Silo 49: Deep Dark Read Online Free PDF Page B

it was an animal and for still others it was knowledge.
    Each thing was a part of Silo's plan and the plan was perfect and when the last human had been made, completed their travels and finally entered the airlock, the silo had closed itself off and the creatures that roamed outside had destroyed each other until nothing alive was left.
    Except that it was thought that there might yet be Others hidden in much the same way the humans were hidden. They merely waited for their chance to destroy the humans once again. It was said that when the last Other died, the world would be reborn and humans would emerge from the safe embrace of the silo to reclaim it.
    This she had accepted as fact in childhood. It made sense. She had seen the screen Up Top and would never have wanted to endure what she saw beyond the safety of the silo. To go outside was to die. But she had seen for herself, or at least she had seen in the image, that this had not always been the case.
    People from this image had once been outside and it had been beautiful. And if they hadn't lived there, but perhaps only visited it from the safety of the silo, why had the woman jumped? What had made being in the silo so unbearable that people jumped when denied that beautiful world?
    The only possibility she could think of was that those people in the image were First People, the ones who were born among the Others and called by the silo. But if that were true, why were they happy? In her imagination, the First People had traveled through a landscape blasted by dust and terrible to see. Her mind's eye saw them struggling against that landscape and arriving at the airlock thankful and knowing they were saved.
    She had certainly never imagined a beautiful world with clear skies spread wide and blue over a world of rich, abundant green. That image didn't look like it showed people trying desperately to escape from Others. It looked more like the world promised to humanity once the Others were gone.
    But the tenets of the silo were clear in terms of truth. All Conduct Above The Rails was more than just an edict on conducting honest business. It meant being truthful and honest with everyone and to not hurt others. It meant to consider the effects of one's actions. It was more than a simple saying. It was a way of life. And if the silo history wasn't truthful, was it because it was mistaken or because it was a lie? One was hard to imagine and the other impossible to accept.
    She turned another page and realized that she knew deep in her heart the evidence she’d seen wasn't wrong. She had no idea what a nuke was but clearly it was something devastating and it had made all the people from outside come into the silo so it could take care of them. She also knew in her heart that it had been a terrible change for some of them which meant that the silo had not been a perfect ideal place after all.
    S he snuck a glance at her family. Her husband and daughter were engaged in a game at the table as they chatted and didn’t seem to notice her preoccupied state. She returned to her book and then broached with herself the only real topic she needed to consider. What was she was going to do about her find? She couldn't return the object and say it wasn't usable because it would be far too easy to be caught in such a lie. Anyone finding the hidden catch would open it and know exactly why she had returned it.
    She could destroy the image and the note by burning them in her work room. She could shred the paper and a touch of her soldering iron at the highest setting would set it ablaze. That was surely the safest thing to do, and probably the smartest, but she shrunk from the idea of actually doing it. It might be the only such letter and image in existence and she could not be the one to snuff them away forever.
    What she really wanted to do was to find out the truth. She knew exactly where she might start too. A visit to the person who sent it in for reclamation would be a good place to