Chapter 5

"In the morning the city Spreads its wings Making a song In stone that sings." -Langston Hughes, The City

“What’s wrong, kid?” Chilo asked Orson as he entered the gym. She was halfway done with her booze still, and Orson realized this was the first time she was up and about before him. This was because he did not sleep much the previous night, and obviously it was noticeable.
“I don’t know…It was weird. You know how the band will start playing after every show? Like, lots of instruments and the type of music varies depending on how the show ended?” He asked her. She nodded her head slowly, trying to understand how this was directly affected to his sleeping patterns. Also, she wasn’t looking for an explanation, just a ‘Yes, I just didn’t get much sleep last night’ would have sufficed.
“Well, yesterday, I left the radio playing for a while after the show ended, and it just plays a bunch of different songs on a loop, and I heard a song I really liked that I’ve never heard on the station before, and when I was trying to sleep, I could remember some parts, and I kept trying to remember the rest and it kept playing in my head.” He said.
“You worded that really weird, but I know exactly what you mean.” She stood up, wiping her brow.
“Are you telling me you’ve never had a song stuck in your head before?” She asked.
“Um, I guess I have. But I would just like hum it or whatever, but it’s never kept me up for that long before.” He tried explaining again.
“Ah, I think I gotcha. Say, is there anything in this place that runs off of replaceable batteries, and isn’t part of the bunker’s power source?” She asked. Orson nodded his head.
“The temperature setting device.” He said.
“There’s a temperature setting device? I can crank the heat up past ‘Moist frost at the a*s-crack of an icy hell’s sunset’?” She asked, suddenly very interested.
“I…uh…” He looked at her with his version of her confused face.
“Sorry, it’s just like, kinda cold in this place, all the time. Especially with the grey tiles. Sometimes at night I’m tempted to go sleep in the garden because it’s so much warmer in there.” She said, standing up, wiping the dust off her hands after working with the spare parts in the storage room. Well, half of it. The deeper part is sealed off by a door that only a password and finger print can open.
“Is there a spare? Like, one just in case the one you already have breaks and you can just replace it?” She asked.
Orson thought for a second, then his eyes lit up.
“Yes, there is one I think!” He said, urging her to follow him.

 

The accessible part of the storage room was full of boxes that were full of spare parts, spare clothes (Which included spare bras, which Chilo took as well) and instruction manuals on how everything in the bunker works. As well as many other miscellaneous items and tools.
Orson and Chilo stood at the door which guarded the other half of the storage room, and he put his thumb on the scanner and put in the password.

07172056

“Is that the password to everything in here?” Chilo asked.
“Yes.”
“What does it mean?”
“It’s a date. The day of the first invasion, July 17^th 2056. “He said, opening the door.

The password protected area of the storage room was filled with shelves and shelves of strange items, with seemingly no connections to each other. Things like a pile of empty travel bags, some stuffed animals, lots of batteries, watches, earrings, locked diaries, golden ink fountain pens, snow globes, music boxes. The place was full of useless junk and useful junk and valuable junk and just flat out bizarre junk. There was also a small trap door labeled “provisions.”
“What’s that word mean?” She pointed at the trap door.
“Oh, it means ‘food’ pretty much, that’s where all the non-garden stuff comes from. Like the dried crackers and sealed stuff. Whenever I run out of that stuff in the kitchen I replace it with this stuff.” He said. Chilo was impressed at the amount of preparation that went into making this bunker, turning her attention away from the trap door.
“What’s the rhyme and reason here? What qualifies as being important enough to store in the super-secret storage closet club?” Chilo asked, picking up an empty glass ball where the inside was colored with cloudy dark red and light blue waves.
“Unless they decide give their stuff away, whenever someone in a bunker dies, it all comes here.” He said, digging through a box full of metal and plastic objects.
Chilo slowly put the colorful orb pack on its groove on the shelf. She looked at all the items.
“If you suddenly get a traveling caravan of perfectly 7 unproblematic healthy people, and they live in here with you until you die, what would you want to come in here?” Chilo asked.
“That’s a dark question, I’m not sure.” He said, stopping his shuffling through the box.
“My necklace.” He said, and then continued his search.
“I thought so.” Chilo continued snooping through the ominous funeral museum.
She also spotted a small locked box. A part of her wanted to find the key and open it, but she thought against it. That would probably be in bad taste. She did, however, carefully picked it up and looked at the bottom, where a professional-looking carving that read “Annie” in cursive with a small black heart next to it hid behind a thin blanket of dust that Chilo swiped away.
Her heart kind of sunk when she saw it, and realized all of these used to belong to actual people, who lived on the planet, in the bunker, their entire lives. She started to understand why they decided to preserve their personal belongings, as there was probably a large shorting of them. And yet, they had a community, they obviously had friends and enemies and loved ones in here, no matter how small the world, it was their entire world.

She looked at Orson, who picked out what he had been looking for, seeming satisfied with his work.
She thought about how he only had that one necklace, how the people who walked out on him probably took everything that didn’t already belong in the bunker or was in here, in the funeral place. She felt a strange kind of anger at those people.
“Chilo?” He asked, snapping her out of her trance.
“You okay?” He asked.
“Yeah, it’s just dark and dusty in here. What’s that?” She asked, looking at the small handheld device in his hand.
“The…Extra temperature device. You asked for it remember?” He looked at her, almost concerned.
“Ah! Yeah alright, get that, some batteries, and uh, ooh, that knife, and some screws. Oh! And you have to let me at the heat thingy after this, I’m shivering.” She said.
“You got it.” He said, gathering everything. Chilo looked at the wall where she saw something she missed before.
“Uh, one last thing. What’s that?” She pointed to a strange contraption built into the wall, with a bunch of numbers on slots. The only reason she noticed it is because one of the slots clicked and the number changed.
“That’s the clock. It shows the time, day, month, and year.” He pointed to it.

 

It read 0-9-1-5-2-2-0-8�"1-0:3-7�"THU�"

Orson explained it, and how a normal calendar would work, but they didn’t bother to make calendars 200 years in preparation, so the bunker builders just made a built in calendar and clock powered by gears and the bunkers power source.
“THU, what does that mean?” She asked.
“It means it’s Thursday.” He said.
Both of them suddenly thought of the same thing at the same time, with similar feelings on the matter, but didn’t think the other one felt the same.
“How long until I can leave?” She asked, and Orson’s stomach seemed to sink a little bit.
“…” He stared at the slot-based calendar for a long time.
“Orson.” She said quietly.
“15 days. 2 weeks and a day.” He said
“Then it’ll be October. It’ll have been one month since you’ve been in here.” He said, assortment of items in hand, walking out.
She sighed, looking at the pile of backpacks. She grabbed one, then followed him out, closing the door behind her.