Mission Jones

Mish · Mission

Mission Jones is a former porter now farming and married to Allie, expecting a child while unable to remember important parts of his past.

Story so far

Mission grew up on the farms and at The Nest. His birth coincided with his mother being sent to cleaning, and his birthday became the anniversary of her death. A quarrel with his father drove him from farming into work with the Porters, sleeping in way stations and saving chits. He had also survived a suicide attempt that left a mark around his neck. Returning to the farms softened his anger, but he joined porters intercepting a generator transported by farmers, cutting its supporting rope at Morgan’s command and joining the fight. On his seventeenth birthday he visited Mrs. Crowe, concealed the cause of his facial injury and agreed to carry her correspondence.

After secretly reading and resealing the Crow’s letter, Mission received a hidden note from Rodny, read it and destroyed it. Fearing Rodny might be sent to cleaning, he tried to obtain Wyck’s delivery work as a pretext for reaching him in IT. A blast near Supply hurled Mission against the railing and tore a landing free. He helped people and searched for Cam, but an accusation turned a mob against him. Fleeing down the damaged staircase toward burning Lower Dispatch, he came to believe Cam had died and to suspect that the delivery fee was bait, that porters were being targeted and that IT was recruiting boys to worsen the crisis.

Mission summoned old friends to the Nest, which he believed would be safe. He offered all his money for Lyn and Joel to carry him upstairs in a body bag, changed into Security whites and cut his hair to avoid recognition. After Katelyn’s body took his place, he continued separately, passing patrols by claiming to be reporting back. At the Nest he found Allie, Frankie and the Crow, still insisting Rodny needed help. He blamed himself for being absent when Riley and Cam died. When boots approached, he barricaded the Crow’s door. He challenged the armed Rodny’s claim that the Crow frightened them, and was shot in the stomach as he threw himself aside. Wounded, he imagined children and a shared farm with Allie.

Mission is subsequently farming during planting season and married to Allie. He expects a disappointing bean harvest, but feels relieved that her pregnancy began within their permitted window. They agree to name a daughter Allison; he proposes Cam for a son without clearly remembering whether he knew anyone by that name. He also cannot remember his birthday or how he acquired the mark on his neck and scar on his stomach.

Appearance

Mission has a mark around his neck and a scar on his stomach, neither of which he can now explain. He cut his hair during his escape through the silo.

Role

He now farms and is married to Allie, with a child expected. Important memories of his former life, including the origins of his scars, are inaccessible to him.

Relationships

Allie — Allie is his wife and is pregnant; Mission is relieved that conception fell within their permitted window.

Cam — Mission believed Cam died during the crisis. He now proposes the name for a son without clearly remembering its connection to anyone he knew.

Rodny — Mission tried to reach and help Rodny, but Rodny later fired at him at the Nest.

Mrs. Crowe — Mission visited Mrs. Crowe, carried her correspondence and sought refuge with her at the Nest.

Sources — 143 recorded facts, by chapter

Chapter 26

Mission Jones will turn seventeen the next day.
Mission’s birthday is also the anniversary of his mother’s death.
Mission is a porter carrying a dead man toward the farm where he grew up.
Mission has not visited the farms or seen his father for almost four months.
Mission sometimes sees his brother at the Nest.
Mission believes the silo is approaching its end.
Mission nervously covers his neck when thinking about death.
Mission and his friends have inhaled potato glue from plastic bags during late-night gatherings.
Mission grew up with his friends in the Nest.
Mission left farming after a fight with his father, promising never to dig another trench.
Mission blamed the farms and his family for his unhappiness.

Chapter 27

Mission and Cam deliver the body to the coroner, who tips them for their speed.
Mission knows of a planned midnight rendezvous of porters that Cam has not been told about.
Mission seeks a load to carry to the farms to avoid his father accusing him of laziness.
Mission volunteers to carry a load for Winters without payment because he is already going upstairs.
Mission carries Winters’s water pump strapped to the outside of his porter’s pack.
Returning to the farms softens Mission’s anger and makes him feel at home.
Mission avoids his aunt to escape her fussing and lectures.
Mission expects cafeteria food production to reduce porters’ delivery work.
Mission believes his generation will become as complacent as its elders by the time it takes charge.
Mission plans to pass the Crow’s way the following day, assuming he survives the night.
Mission has saved three hundred and eighty-four chits.
Mission stays in way stations rather than an apartment of his own.

Chapter 28

Mission carries a pump to his father before delivering it because he wants his father to see the load.
Mission receives porter bonuses based on the weight carried and his delivery time.
Mission is grateful to have left farm work for a different occupation.
Mission accepts his father’s invitation to lunch before a delivery that night.
Mission declines to visit Allie on this trip.
Mission considers warning his father and Riley to stay inside that night but says nothing.
Mission thinks increasing departmental self-sufficiency may make cooperation harder.

Chapter 29

Mission waits with a gang of porters on the darkened staircase to intercept a load being lowered by rope.
Mission has a healed mark around his neck from a rope.
Mission once tried to end his own life.
Mission was born in confinement and released while his mother was sent out to clean.
At Morgan’s command, Mission cuts the rope supporting the farmers’ generator.
Mission joins the fighting on the landing after cutting the rope.

Chapter 34

Mission suffers a facial injury in a scuffle with farmers.
Mission rests at the upper way station on level ten after the fight.
Mission visits the Crow on his birthday.
Mission remembers learning that his mother was sent to clean because of his birth.
Mission lies to Mrs. Crowe that his facial injury was an accident.
Mission agrees to carry Mrs. Crowe’s correspondence for Rodny and Jeffery.
Mission brings farm vegetables for Mrs. Crowe’s drinks.
Mission stays to hear the Crow tell a story about the old world.

Chapter 35

The Crow’s tales of a better world leave Mission angry at the world he inhabits.
Mission smells smoke while descending past the farms.
Mission insists on handing the Crow’s letter to Rodny personally.
Mission takes an application for its reusable paper rather than to apply for a job.
Mission secretly opens and reads Mrs. Crowe’s letter to Rodny.
Mission reseals Mrs. Crowe’s letter after reading it.
Mission initially suspects Rodny is being punished.
Mission and Rodny attended school together.
Mission receives a concealed note during his farewell handshake with Rodny.

Chapter 36

Mission conceals Rodny’s note from Jeffery and Wyck.
Mission is called a zero because no lottery number was drawn for his birth.
Mission fears Wyck’s delivery offer may be a test.
Mission postpones deciding whether to take Wyck’s delivery job.
Mission reads Rodny’s note after leaving IT and descending two turns of stairs.
Mission destroys Rodny’s note and scatters the pieces over the stair railing.

Chapter 41

Mission fears that Rodny may be sent to clean.
Mission wonders whether the Pact allows someone to volunteer to clean in another person’s place.
Mission has never read the Pact.
Mission agrees to carry Drexel’s medicines to Central Dispatch for onward delivery.
Mission earns two coins by arguing that equal weights of feathers and rocks require bags of different weights.
Mission considers asking Mrs. Crowe to help discover why Rodny is being punished.
Mission suspects Cam has accepted the job offered by Wyck.
Mission accepts a forty-five-pound delivery from Mechanical to Supply.
Mission plans to reach Supply ahead of Cam and do Wyck’s other job.
Mission wants Wyck’s job as a pretext to return to level thirty-four and see Rodny.

Chapter 42

Mission reaches Supply without seeing Cam on the stairs.
Mission’s worries about Rodny distract him from his birthday.
Mission asks Joyce for deliveries in Wyck’s name.
Mission lies that he has been sent to relieve a porter whose mother is gravely ill.
Mission considers offering Cam a vacation chit for the chance to collect Wyck’s payment on his behalf.
Mission hopes an IT delivery will let him get through security to help Rodny.
A blast strikes while Mission is four levels below Supply.
Mission nearly falls over the railing when the blast throws him against it.
Mission sees several people fall into the stairwell after a landing tears free.
Mission helps a frightened woman to her feet and directs her upward away from the blast.
Mission goes toward the blast to help people on the stairs and look for Cam.
Mission searches the crowd below for Cam without finding him.
Mission initially treats the blast’s proximity to Cam’s delivery as coincidence.
A woman who survived the blast points out Mission and accuses the porter of causing it.

Chapter 43

Mission flees down the damaged staircase from a pursuing mob.
Mission suspects someone mistook him for the person who delivered the package because of his blue neckerchief.
Mission heads for Lower Dispatch as a refuge.
Mission witnesses one of his pursuers fall down the stairwell alive.
Mission runs into smoke rising from below.

Chapter 48

Mission feels certain that Cam died in the fall at the gap in the stair rails.
Mission begins to suspect that the unusually large delivery fee was never meant to be paid.
Mission enters the smoke-filled Dispatch with his face covered and his knife strap unsnapped.
Mission helps carry wet files from Dispatch’s burned main hall to a dormitory.
Mission suspects that someone is deliberately targeting porters.
Mission suspects that IT is recruiting boys to undermine the silo rather than repair computers.
Mission plans to change the color of his coveralls and contact old friends from the Nest.
Mission has a bright red welt around his neck.
Mission fears that Rodny is in danger or possesses information about the crisis.
Mission believes the attacks are intended to make everyone as angry as possible.
Mission insists on going up top and offers all his vacation chits to do so.

Chapter 49

Mission seeks help from trusted friends from the Nest.
Mission asks Robbie to send wires summoning his friends to the Nest.
Mission believes the Nest will be safe because nobody would attack the school or the Crow.
Mission initially plans to change his coverall colors to avoid being recognized.
Mission wonders whether the apparent buildup of Security and fighting is intended to get everyone killed.
Mission offers Lyn and Joel all his money, 384 chits, for one last tandem haul using a body bag.

Chapter 50

Mission removes his soaked halfboots and socks to keep water out of the bag and reduce the load.
Mission changes from porter blues into Security whites as an additional precaution.
Mission keeps his knife strapped to his waist while being concealed in the bag.
Mission is carried out of Lower Dispatch in a bag while other porters treat him as a dead person.
Mission finds being carried and feeling like a burden more distressing than the bag’s physical discomfort.
Mission’s arms become numb from the straps pinching his shoulders.
Mission recalls that his father learned of his mother’s pregnancy too late for it to be terminated.
Mission remembers attempting to hang himself exactly two years earlier.
The knot in Mission’s hanging attempt slipped and left his neck bleeding.
Mission attempted suicide by jumping from the lower stairwell in Mechanical with a rope over the pipes.
Mission is now too frightened to attempt suicide again.
Mission wonders whether fear of burdening others explains why he avoids Allie and ran away from home.
Mission’s journey concealed in the bag takes place on his birthday.

Chapter 55

Mission hides inside a body bag while Joel and Lyn carry him upstairs.
Mission cuts his hair to make himself less recognizable to the people searching for him.
Mission has trouble breathing inside the bag despite cutting ventilation slits.
Mission decides to continue upstairs separately after Katelyn’s body takes his place in the bag.

Chapter 56

Mission’s white Security clothing makes people fall silent or retreat when they see him.
Mission passes Security patrols by claiming that he fought below and is reporting back.
Mission reaches the Nest and finds Frankie and Allie with Mrs. Crowe.
Mission insists that Rodny needs help and was afraid.

Chapter 57

Mission and his friends decide to wait until daybreak for the others to arrive.
Mission fears Rodny may already be on his way to a cleaning.
Mission blames himself for being absent when Riley and Cam died.
Mission barricades the Crow’s door with a desk when he hears approaching boots.
Mission challenges Rodny’s claim that the Crow is frightening them, pointing out that Rodny has the gun.
Mission is shot in the stomach as he throws himself sideways when Rodny fires.
Mission imagines having children and combining his land with Allie’s while lying wounded.
Mission tells Allie that it is his birthday as he struggles to speak.

Chapter 58

Mission works at farming during planting season.
Mission expects the bean harvest to fall short of his hopes.
Mission is married to Allie.
Mission feels relieved that Allie conceived within their permitted window.
Mission agrees to name a daughter Allison.
Mission proposes Cam as the name for a son.
Mission cannot clearly remember whether he knew someone named Cam.
Mission cannot remember how he acquired the mark on his neck or the scar on his stomach.
Mission cannot remember his birthday.