322 PsyLo: Part 2

"Still not safe," said the Curator.

For 300 years, the Curator had been part of a nepotistic reality in SILO. Nepotism was the tradition and, in three centuries, each Curator had been an exemplar of wisdom, planning, and cleverness. The people of SILO had never had reason to challenge patriarchy, by which system their civilization ran.

Yet, they were not some feudal people. Their entire subterranean culture was very sophisticated. Even hunkered down, they had doubled, then tripled the data with which they had originally arrived—the then-total medical knowledge, state-of-the-art engineering, and the hand-selected trade and professional syllabi by which they survived. Their AI evolved itself into a self-advancing near-omniscience that partnered with them in perfect dovetail.

Each family held a trade or profession, and even new sciences, as they arose, were assigned as secondary and then tertiary responsibilities to them. Thus, knowledge, in the same nepotistic architecture that determined the position of Curator, was passed down and legislated into a consortium so complex that the AI was required to keep it synchronized.

They had planned so well in the beginning, when the missiles had started falling and their own missile had erased the people of Omsk over 5,000 miles away that fateful day. Omsk's loss was their gain, arriving at their silo for survival—ready, organized, and willing to do all necessary.

They had not only survived, but they had thrived. 652 original "colonizers" had grown to 1890. But they wondered, how many were outside?

They knew there were some, but they had no idea what was going on out there. Their links to the outside world had been destroyed by those on the outside—their antennae, the fiberoptics, and cameras. Even shortwave couldn't penetrate the reinforced ferroconcrete chrysalis from which they hoped to emerge one day...

...gloriously.

Despite a marvelous society within, all they had to "read" the outside was a geiger counter. It was what would be their signal to finally decommision the radial bondage around their uppermost portal seal.

One day.

The Curator turned away from the screen, still reflecting red in all its warnings. "Not this year, I'm afraid." Privately, he found it curious that the reading never changed, even after 300 years.

________

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

For Sunday, November 17, Day 322 of the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge.

366 WORDS (without A/N)

44 DAYS TO GO! THE SILO SURVIVES ON IN THIS VOCAL CHALLENGE, 366 CURIES A DAY.

There are currently three Vocal survivalist writers in this 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge:

• L.C. (Surviver) Schäfer

• Rachel (Reviver) Deeming

• Gerard (Screwdriver) DiLeo