It was slander to doubt The Corporation. The Corporation oxidized on contact. The Corporation crippled death. The Corporation sealed the cracks. The Corporation salved their wounds on the rig. Their cheekbones radiation-burned and peeling. Their throats stringy with the ceaseless vaccine cocktails and day-nights eating only powdered potatoes and clear, skimmed fat.

They called the fat “shine” and shine kept them living out here. The rig turned into the moon where they sent silver tubes and breathed already inhaled breath from their collapsing lungs.

Rasp the youngest of the blistered men sometimes dipped his fingers into the black powder the men had suctioned from the asteroids’ surfaces and drew a mustache on his clear helmet.

“Have you ever tasted breast milk?” He asked anyone who would listen.

When his shift ended, the other roughnecks pushed past him in the grav field, flicking their tubing at the backs of his knees. None of them had ever even seen a woman in the flesh.Women were a thing in sanctioned plasticine-stream publications with smooth bodies and hard smiles. Women only existed in two dimensions.

Steam clouded his helmet in the decontamination chamber. He drew eyes over the black powdered mustache and prodded Easy, who dug at the crotch of his suit. Easy sighed into his earpiece.

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“They’ll make you shine, boy.”

“Nah, they only make you Shine if you can’t work.” Rasp wrinkled his nose.

In each corner, the misting nozzles flipped down and the green light appeared above the door, before it parted to let the men into the next chamber. Easy pushed past Rasp and wedged himself into one of the tall hexagonal coffin chambers in the wall. Adhesive bands lashed around the suit and cracked it open like chicken bones. The suit crumpled into the wall, later to be ejected into space. Easy slid out of the side, naked, and stepped into his white slippers. A round O printed on the toe of each one. The suit crumpled into the bands and compressed it to the size of glove. Rasp followed suit, frowning that no one laughed at his crude helmet face. He entered the barracks though the plasticine doors, looking at Easy’s fibrous thighs in front of him.

Rasp checked the screen for any messages from Queen Gracious, the mascot of the miners. She blessed them every evening before bed. And every morning when they rose. Queen Gracious’ breasts looked like the warmest silicone and the softest mercury.

‘What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,’ flashed on the screens above their scrolling names and messages. There was no word for privacy. Privacy was like breast milk. Rasp could not remember geese.

Rasp had a message from HR. It read:

RASP 2544-46, INDENTURED

Report to The Rumpus Room at 4:30 PM.

If you’re early, you are on time. If you’re on time, you are late. If you’re late, that’s unacceptable.

Don’t forget!!! Tonight is pizza night!!!