Shift (Silo Trilogy #2)

by Hugh Howey

All it took was for a lot of seemingly decent people to put the wrong person in power, and then pay for their innocent choice.

“That word means something else, you know,” his father had told him once, when Mission had spoken of revolution. “It also means to go around and around. To revolve. One revolution, and you get right back to where you started.”

It was just the sort of pseudo-intellectual nonsense they regaled each other with late at night on dark landings

“Predict the inevitable,” she said, “and you’re bound to be right one day.”

“I was beautiful, once, you know.” Mrs. Crowe withdrew her hands and folded them in her lap. “Once that’s gone, once it leaves us for good, no one will ever see it again.”

humanity had been thrown to the brink of extinction by insane men in positions of power following one another, each thinking the others knew where they were going.

Did these men see themselves as deck hands on some great ark with a noble purpose? Or were they walking in circles simply because they knew the way?

Or was he looking for these similarities? Isn’t that what people did? Saw in others what they feared to see or hoped to see in themselves?

he wondered what this said of him, what it portended.

The hard things got easier the more you did them. It didn’t make it anymore fun to do the hard things, though.