Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1-5)

“It doesn’t have to be real. Any of this. None of this.” She looked to the screen. Holston leaned so close he could smell the dried sweat from the day’s struggle.

“Baby, what’s going on?”

Her hair stirred with his words. She reached out and rubbed the darkening display, feeling the pixels.

“It could be morning right now and we’d never know. There could be people outside.” She turned and looked at him. “They could be watching us,” she said with a sinister grin.

Holston held her gaze. She didn’t seem crazy at all, not like earlier. Her words were crazy, but she didn’t seem to be. “Where did you get that idea?” he asked. He thought he knew, but he asked anyway. “Did you find something on the hard drives?” He’d heard that she had run straight from her lab toward the airlock, already barking her madness. Something had happened while she was at work. “What did you find?”

“There’s more deleted than just from the uprising,” she whispered. “Of course there would be. Everything is deleted. All the recent stuff, too.” She laughed. Her voice got suddenly loud and her eyes lost focus. “Emails you never sent me, I bet!”

“Honey.” Holston dared to reach for her hands, and she didn’t pull away. He held them. “What did you find? Was it an email? Who was it from?”

She shook her head. “No. I found the programs they use. The ones that make pictures on the screens that look so real.” She looked back to the quickening dusk. “IT,” she said. “Eye. Tee. They’re the ones. They know. It’s a secret that only they know.” She shook her head.

“What secret?” Holston couldn’t tell if this was nonsense or important. He only knew that she was talking.

“But now I know. And you will too. I’ll come back for you, I swear. This’ll be different. We’ll break the cycle, you and me. I’ll come back and we’ll go over that hill together.” She laughed. “If it’s there,” she said loudly. “If that hill is there and it’s green, we’ll go over it together.”

She turned to him.

“There is no uprising, not really, there’s just a gradual leak. Just the people who know, who want out.” She smiled. “They get to go out,” she said. “They get just what they ask for. I know why they clean, why they say they won’t but why they do. I know. I know. And they never come back, they wait and wait and wait, but I won’t. I’ll come right back. This’ll be different.”

Holston squeezed her hands. Tears were dripping off his cheeks. “Baby, why are you doing this?” He felt like she wanted to explain herself now that the silo was dark and they were all alone.

“I know about the uprisings,” she said.

Holston nodded. “I know. You told me. There were others—”

“No.” Allison pulled away from him, but it was only to make space so she could look him in the eyes. Hers were no longer wild, as before.

“Holston, I know why the uprisings took place. I know why.”

Allison bit her lower lip. Holston waited, his body tense.

“It was always over the doubt, the suspicion, that things weren’t as bad out there as they seemed. You’ve felt that, right? That we could be anywhere, living a lie?”

Holston knew better than to answer, to even twitch. Broaching this subject led to cleaning. He sat frozen and waited.

“It was probably the younger generations,” Allison said. “Every twenty years or so. They wanted to push further, to explore, I think. Don’t you ever feel that urge? Didn’t you when you were younger?” Her eyes lost focus. “Or maybe it was the couples, newly married, who were driven to madness when they were told they couldn’t have kids in this damned, limited place. Maybe they were willing to risk everything for that chance—”

Her eyes focused on something far away. Perhaps she was seeing that lottery ticket they had yet to redeem and now never would. She looked back to Holston. He wondered if he could be sent to cleaning even for his silence, for not yelling her down as she uttered every one of the great forbidden words.

“It could even have been the elderly residents,” she said, “cooped up too long, no longer afraid in their final years, maybe wanting to move out and make room for the others, for the few precious grandchildren. Whoever it was, whoever, every uprising took place because of this doubt, this feeling, that we’re in the bad place right here.” She looked around the cell.

“You can’t say that,” Holston whispered. “That’s the great offense—”

Allison nodded. “Expressing any desire to leave. Yes. The great offense. Don’t you see why? Why is that so forbidden? Because all the uprisings started with that desire, that’s why.”

“You get what you ask for,” Holston recited, those words drilled into his head since youth. His parents had warned him—their only precious child—to never want out of the silo. Never even think it. Don’t let it cross your mind. It was instant death, that thought, and it would be the destruction of their one and only.

He looked back to his wife. He still didn’t understand her madness, this decision. So she had found deleted programs that could make worlds on computer screens look real. What did that mean? Why do this?

“Why?” he asked her. “Why do it this way? Why didn’t you come to me? There has to be a better way to find out what’s going on. We could start by telling people what you’re finding on those drives—”

“And be the ones who start the next great uprising?” Allison laughed. Some of the madness was still there, or maybe it was just an intense frustration and boiling anger. Perhaps a great, multi-generational betrayal had pushed her to the edge. “No thanks,” she said, her laughter subsiding. “I wiped everything I found. I don’t want them to know. Damn them if they stay here. I’m only coming back for you.”

“You don’t come back from this,” Holston said angrily. “You think the banished are still out there? You think they choose to not come back because they feel betrayed by us?”

“Why do you think they do the cleaning?” Allison asked. “Why do they pick up their wool and set to work without hesitation?”

Holston sighed. He felt the anger in him draining away. “No one knows why,” he said.

“But why do you think?”

“We’ve talked about this,” he said. “How many times have we discussed this?” He was sure all couples whispered their theories when they were alone. He looked past Allison as he remembered those times. He looked to the wall and saw the moon’s position and read in it the night’s hour. Their time was limited. His wife would be gone tomorrow. That simple thought came often like lightning from stormy clouds.

“Everyone has theories,” he said. “We’ve shared ours countless times. Let’s just—”

“But now you know something new,” Allison told him. She let go of his hand and brushed the hair from her face. “You and I know something new, and now it all makes sense. It makes perfect sense. And tomorrow I’ll know for sure.” Allison smiled. She patted Holston’s hand as if he were a child. “And one day, my love, you will know it, too.”

6

Present Time

The first year without her, Holston had waited, buying into her insanity, hoping she’d come back. He’d spent the first anniversary of her death scrubbing the holding cell clean, washing the yellow airlock door, straining for some sound, some knock, that the ghost of his wife was back to set him free.

When it didn’t happen, he began to consider the alternative: Going out after her. He had spent enough days, weeks, months going through her computer files, reading some of what she had pieced together, making sense of half of it, to become half mad himself. His world was a lie, he came to believe, and without Allison in it he had nothing to live for even if it were truth.

The second anniversary of her departure was his year of cowardice. He had walked to work, the poisonous words in his mouth—his desire to go out—but he had choked them down at the last second. He and Deputy Marnes had gone on patrol that day with the secret of how near he’d come to death burning inside of him. That was a long year of cowardice, of letting Allison down. The first year had been her failure; last year had been his. But no more.