Story so far
Bernard Holland ran IT and interfered in the sheriff’s appointment, obtaining Peter Billings’s acceptance without Jahns’s approval and refusing personally to sign Juliette’s contract. After Jahns’s death he claimed the acting mayoralty under The Pact, while remaining the prime suspect in her death investigation. His proposed forgiveness moratorium could, Juliette realized, cover that investigation. He reported Scottie’s death as suicide and offered to drop charges against Juliette if she returned below. When she later went out to clean, he expected her to die within sight. Her disappearance beyond the hill threatened rules he was charged with enforcing, and he called Silo One to report the problem. Preserving server data remained his highest priority; he also knew and enjoyed the deception used to transform cleaners’ perceptions. He had once visited Mechanical to kill a man.
After searching Juliette’s possessions for evidence of collusion, Bernard chose Lukas as his shadow despite his long reluctance to entrust anyone else with the operation. He revealed the hidden rooms and directed Lukas to study The Order. The attack on IT left Bernard injured by a blast and surprised that the attackers had guns. A call from the neighboring silo then reached him despite his belief that it was dead. He sought to mark and ignore its calls, confined Lukas during training, and directed the fighting by radio. He planned to have Lukas run IT while preparing Peter for a future mayoralty. Bernard described a world deliberately destroyed centuries earlier, condemned those responsible, and theorized about their motives; he insisted that disobeying their rules killed everyone, while obedience caused suffering. He told Lukas that preserving secrets would require killing.
As the conflict continued, Bernard retained Juliette’s generator manual and planned to move farmers into Mechanical, possibly under Sammi. He admitted that George had been killed, refused to identify the killer, and claimed fourteen threats had been eliminated that year. When Lukas asked to leave confinement, Bernard treated the request as a wish to go outside. After recognizing Juliette on the radio, he threatened further cleanings and vowed to build Lukas’s suit so he could not reach the hills. Even reports of surrender in Mechanical did not stop Bernard sentencing people to death. Lukas accused him of killing a man and claimed proof. Bernard’s own removal for cleaning subsequently caused the mayoral election, in which he had been running unopposed, to be called off.
Appearance
Bernard is short and portly, with a potbelly, glasses, crooked front teeth, and a wispy mustache. His customary clothing is pressed silver IT overalls.
Role
Bernard is the displaced IT chief and acting mayor whose removal for cleaning ended his unopposed mayoral campaign. He had enforced the silo’s secrets and directed the fight against Mechanical.
Relationships
Juliette — Bernard opposed Juliette, expected her cleaning to kill her, and threatened further cleanings when she contacted him alive.
Lukas — Bernard chose Lukas as his successor, confined him during training, and later turned his request to leave into a sentence to go outside.
Jahns — Bernard was the prime suspect in the investigation of Jahns’s death; Juliette saw that his proposed amnesty could cover that case.
Silo One — Bernard reported Juliette’s disappearance beyond the hill to Silo One.
Sources — 153 recorded facts, by chapter
Chapter 10
- Bernard Holland runs IT.
- Bernard is short and portly and wears glasses.
- Bernard has crooked front teeth and a wispy mustache.
- Bernard reports that eight known atmospheric toxins have declined slightly and two have risen.
- Bernard has already obtained Peter Billings’s acceptance of the sheriff position without Jahns’s approval.
- Bernard refuses to make a formal accusation against the preferred sheriff candidate.
- Bernard apologizes for his interference in choosing the sheriff.
Chapter 11
- Jahns fears Bernard is accumulating influence through judicial and sheriff appointments.
Chapter 15
- Bernard invokes clauses in the Pact to support IT’s exemptions from power restrictions.
- Bernard accuses Jahns of using the power holiday to retaliate against him.
- Bernard says rising server temperatures could force an unprecedented reduction in operations.
- Bernard refuses to sign Juliette’s appointment contract himself.
- Bernard questions whether Jahns will outlive another sheriff.
- Bernard directs Lukas to sign Jahns’s paperwork and make copies.
- Bernard orders that Sims refill the visitors’ canteens.
Chapter 16
- Jahns and Marnes discuss making a concession to calm Bernard.
Chapter 19
- Bernard introduces himself to Juliette as Bernard Holland.
- Bernard says the Pact makes him acting mayor until a vote can be arranged.
- Bernard is the prime suspect in the investigation of Jahns’s death.
- Bernard reports a rumor that Jahns died from exhausting herself on the climb.
- Bernard demands that Juliette keep him informed about everything as acting mayor.
- Bernard is small and potbellied, wears glasses, and dresses in pressed silver IT overalls.
Chapter 23
- Bernard is serving as interim mayor.
- Bernard says he intended to remove Holston’s closed case file for refiling in his offices.
- Bernard reminds Juliette that she reports to him under the Pact.
- Bernard plans a forgiveness moratorium to clear cases and reassure the silo.
- Bernard throws both files in the rat dispute into Juliette’s recycling bin.
- Bernard chooses “Forgive and forget” as his election motto.
- Bernard intends to serve as mayor while continuing his IT duties.
- Juliette recognizes that Bernard’s proposed forgiveness could cover a case in which he is the prime suspect.
Chapter 24
- Juliette thinks she hears Bernard’s voice in the late-night IT meeting.
Chapter 26
- Bernard says Scottie committed suicide after becoming distraught over recent tragedies.
- Bernard says Juliette is held for unauthorized entry, threats, tampering with IT affairs, and removing IT property.
- Bernard says a vote will address the restriction against simultaneously being mayor and IT head.
- Bernard offers to drop the charges if Juliette returns below and checks in with deputies along the way.
Chapter 29
- Bernard does not appear while Juliette is being charged.
Chapter 30
- Bernard watches Juliette’s cleaning from the cafeteria.
- Bernard has watched nearly a dozen cleanings.
- Bernard enjoys the deceptive transformation in cleaners’ perceptions that he and his predecessors have refined.
- Bernard hopes Peter Billings will eventually become mayor.
- Bernard considers remaining mayor for an election or two but believes his IT duties are harder to replace.
- Bernard expects Juliette to collapse near the bodies of two previous cleaners.
- Bernard races to level thirty-four after Juliette disappears over the hill.
- Bernard’s highest priority is preserving the server data.
- Bernard is ordered never to allow anyone sent outside to pass out of sight.
- Bernard still believes Juliette cannot survive outside after she disappears from view.
- Bernard has visited Mechanical once to kill a man.
- Bernard oversees the restoration to data drives of information deleted during the last uprising.
- Bernard believes that controlling both IT and the mayor’s office will let him conceal the disruption caused by Juliette.
- Bernard calls Silo One to report a problem in Silo Eighteen.
Chapter 32
- Marsh complains that Bernard is making him do too much climbing.
Chapter 33
- Samson says Bernard witnessed Juliette’s departure.
Chapter 38
- Bernard angrily questions IT technicians after Juliette survives beyond the hill.
- Bernard takes Juliette’s belongings from Lukas and orders him to join the inspection.
- Bernard searches for an explanation of how Juliette reached the far side of the hill.
- Bernard wants Juliette’s notebook examined for possible collusion.
- Bernard angrily dismisses Sims after Sims suggests Juliette was lucky.
- Bernard says he has never taken a shadow because he dreads anyone else running his operation.
- Bernard claims silos have been destroyed because leaders failed to plan for their successors.
- Bernard wants a successor who already has access to the servers.
- Bernard asks Lukas to become his shadow.
Chapter 41
- Bernard intends Lukas to continue his regular duties while learning to take over in an emergency.
- Bernard says his will would explain his responsibilities to a successor in an emergency.
- Bernard wants to replace Sims as executor of his will.
- Bernard confirms that overseeing cleanings would be a small part of Lukas’s new responsibilities.
- Bernard insists the hidden floor access must be locked after returning upstairs.
- Bernard describes the hidden knowledge he will share as a gift he once received himself.
- Bernard claims the silo and all its inhabitants depend on what he is about to show Lukas.
Chapter 43
- McLain believes Bernard is probably away from IT because he is acting as mayor.
Chapter 47
- Bernard says no one else comes into the hidden area he is showing Lukas.
- Bernard predicts deaths and disorder because the cleaning did not take place.
- Bernard says the silos were designed to prevent the disorder he expects.
- Bernard promises Lukas a spare key that Lukas must keep around his neck.
- Bernard instructs Lukas to study the book containing their history and emergency procedures.
- Bernard says the book’s authors experienced many bad things.
- Bernard identifies the book’s authors as the one people, predating those before the uprising.
- Bernard tells Lukas he needs to know where to find information in the book rather than memorize it.
Chapter 51
- Bernard stands behind the sheriff and issues instructions to his men before the attack.
Chapter 52
- Bernard regains consciousness after a blast with a throbbing head, ringing ears, and a bleeding nose.
- Bernard admits he did not expect the attackers to have guns.
- Bernard orders Lukas to remain below because he cannot risk both of them being harmed.
- Bernard wants to report the attack through the server.
- Bernard initially plugs his headset into line 1, then cancels the outgoing call when he sees line 17 flashing.
- Bernard had believed the silo calling on line 17 to be dead.
- Bernard recognizes the caller but denies knowing who it is.
- Bernard responds to the caller’s accusation by insisting the caller knew the rules.
Chapter 57
- Bernard brings Lukas pork ribs for dinner.
- Bernard says the pig was killed in crossfire during a flare-up of resistance in the bazaar.
- Bernard says most of the pork was distributed to spouses of people his side lost.
- Bernard reports five losses in addition to three from the first attack.
- Bernard has left the decision about Lukas’s continued confinement to Sims.
- Bernard believes hunger will eventually force Mechanical to surrender.
- Bernard plans to have Lukas run IT after the election is rescheduled.
- Bernard wants Lukas to build a caller indicator with red for silo seventeen and green for all other silos.
- Bernard lets the incoming server call go unanswered.
- Bernard is trying to arrange for Lukas’s mother to visit him in the server room.
- Bernard instructs Lukas to study the Order’s sections on insurrections and uprisings.
- Bernard forbids Lukas to answer the server before his induction and clearance with the other IT heads.
Chapter 59
- Thoughts of Bernard prevented Juliette from settling in the apartment intended for the head of IT.
Chapter 60
- Bernard has secretly told Lukas that he is preparing Peter Billings to become mayor.
- Bernard has told Lukas that he and Peter will eventually work together.
- Peter says Bernard decides when Lukas can leave confinement.
- According to Peter, Bernard has discussed bringing Lukas’s mother to visit.
Chapter 63
- Bernard directs security forces in the down deep by radio while working in the hidden study.
- Bernard requires Lukas to learn the Order before reading the other books.
- Bernard says many people will eventually read the Legacy books if the silo survives.
- Bernard says constructing the silos took decades.
- Bernard says moving people and supplies into the silos took much less time than building them.
- Bernard says information about what happened outside is stored in the hidden area but is not in the books.
- Bernard insists that the past differs from the Legacy and that knowing the past does not matter.
- Bernard tells Lukas that he is almost ready after hearing Lukas’s interpretation of the Order.
Chapter 64
- Juliette wonders whether returning alive from a cleaning and revealing the truth could expose Bernard.
Chapter 67
- Bernard is serving as acting mayor.
- Bernard has prepared Lukas for likely questions during his appointment.
- Bernard connects the headset for Lukas’s formal appointment conversation.
Chapter 70
- Bernard says he chose Lukas because Lukas already had some knowledge of the material stored on the servers.
- Bernard says his own training confinement lasted just over two months.
- Bernard does not know whether the destruction outside is still continuing.
- Bernard says forty-seven silos remain.
- Bernard says the destruction happened a few hundred years ago.
- Bernard condemns the men who destroyed the world and says he would kill them if he could.
- Bernard regards the silos as prisons intended to force their inhabitants to fulfill the founders’ vision.
- Bernard theorizes that the founders wanted people too alike and interdependent to fight one another.
- Bernard theorizes that the founders ruled a declining powerful country and acted to preserve their way of life.
- Bernard suspects secretly manufactured bombs helped destroy the world.
- Bernard tells Lukas that killing to preserve secrets will be part of his future job.
- Bernard says breaking the imposed rules kills everyone while obeying them causes suffering.
Chapter 73
- Bernard directs the fighting from his office by radio.
- Bernard has kept Juliette’s generator manual in case the trouble in the down deep worsens.
Chapter 76
- Bernard dismisses Lukas’s concern about smoke but promises to have a replacement mechanic investigate.
- Bernard plans to move farmers into Mechanical.
- Bernard proposes putting Sammi in charge of Mechanical.
- Bernard admits that George was killed but refuses to identify the killer.
- Bernard tells Lukas that his future duties will include eliminating people considered threats.
- Bernard claims fourteen threats have been eliminated this year.
- Bernard interprets Lukas’s request to leave the room as a request to go outside and reports it to Sheriff Billings.
Chapter 77
- Bernard orders everyone else off the radio channel after recognizing Juliette.
- Bernard warns that transmitting on this frequency merits being sent to clean.
- Bernard says Juliette’s friends are lined up for cleanings beginning the following day.
- Bernard claims to have discovered how Supply helped Juliette survive her cleaning.
- Bernard vows to construct Lukas’s suit himself to ensure Lukas cannot reach the hills.
Chapter 78
- Bernard has told Lukas that he will not survive being sent outside.
- Bernard’s request for radio silence does not stop Peter from listening to the exchange at reduced volume.
Chapter 79
- Juliette thinks her voluntary return outside may achieve the death Bernard previously tried to bring about.
Chapter 80
- An unnamed cleaner kneels facing the inner airlock door instead of going outside.
- The cleaner initially remains still beneath Juliette’s protective blanket.
- The cleaner crawls out from beneath the blanket despite Juliette’s attempt to hold him back.
- The cleaner’s suit is severely burned when Juliette finds him lying against the door.
- The dead cleaner is not Lukas, whom Juliette intended to rescue.
Chapter 81
- Bernard sentences people to death despite radio reports of their surrender in Mechanical.
- Lukas accuses Bernard of killing a man and claims to have proof.
Chapter 82
- Bernard had been running unopposed in the mayoral election.
- Bernard’s removal for cleaning led to the election being called off.