Shadows (7 page)

“
Yep.
”

“
Couldn't we
do this at some more civilized time?
”

“
Nope.
”

“
You do
realize, it's going to be two or three in the morning before we get
back to the Up Top.
”

“
Yep.
”

With that, Charlie picked
up the pace. They weren't taking two steps at a time, but they were
moving at a considerable pace, and being a porter, Susan had
learned the art of a foot-glide, knowing how to let the pull of
gravity do the work and dictate the pace.

Charlie stopped by the
landing on level thirty-three.

“
How do I
look?
”
he asked, straightening his coveralls and
catching his breath.

“
Like a
criminal,
”
Susan replied.

“
Perfect.
Now, just play along with whatever happens down
there.
”

“
Charles,
”
Susan said, deploying his formal
name in a hope of getting a serious response.
“
You're not
going to get me into trouble, are you?
”

“
Me?
”
Charlie replied, with a look of
innocence on his face.

Hand in hand, they walked
casually down the last flight of stairs and up to the security
turnstile leading into IT. Susan was surprised to find her hands
were shaking. Charlie must have felt that as he squeezed her hand
affectionately, as if to say, don't sweat it. He pulled an ID tag
from his pocket and swiped the lock. The red light turned to green
and he started to walk through when the security guard
spoke.

“
Hey. You
can't take her in there. She's gonna need to sign in and
demonstrate a valid purpose for being on this
floor.
”

Charlie
leaned close to the guard. Under his breath, he said,
“
Look at the time. You don't seriously think I brought a
beautiful, young, female porter down here for porting, do
you?
”

The guard looked at Susan
and smiled, but his wasn't a smile that felt warm and inviting,
more one that spoke of hidden desires. He nodded with his head,
silently signaling for her to follow Charlie.

Susan scooted after
Charlie, passing through the turnstile with him.

“
Thanks,
”
Charlie said to the
guard.

The guard nodded and turned
back to his station.

As they
walked through the empty floor, Susan whispered,
“
Don't you ever worry about getting caught? What happens if
you get busted? What then?
”

“
Hey, it's
OK,
”
Charlie assured her.

“
No, it's
not,
”
she insisted, keeping her voice down even though the
rows of computer workstations within the open plan floor were
empty.
“
What if he'd stopped us. What if he'd turned us
in?
”

“
You're not
thinking like a guy,
”
Charlie replied.
“
He thinks
I've brought you down here to score, to impress you with where I
work. Honestly, it was a safe bet he'd let us through. Guys are
like that.
”

Susan batted
him on the shoulder, saying,
“
This had better be
good. And if you think you're getting any down here, you're sorely
mistaken.
”

“
Hah,
”
Charlie replied.
“
I wouldn't
dream of it ... well, actually.
”

Susan batted his shoulder
again, this time, more playfully.

A series of meeting rooms
dominated the far end of the floor. Charlie led her through to the
back of the floor where a large metal door blocked off what could
have been a storage room. Charlie punched a series of numeric
buttons on a keypad and the door slid open.

“
What is this
place?
”
Susan asked.

“
This is
where Barney shadows,
”
Charlie replied.
“
He's
brought me in here a couple of times. This place is beyond top
secret. Oh, and the best is yet to come.
”

They stepped inside the
room and the door slid shut behind them.

A gentle hum filled the
room, whispering of untold computing power busily undertaking some
unknown task with lightning speed. There were several rows of
computer servers encased in black towers, each of them reaching up
to shoulder height. Above and below them, bundles of wiring and
cabling wound its way into the floor and up to the ceiling. Susan
had never seen anything like this before. Her world was one of
primitive survival, of pots and pans, knives and needles, but never
electronics, at least, nothing on this scale. The only computer
terminals she'd ever seen were like those on the main floor. They
looked old and strangely archaic, but the servers were pristine.
They spoke of another time, when the world thrived on
technology.

“
Come,
”
Charlie said. He led her to the end
of the far row and removed a grate from the raised floor, only the
grate lifted to reveal a darkened tunnel. A ladder led down below
the floor.

“
You've
noticed before, haven't you?
”
he asked as he
began climbing down the ladder.

“
Yes,
”
Susan replied with a sense of
dawning awareness.
“
The concrete slab
that supports IT is thicker than all the others.
”

“
Because it's
hollow,
”
Charlie replied.

Susan felt overwhelmed, in
awe of what she was seeing. Charlie was right, he couldn't have
told her this, she had to see it for herself or she would have
never believed there was a secret level within the silo.

“
And Barney
comes down here?
”
she asked as Charlie reached the
bottom of the ladder and turned on the lights.

“
Yeah, pretty
cool, huh? Sometimes, we'll come down here on a Friday night and
sneak in a little distilled juice. Have a few drinks and bullshit
into the wee hours of the morning.
”

“
I don't get
it,
”
Susan said, stepped off the bottom rung.
“
Why would there be a secret room?
”

Charlie
replied,
“
Because our silo was built on
secrets.
”

As they began walking down
the tunnel, Charlie stopped and pointed up at the concrete ceiling.
A thin join-line ran along the concrete, down the wall and across
the floor.

“
Do you know
what that is?
”
he asked.

“
No.
”

“
Think about
it. Where were we within the silo?
”

Susan thought about it for
a second before replying.

“
The far wall
of the silo!
”

“
Yep. You are
now about to step OUT of the silo. Pretty cool, huh? The whole silo
could collapse, and this apartment would remain
intact.
”

“
Wow,
”
she replied, stepping forward out of
the tunnel and into the apartment. There was a neatly made cot to
one side, along with several shelves full of books and binders and
glossy folders. In front of her were two desks, while on the other
side of the apartment there was a kitchenette complete with a large
walk-in-pantry.

“
What is this
place?
”
Susan asked.

“
Best we
understand it,
”
Charlie continued.
“
It's designed to ensure the knowledge from before lives
on.
”

“
But
why?
”
Susan asked as Charlie handed her a book.

“
Why?
”
Charlie repeated.
“
So that knowledge isn't lost forever.
”

“
No,
”
Susan replied, flicking through the
largest book she'd ever seen, seeing dozens of colored images
flickering before her, their colors bursting before her
eyes.
“
Why hide this?
”

“
Ah,
yes,
”
Charlie replied.
“
That is a very good
question. Why indeed.
”

He pulled a chair over for
her to sit in. Susan felt conflicted. On one hand, she wanted to
read each page and carefully scrutinize every picture, on the other
she wanted to flick through and take in the whole. There were
animals she'd never dreamed existed, some with spots, some with
stripes. She'd heard of birds, but never with the array of colors
she saw before her, and there were fish that looked like they'd
been painted in the brightest of reds and yellows.

“
I ...
I.
”

“
Yeah,
”
Charlie said.
“
I was the
same when Barney first showed me this stuff. Takes a while to get
your head around it all. Don't rush. Take your
time.
”

Susan felt
giddy. She lost track of time. She wasn
’
t sure how long
she sat there looking through those books, picking up one after the
other and losing herself in the glossy pages. Charlie was so
engrossed reading something that on those rare occasions when she
looked up she didn
’
t want to disturb
him so she just kept browsing, feeling a sense of awe and
astonishment at all she was seeing.

Giraffes.
Susan didn
’
t want to hazard a guess at how to pronounce
such an unusual name, but there were several images of these lanky
creatures. Their legs looked impossibly thin, with thigh muscles up
high, but below their knees their their legs looked like bone
wrapped in skin. The absurd length of their necks compared with
their heads looked almost comical, as though they were the product
of some child
’
s imagination. If
she doodled with a crayon she couldn
’
t have come up with
an animal this outlandish. The patches of color on the
giraffe
’
s coat reminded Susan of the paint blistering
and peeling off the wall in her parent
’
s apartment. How did
animals like this arise? She would love to learn more about not
only them but all the astonishing diversity she saw in the animal
kingdom.

She flicked through a few
more pages.

Snakes looked
like coils of rope, but they had no arms or legs. How did they
move? They seemed to be so astonishingly flexible she wondered if
they had bones. And their eyes were like nothing
she
’
d ever seen, matching the color of their skin but with
a tiny black slit for a pupil. Susan wasn
’
t sure what was
more bizarre, that these impossible creatures were covered in tiny
plates that looked like fingernails or that their tongue split in
two when they stuck it out.

Charlie had
put down one book and picked up another. Out of curiosity, Susan
grabbed his old book, wondering what he
’
d been looking
at.

Rockets were long, thin
cylinders that shot up into the sky, riding on a fiery, flaming
tail that glowed like the sun. It was difficult to judge their
size, but they looked huge. Some of them were clearly split into
segments that served some obscure function that had been lost in
time.

There were
photos of Earth as seen from space. White clouds floated below a
night blacker than any she
’
d ever seen, even
when the lights went out in the silo. Space seemed serene. Thinking
about it, another equally applicable term sprang to mind: surreal.
The idea of clouds floating beneath someone was like that of a
children's tale. To soar above the clouds was the stuff of dreams.
To float through space must have been surreal, she decided, at
least as best she understood the word. The images before her were
probing the limits of both her comprehension and her
vocabulary.

Susan particularly liked
the images of people floating inside busy metal rooms with wires
and computer consoles lining the walls. She wanted to ask Charlie
about them, but the furrows on his brow as he read his book spoke
of intense concentration so she went back to her book. At first,
she thought these photos had been taken while the people were
jumping, as how else could you float without being in water?
Turning the page, she saw another photo of three people drifting
within something called the space station, only they were floating
at different angles. One of them, a woman, was completely upside
down. Her hair drifted away from her head when both she and her
hair should have fallen to the ground. What marvelous wonders there
had once been, Susan thought.