Dust (Silo, #3)

by Hugh Howey

Her brother was dying. Charlotte knew her brother was dying, could see him like she saw him in her dreams, turning at the last minute to shield his eyes against the noonday sun. She saw him the way she saw every man in that last instant of their lives. There was Donny’s beautiful face on her screen, watching the inevitable fall from the sky.

Jimmy couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t Elise squeezing him this time – it was the idea of visitors. Of people not to be afraid of. Someone he could run to rather than from.

Somewhere between pointless dreams and hopeless dread was a desire to know the

‘It doesn’t bother me that I won’t be around one day,’ Lukas said after a while. ‘I don’t stress about the fact that I wasn’t here a hundred years ago. I think death will be a lot like that. A hundred years from now my life will be just like it was a hundred years ago.’

‘Yeah. Our actions, you know? They last for ever. Whatever we do, it’ll always be what we did. There’s no taking them back.’

Juliette was moved by the utter simplicity of his answer. Something resonated, but she wasn’t sure what it was.

‘And every mistake. But every good thing we do as well. They are immortal, every single touch we leave behind. Even if nobody sees them or remembers them, that doesn’t matter. That trail will always be what happened, what we did, every choice. The past lives on for ever. There’s no changing

Always have had a brother die and a mother take her own life. Always have had taken that damn job as sheriff. There was no going back. Apologies weren’t welds; they were just an admission that something had been broken. Often between two people.

‘You were just doing your job,’ she assured him. And then she thought just how powerful that sentiment was, how far down a nasty road that could take a person, shuffling along and simply doing their job.

What life you lived was divined by some calculus of your people, your leaders, like computers tallying your fate.

Heroes didn’t win. The heroes were whoever happened to win. History told their story – the dead didn’t say a word. All of it was bullshit.

We would be tossing this dirt and these rocks right into our own graves.’

No life had ever been truly saved, not in the history of mankind. They were merely prolonged. Everything comes to an end.

Sleep was a vehicle for passing the time, for avoiding the present. It was a trolley for the depressed, the impatient and the dying. Donald was all three.