Part 1 Holston
5
Three Years Earlier
“I want to go out. I want to go out. Iwanttogoout.”
something about Allison. Holston hadn’t even taken the time to respond, had just bolted up three
flights of stairs toward the scene.
“What’s going on?” he asked. He swam through the crowd by the door and found his wife
go!” He slapped their hands off his wife’s shins and was nearly rewarded by one of her boots to his
chin. “Settle down,” he said. He reached for her wrists, which were twisting this way and that to get
out of the desperate grips of grown men. “Baby, what the hell is going on?”
kicking feet, and Holston didn’t stop him. He saw now why three men were needed. He leaned close
hair.
“Allison, baby, you’ve gotta settle down.”
“I want to go out. I want to go out.” Her voice had quieted, but the words kept tumbling out.
“Don’t say that,” Holston told her. Chills ran through his body at the sound of the grave
utterances6. He held her cheeks. “Baby, don’t say that!”
had heard. Everyone had heard. His wife had signed her own death certificate.
wounded. Arrived to find them alive and kicking, but knowing at a glance that the injury was fatal.
Holston felt warm tears streak10 down his cheeks as he tried to wipe the hair from her face. Her eyes
moment, just a second, before he could wonder if she’d been drugged or abused in any way, a spark
of calm clarity registered there, a flash of sanity13, of cool calculation. And then it was blinked away
and her eyes went wild again as she begged to be let out, over and over.
“Lift her up,” Holston said. His husband eyes swam behind tears while he allowed his dutiful
sheriff-self to intervene. There was nothing for it but to lock her up, even as he wanted no more than
room enough to scream. “That way,” he told Connor, who had both hands under her twisting
shoulders. He nodded toward his office and the holding cell beyond. Just past that, down at the end of
the hall, the bright yellow paint on the great airlock door stood out, serene14 and menacing, silent and
waiting.
Once in the holding cell, Allison immediately calmed. She sat on the bench, no longer struggling
or blabbering, as if she’d only stopped by to rest and enjoy the view. Holston was now the writhing
mayor handled his procedural work. The two of them were treating Holston and his wife both like
patients. And even as Holston’s mind spun with the horror of the past half hour, in the back of his
sheriff brain, where he was always alert for the rising tensions in the silo, he was dimly aware of the
“Sweetheart, you’ve gotta talk to me,” he pleaded again and again. He stopped his pacing and
twisted the bars in his hands. Allison kept her back to him. She gazed at the wallscreen, at the brown
hills and gray sky and dark clouds. Now and then a hand came up to brush hair out of her face, but
otherwise she didn’t move or speak. Only when Holston’s key had gone into the lock, not long after
they had wrestled18 her in and shut the door, did she utter a single don’t that had convinced him to
remove it.
silo. Techs rumbled20 down the hallway as a suit was sized and readied. Cleaning tools were prepped in
commotion23 of it sporadically24 rumbled past the holding cell where Holston stood gazing at his wife.
Chattering25 techs went dreadfully silent as they squeezed past; they didn’t even seem to breathe in his
presence.
Hours passed and Allison refused to talk—behavior that created its own stir in the silo. Holston
spent the entire day blubbering through the bars, his brain on fire with confusion and agony. It had
happened in a single moment, the destruction of all that he knew. He tried to wrap his brain around it
while Allison sat in the cell, gazing out at the dismal26 land, seemingly pleased with her far worse
status as a cleaner.
It was after dark when she finally spoke27, after her last meal had been silently refused for the final
time, after the techs had finished in the airlock, closing the yellow door and retiring for a sleepless28
night. It was after his deputy had gone for the night, patting Holston on the shoulder twice. What felt
hoarse30 remonstrations, long after the hazy31 sun had settled over the hills visible from the cafeteria and
lounge—the hills that hid the rest of that distant, crumbling32 city—in the near-dark left in the holding
cell, Allison whispered something almost inaudible: “It’s not real.”
That’s what Holston thought he heard. He stirred.
“Baby?” He gripped the bars and pulled himself up to his knees. “Honey,” he whispered, wiping
the crust from his cheeks.
She turned. It was like the sun changing its mind and rising back over the hills. That she’d
acknowledged him gave him hope. It choked him up, causing him to think this had all been a
sickness, a fever, something they could have Doc write up to excuse her for everything she’d uttered.
She’d never meant it. She was saved just by snapping out of it, and Holston was saved just by seeing
her turn to him.
“Nothing you see is real,” she said quietly. She seemed calm of body even as her craziness
continued, condemning33 her with forbidden words.
“Come talk to me,” Holston said. He waved her to the bars.
Holston checked the time. It was long past visiting hours. He could be sent to cleaning just for
doing what he was about to do.
The key went into the lock without hesitation35.
Holston stepped inside with his wife and sat beside her. It killed him to not touch her, to not wrap
her up or drag her out to some safe place, back to their bed, where they could pretend it had all been a
bad dream.
But he didn’t dare move. He sat and twisted his hands together while she whispered:
“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 the breath from 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
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. “E-mails 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 e-mail? 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 twitch38. Broaching39 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 world of ours. Maybe
they were willing to risk everything for that chance …”
Her eyes focused on something far away. Perhaps she was seeing that lottery40 ticket they had yet 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.
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—never to want out of the silo. Never even to
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 at 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 frustration43 and boiling anger. Perhaps a great,
multigenerational betrayal had pushed her to the edge. “No thanks,” she said, her laughter subsiding44.
“Damn them if they stay here. I’m only coming back for you.”
there? You think they choose not to 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.
“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.”
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
sprint
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| n.短距离赛跑；vi. 奋力而跑，冲刺；vt.全速跑过 | |
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writhing
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| （因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的现在分词 ) | |
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grunts
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的第三人称单数 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说； 石鲈 | |
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exertion
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| n.尽力，努力 | |
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peeking
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| v.很快地看( peek的现在分词 )；偷看；窥视；微露出 | |
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utterances
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| n.发声( utterance的名词复数 )；说话方式；语调；言论 | |
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jolting
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| adj.令人震惊的 | |
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spun
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| v.纺，杜撰，急转身 | |
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mishap
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| n.不幸的事，不幸；灾祸 | |
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streak
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| n.条理，斑纹，倾向，少许，痕迹；v.加条纹，变成条纹，奔驰，快速移动 | |
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11
swirling
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| v.旋转，打旋( swirl的现在分词 ) | |
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awareness
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| n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智 | |
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sanity
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| n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确 | |
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serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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rumors
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| n.传闻( rumor的名词复数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷v.传闻( rumor的第三人称单数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷 | |
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hissing
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| n. 发嘶嘶声, 蔑视 动词hiss的现在分词形式 | |
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wrestled
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| v.（与某人）搏斗( wrestle的过去式和过去分词 )；扭成一团；扭打；（与…）摔跤 | |
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looming
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| n.上现蜃景（光通过低层大气发生异常折射形成的一种海市蜃楼）v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的现在分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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rumbled
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| 发出隆隆声，发出辘辘声( rumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 轰鸣着缓慢行进； 发现…的真相； 看穿（阴谋） | |
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hissed
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| 发嘶嘶声( hiss的过去式和过去分词 )； 发嘘声表示反对 | |
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chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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commotion
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| n.骚动，动乱 | |
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sporadically
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| adv.偶发地，零星地 | |
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chattering
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| n. （机器振动发出的）咔嗒声，(鸟等)鸣，啁啾 adj. 喋喋不休的，啾啾声的 动词chatter的现在分词形式 | |
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dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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sleepless
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| adj.不睡眠的，睡不著的，不休息的 | |
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fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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hoarse
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| adj.嘶哑的，沙哑的 | |
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hazy
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| adj.有薄雾的，朦胧的；不肯定的，模糊的 | |
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crumbling
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| adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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condemning
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| v.（通常因道义上的原因而）谴责( condemn的现在分词 )；宣判；宣布…不能使用；迫使…陷于不幸的境地 | |
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mattress
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| n.床垫，床褥 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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metallic
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| adj.金属的；金属制的；含金属的；产金属的；像金属的 | |
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sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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twitch
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| v.急拉，抽动，痉挛，抽搐；n.扯，阵痛，痉挛 | |
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broaching
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| n.拉削；推削；铰孔；扩孔v.谈起( broach的现在分词 )；打开并开始用；用凿子扩大（或修光）；（在桶上）钻孔取液体 | |
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lottery
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| n.抽彩；碰运气的事，难于算计的事 | |
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redeem
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| v.买回，赎回，挽回，恢复，履行（诺言等） | |
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42
offense
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| n.犯规，违法行为；冒犯，得罪 | |
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frustration
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| n.挫折，失败，失效，落空 | |
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44
subsiding
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| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的现在分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
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45
banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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