the door with her foot. She walked around the back of the desk and stood beside him, a hand on his chair, the other reaching for his mouse.
“What day—?”
He watched while she changed some settings on his computer and the new monitor flashed to life. Donald could feel his pulse in his crotch, could smell a familiar perfume. The breeze she had caused by walking across the room seemed to stir all around him. Her body had pressed against air molecules that now pressed into him. This felt near enough to a caress, to a physical touch, that he wondered if he was cheating on Helen right at that very moment while Anna did little more than adjust sliders on his control panel.
“You know how to use this, right?” She slid the mouse from one screen to the other, dragging an old game of solitaire with it.
“Uh, yeah.” Donald squirmed in his seat. “Um… what do you mean about a day that works best for me?”
She let go of the mouse. It felt like she had taken her hand off his thigh. Stepping away from him, she peeled the plastic film off the monitor with a loud ripping sound and balled it up in her hands.
“Dad wants me to handle the mechanical spaces on the plans.” She gestured toward the folder as if she knew precisely what was inside. “I’m taking a sabbatical from the Institute until this Atlanta project is up and running. I thought we’d want to meet once a week to go over things.”
