Shift (Silo, 2)
About
NOW A SERIES ON APPLE TV+ THAT STEPHEN KING CALLS “MYSTERIOUS AND TERRIFICALLY SUSPENSEFUL… EXCELLENT SCIENCE FICTION WITH THREE-DIMENSIONAL CHARACTERS.”In this second volume in the New York Times best-selling Silo series, Hugh Howey describes the catastrophic events that led to the creation of the silo— and the beginning of the endIn 2007, the Center for Automation in Nanobiotech (CAN) outlined the hardware and software platforms that would one day allow robots smaller than human cells to make medical diagnoses, conduct repairs, and even self-propagate. The technology has an almost limitless capacity for good—but in the wrong hands, it could have an equally boundless capacity for evil.In the same year, the CBS network re-aired a program about the effects of propranolol on sufferers of extreme trauma. A simple pill, it had been discovered, could wipe out the memory of any traumatic event.At almost the same moment in humanity’s broad history, mankind discovered the means for bringing about its utter downfall, and the ability to forget it ever happened. With this godlike power at their fingertips, can humanity be trusted to create a new—and better—world? Or is it doomed to bring about its own destruction?
Unchaptered
p. 55
He had seen videos of what Charlotte did, camera feeds from the drones and hen from the missiles as they were guided in to their targets. The video quality was amazing. You could see people turning to look up to the heavens in surprise, could see the last moments of their lives, could cycle through the video frame by frame and decide—after the fact—if this had been your man or not. He knew what his sister did, what she dealt with.
p. 155
The last two weeks had been like summer camp, where being around the same people almost every hour o the day brought a level of familiarity and intimacy that knowing them casually for years could never match. There was something about forced confinement that brought people together. Beyond the obvious, physical ways.
p. 236
“Predict the inevitable,” she said, “and you’re bound to be right one day.”
p. 273
Often, it was the man with the most promises who got the chits, not the one who made people better.
p. 449
Life at its essence, Jimmy learned, was a series of meals and bowel movements. There was some sleep mixed in as well, but little effort was required for that. He didn’t learn this great Rule of the World until the water stopped flushing. Nobody thinks about their bowel movements until the water stops flushing. And then it’s all one thinks about.