“What did you find?” he whispered. And he damned the machines that would make him sound disinterested, that would make him sound as if he knew. Why couldn’t he just say that he had no idea what was wrong with the world or with himself and please, please help him? Help each other.
“You aren’t sending us out there to clean. You’re sending something else. I’ll tell you what I found—”
To Donald, her voice was the entire universe. The weight of the soil overhead vanished, as did the solidness beneath his feet. It was just him in a bubble, and that voice.
“—we took two samples and another from the airlock that should’ve been inert gas. We took a sample from the ramp and one from the hills.”
Suddenly, he was the silent one. His coveralls clung to him. He waited and waited, but she outlasted him. She wanted him to beg for it. Maybe she knew how lost he was.
“What did you find?” he asked again.
“That you’re a lying sack of ratshit. That everything we’ve been told, any time we’ve trusted you, we’ve been fools. We take for granted everything you show us, everything you tell us, and none of it’s true. Maybe there were no ancients. You know these goddamn books over here? Burn them all. And you let Lukas believe this crap—”
“The books are real,” Donald said.
“Ratshit. Like the argon? Is the argon real? What the hell are you pumping into the airlocks when we go out to clean?”
Donald repeated her question in his head. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Stop with the games. I know what’s going on now. When you send us outside, you pump our airlocks full of something that eats away at us. It takes the seals and gaskets first, and then our bodies. You’ve got it down to a science, haven’t you? Well, I found the camera feeds you hid. I cut them weeks ago. Yeah, that was me. And I saw the power lines coming in. I saw the pipes. The gas is in the pipes, isn’t it?”
“Juliette, listen to me—”
“Don’t you say my name like you know me. You don’t know me. All these talks, telling me how my silo was built like you built it yourself, telling Lukas about a disappeared world like you’d seen it with your own eyes. Were you trying to get us to like you? To think you were our friend? Saying you want to help us?”
Donald watched the clock tick down. The techs would be back soon. He’d have to yell at them to get out. He couldn’t leave the conversation like this.
“Stop calling us,” Juliette said. “The buzzing and the flashing lights, it’s giving us headaches. If you keep doing this every day, I’m going to start tearing shit down, and I’ve got enough to worry about.”
“Listen … Please—”
“No, you listen. You are cut off from us. We don’t want your cameras, your power, your gas. I’m cutting it all. And no one will ever clean from here again. No more of this bullshit argon. The next time I go out, it’ll be with clean air. Now fuck off and leave us to it.”
“Juliette—”
But the line was dead.
Donald pulled his headset off and threw it against the desk. Playing cards scattered, and the book fell from its perch, losing someone’s place.
Argon? What the hell had come over her? The last time she’d been so angry was when she said she had found some machine, threatened to come after him. But this was something else. Argon. Pumped out with a cleaning. He had no idea what she was talking about. Pumped out with a cleaning—
A bout of dizziness struck him, and Donald sank back into his chair. His coveralls were damp with sweat. He clutched a bloody rag and remembered a fog-filled airlock. He remembered stumbling down a ramp with a jostling crowd, crying for Helen, the vision of bomb blasts seared in his retinas, Anna and Charlotte tugging him along, while a white cloud billowed out around him.
The gas. He knew how the cleanings went. There was gas to pressurize the airlock. Gas to push against the outside air. Gas to push out.
“The dust is in the air,” Donald said. He leaned against the counter, his knees weak. The nanos eating away at mankind, they were loosed on the world with every cleaning, little puffs like clockwork, tick-tock with each exile.
The headphones sat there quietly. “I am an ancient,” Donald said, using her words. He grabbed the headphones from the desk and repeated into the microphone, loudly, “I am an ancient! I did this!”
He sagged once more against the desk, catching himself before he fell. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Louder, yelling it: “I’m sorry!”
But nobody was listening.
26