yellowed and crazed plastic dome. He nodded silently at the ticking of the hand, stood up, his back stooped for a moment as he fought to straighten it. He ran his hands down his coveralls, reached to the folder, closed it tenderly, and tucked it under his arm.
“Tomorrow,” he whispered, nodding to Juliette.
“See you in the morning,” she said, as he staggered out toward the cafeteria.
Juliette watched him go, feeling the sorriest for him. She recognized the love behind his loss. It was painful to imagine him back in his small apartment, sitting on a cot wide enough for one, sobbing over that folder until he finally collapsed into his fitful dreams.
Once alone, she placed Holston’s folder on her desk and slid her keyboard closer. The keys had been worn bare long ago, but someone in recent years had neatly reprinted the letters in black ink. Now even these handwritten faces were fading and would soon need another coat. Juliette would have to see to that—she couldn’t type without looking at her keyboard like all these office people could.
She slowly pecked out a request to wire down to Mechanical. After another day of getting little done, of being distracted by the mystery of Holston’s decision, she had come to a realization: there was no way she could perform this man’s job until she first understood why he had turned his back on it, and on the silo itself. It was a nagging rattle keeping her from other problems. So instead of kidding herself, she was going to embrace the challenge. Which meant that she needed to know more than his folder contained.
She wasn’t sure how to get the things she needed, how to even access them, but she knew people who might. This was what she missed most about the down deep. They were family there, all with useful skills that overlapped and covered one another. Anything she could do for any of them, she would. And she knew they would do the same, even be an army for her. This was a comfort she sorely missed, a safety net that felt all too far away.
After sending the request, she sat back with Holston’s folder. Here was a man, a good man, who had known her deepest secrets. He was the only one who ever had. And soon, God willing, Juliette would uncover his.
3
It was well after ten by the time Juliette pushed away from her desk. Her eyes had become too sore to stare at her monitor any longer, too tired to read one more case note. She powered down her computer, filed the folders away, killed the overhead lights, and locked the office door from the outside.
As she pocketed her keys, her stomach grumbled, and the fading odor of a rabbit stew reminded her that she’d missed yet another dinner. That made it three nights in a row. Three nights of focusing so hard on a job she barely knew how to perform, a job she had no one to guide her through, that she’d neglected to eat. If her office didn’t abut a noisy, aroma-filled cafeteria, she might be able to forgive herself.
She pulled her keys back out and crossed the dimly lit room, weaving around nearly invisible chairs left scattered between the tables. A teenage couple was just leaving, having stolen a few dark moments in the wallscreen’s twilight before curfew. Juliette called out for them to descend safely, mostly because it felt like the sheriff thing to do, and they giggled at her as they disappeared into the stairwell. She imagined they were already holding hands and would steal a few kisses before they got to their apartments. Adults knew of these illicit things but let them slide, a gift each generation bestowed on the next. For Juliette, however, it was different. She had made the same choices as an adult, to love without sanction, and so her hypocrisy was more keenly felt.
As she approached the kitchen, she noticed the cafeteria wasn’t quite empty. A lone figure sat in the deep shadows by the wallscreen, staring at the inky blackness of nighttime clouds hanging over darkened hills.
It appeared to be the same figure as the night before, the one who had watched the sunlight gradually fade while Juliette worked alone in her office. She adjusted her route to the kitchen in order to pass behind the man. Staring all day at folders full of bad intentions had made her a budding paranoid. She used to admire people who stood out, but now she could feel herself wary of them.
She moved between the wallscreen and the nearest table, pausing to push chairs back into place, their metal feet scraping on the tile. She kept an eye on the seated man, but he never once turned toward the noise. He just stared up at the clouds, something in his lap, a hand held up by his chin.
Juliette walked right behind him, passing between the table and his chair, which had been moved strangely close to the wallscreen. She fought the urge to clear her throat or ask him a question. Instead, she passed on by, jangling her master key from the crowded ring that had come with her new job.
Twice, she glanced back over her shoulder before she reached the kitchen door. The man did not move.
She let herself inside the kitchen and hit one of the light switches. After a genial flicker, the overhead bulbs popped on and shattered her night vision. She pulled a gallon of juice from one of the walk-in refrigerators and grabbed a clean glass from the drying rack. Back in the walk-in, she found the stew—covered and already cold—and brought it out as well. She ladled two scoops into a bowl and rattled around in a drawer for a spoon. She only briefly considered heating up the stew as she returned the large pot to its frosted shelf.
With her juice and bowl in hand, she returned to the cafeteria, knocking the lights off with her elbow and pushing the door shut with her foot. She sat down in the darkness at the end of one of the long tables and slurped on her late meal, keeping an eye on this strange man who seemed to peer into the darkness as if something could be seen out there.
Her spoon eventually scraped the bottom of her empty bowl, she finished the last of her juice, and not once had the man turned away from the wallscreen. She pushed the dishes away from herself, insanely curious. The figure reacted to this, unless it was mere coincidence. He leaned forward and held his outstretched hand out at the screen. Juliette thought she could make out a rod or stick in his grasp—but it was too dark to tell. After a moment, he leaned over his lap, and Juliette heard the squeak of charcoal on expensive-sounding paper. She got up, taking this movement as an opening, and strolled closer to where he was sitting.
“Raiding the larder, are we?” he asked.
His voice startled her.
“Worked through dinner,” she stammered, as if
“Must be nice to have the keys.”
He still didn’t turn away from the screen, and Juliette reminded herself to lock the kitchen door before she left.
“What’re you doing?” she asked.
The man reached behind himself and grabbed a nearby chair, slid it around to face the screen. “You wanna see?”
Juliette approached warily, grabbed the backrest, and deliberately slid the chair a few inches further from the man. It was too dark in the room to make out his features, but his voice sounded young. She chastised herself for not committing him to memory the night before when there’d been more light. She would need to become more observant if she was going to be any good at her job.
“What’re we looking at, exactly?” she asked. She stole a glance at his lap, where a large piece of white paper faintly glowed in the wan light leaking from the stairwell. It was spread flat across his thighs as if a board or something hard rested beneath it.
“I think those two are going to part. Look there.”
The man pointed at the wallscreen and into a mix of blacks so rich and so deep as to appear as one. The contours and shadowy hues Juliette could make out almost seemed to be a trick played by her eyes—as real as ghosts. But she followed his finger, wondering if he were mad or drunk, and tolerated the exhausting silence that followed.
“There,” he whispered, excitement on his breath.
Juliette saw a flash. A spot of light. Like someone flicking on a torch far across a dark generator room. And then it was gone.
She bolted out of her chair and stood near to the wallscreen, wondering what was out there.
The man’s charcoal squeaked on his paper.
“What the hell was
