Second Shift - Order (Part 7 of the Silo Series) (Wool) by Hugh Howey Page A

hair on her knuckles. Still, he believed her. He always did.
    “The world is a lot like me, you know.” She lifted her gaze toward the ceiling and perhaps beyond. “The world was beautiful once, too.”
    Mission sensed an Old Time story brewing like a storm of clouds. More lockers were slammed in the hallway, little voices gathering.
    “Tell me,” Mission said, remembering the hours that had passed like eyeblinks at her feet, the songs she sang while children slept. “Tell me about the old world.”
    The Old Crow’s eyes narrowed and settled on a dark corner of the room. A deep breath rattled in her once-proud chest. Her lips, furrowed with the wrinkles of time, parted, and a story began, a story Mission had heard a thousand times before. But it never got old, visiting this land of the Crow’s imagination. And as the little ones skipped into the room, they too fell silent and gathered around. They slipped into their tiny desks and followed along with the widest of eyes and the most open of unknowing minds these tales of a world, once beautiful, and now fairly forgotten.

•11•
     
    The stories Mrs. Crowe made up were straight from the children’s books. There were blue skies and lands of green, white clouds and rainbows, animals like dogs and cats but bigger than people. Juvenile stuff. And yet, these fantastic tales of a better place somewhere impossibly distant left Mission feeling angry at the world he was stuck with. He thought this as he left the Up Top behind and wound his way past the farms and the levels of his youth. The promise of an elsewhere highlighted the flaws of the familiar. He had gone off to be a porter, to fly away and be all that he wished, and what he wished was to be further away than this world would allow.
    These were dangerous thoughts. They reminded him of his mother and where she had been sent seventeen years ago to the day.
    Past the farms, Mission noted something burning further down the silo. The air was hazy, and there was the bitter tinge of smoke on the back of his tongue. A trash pile, maybe. Someone who didn’t want to pay the fee to have it ported to recycling. Or someone who didn’t think the silo would be around long enough to need to recycle.
    It could be an accident, of course. It could be a legitimate danger. But that’s not where Mission’s mind went. Nobody thought that way anymore. He could see it on the faces of those on the stairwell. He could see by the way belongings were clutched, children sheltered, that the future of everything was in doubt. There hadn’t been nearly as much new graffiti lately. Even the delinquents had begun to wonder: What’s the point?
    Mission adjusted his light pack and hurried down to the IT levels. He remembered his father’s talk of restoring the silo after the last outbreak of violence. There were physical things to patch, like the stairwell, but the population, too. Physical explosions led to population explosions. Record numbers of lottery winners followed the fighting. His father spoke of so many bodies to dispose of that the airlock had been employed, the great flames cremating the dead by the score, their ashes set loose to blur the view. It made clear the link between life and death, that each birth was owed to another’s passing. The difference with Mission was that he knew who that other person was.
    He reached IT and pushed his way through a crowd on landing thirty-four. It was mostly boys his age or a little older, many that he recognized, a lot from the mids. Several who didn’t match this profile stood with computers tucked under their arms, wires dangling, jostling with the rest. Mission picked his way through the throng. A computer was dropped, which led to shouting and shoving. Inside, he found a barrier had been set up just beyond the door. Two men from Security manned the temporary gate and allowed only crumpled IT workers through.
    “Delivery,” Mission shouted. He worked his way to the front, carefully