Wool

In the holding cell there is a smaller, less blurry view of the outside world than in the cafeteria. Holston examines “dead pixels”(8) on the screen. Mayor Jahns comes to visit Holston in the cell. Resentful over Allison’s death, Holston is cold toward her and refuses his last meal. He notices that Jahns looks older and sadder than he remembers seeing her. Holston accuses Jahns of looking forward to the clear view on the screens after he cleans the cameras the next day. “That’s not fair” (11), Jahns says, reminding him that he broke the law by saying he wanted to go outside.

Jahns asks whether Holston will go through with the cleaning. Mysteriously, everyone who is condemned to clean vows not to do it but goes through with it anyway. Both Jahns and Holston wonder why this is.

In a flashback to three years earlier, Allison, who works in IT, is retrieving deleted information from an old server. She tells Holston about her discovery that uprisings used to take place about once every generation. She wonders whether the silo’s leaders have intentionally hidden this information. Allison also asks whether the “knowledge of whatever it was that made people move in here long, long ago” (17) prompted the uprisings.

Allison is expressing taboo ideas that could lead her to be sent to cleaning. Holston, though likewise curious about the silo’s unknown history, cautions her. He reflects that tensions in the silo are running high, as it has been five years since the last cleaning and the view of the outside is getting blurry.

In present time, a tech from IT puts the suit on Holston and gives him directions for cleaning the cameras. Holston remembers how he watched Allison unhurriedly clean the cameras and then set off for the hill, where she collapsed. Holston notices that the IT tech is worried that he will not go through with the cleaning and that the carefully constructed suit will go to waste.