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Extraordinary life!
    Holston polished the grime off the camera lens and wondered if the gradual blurring was even real. The grime certainly was. He saw it as he rubbed it away. But was it simple dirt, rather than some toxic, airborne grime? Could the program Allison discovered modify only what was already seen? Holston’s mind spun with so many new facts and ideas. He was like an adult child, born into a wide world, so much to piece together all at once that his head throbbed.
    The blur is real, he decided as he cleaned the last of the smear from the second lens. It was an overlay, like the false grays and browns the program must have used to hide that green field and this blue sky dotted with puffy white. They were hiding from them a world so beautiful, Holston had to concentrate not to just stand still and gape at it.
    He worked on the second of the four cameras and thought about those untrue walls beneath him, taking what they saw and modifying it. He wondered how many people in the silo knew. Any of them? What kind of fanatical devotion would it take to maintain this depressing illusion? Or was this a secret from before the last uprising? Was it an unknown lie perpetuated through the generations—a fibbing set of programs that continued to hum away on the silo computers with nobody aware? Because if someone knew, if they could show anything, why not something nice?
    The uprisings! Maybe it was just to prevent them from happening over and over again. Holston applied an ablative film to the second sensor and wondered if the ugly lie of an unpleasant outside world was some misguided attempt to keep people from wanting out. Could someone have decided that the truth was worse than a loss of power, of control? Or was it something deeper and more sinister? A fear of unabashed, free, many-as-you-like children? So many horrible possibilities.
    And what of Allison? Where was she? Holston shuffled around the corner of the concrete tower toward the third lens, and the familiar but strange skyscrapers in the distant city came into view. Only, there were more buildings than usual there. Some stood to either side, and an unfamiliar one loomed in the foreground. The others, the ones he knew by heart, were whole and shining, not twisted and jagged. Holston gazed over the crest of the verdant hills and imagined Allison walking over them at any minute. But that was ridiculous. How would she know he’d been expelled on this day? Would she remember the anniversary? Even after he’d missed the last two? Holston cursed his former cowardice, the years wasted. He would have to go to her, he decided.
    He had a sudden impulse to do just that, to tear off his helmet and bulky suit and scamper up the hill in nothing but his carbon undersuit, breathing in deep gulps of crisp air and laughing all the way to his waiting wife in some vast, unfathomable city full of people and squealing children.
    But no, there were appearances to keep, illusions to maintain. He wasn’t sure why, but it was what his wife had done, what all the other cleaners before him had done. Holston was now a member of that club, a member of the out group. There was a press of history, of precedent, to obey. They had known best. He would complete his performance for the in group he had just joined. He wasn’t sure why he was doing it, only that everyone before him had, and look at the secret they all shared. That secret was a powerful drug. He knew only to do what he had been told, to follow the numbers on the pockets, to clean mechanically while he considered the awesome implications of an outside world so big one couldn’t live to see it all, couldn’t breathe all the air, drink all the water, eat all the food.
    Holston dreamed of such things while he dutifully scrubbed the third lens, wiped, applied, sprayed, then moved to the last. His pulse was audible in his ears; his chest pounded in that constricting suit. Soon, soon, he told himself. He used the second wool pad and