It was way too good to be true. Fritz read the notice one more time, but the words on the screen stayed the same as the last three times he’d gone over them. A promotion. Not a small one, either; this new position was leagues better than the one he had now. It was located right next to the central clusters, the pay was a lot higher, and he gained access to a multitude of rare and obscure resources that would normally be extremely hard to obtain otherwise. There were other factors to the job, both positive and negative, but out of everything those three benefits were the most prominent changes that were listed that he was interested in.
Honestly, it sounded like a scam. Randomly receiving a promotion out of nowhere? How did he even get selected for this job, anyhow? It said here that their decision to promote him was because his “eligibility of promotion matched our desired criteria.” What the heck did that even mean? What criteria did he meet? Sure, his current official job title and description was ‘Botanical Resources: Management, Security, and Acquisitions Specialist’, but in Fritz’s opinion he was just a glorified gardener.
Sitting around and watching plants grow all day didn't sound very exciting, but that was what he did. He didn’t even have to do any actual gardening, either. Everything was fully automated; the only thing he had to do was collect the output whenever something was harvested and make sure none of the machines broke - not that anything ever did, considering that it was all self-repairing. A supply transport stopped by every decade to pick up the harvested resources, which was the only traffic that he ever saw in this sector of space. On a fringe world, especially on one bordering uncharted territory, not much traveled through. While it might have been boring, it also made his job easy to do. He was supposed to “defend the property from aggressors and unauthorized personnel,” but nobody was around to steal or cause trouble, not this far out. In fact, nobody was really around at all. Who was to say if he was watching for intruders or watching the latest episode of a new series? As far as his boss was concerned, Fritz was a model employee - vigilant, attentive, and constantly going above and beyond to ensure that operations continued to run smoothly.
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Fritz paused for a moment. That was probably the reason why he got selected, wasn't it? He embellished his yearly reports a little too much and now they thought he was a lot more competent than he actually was. He wondered if his deceptions would be exposed once he started his new job, but then shrugged and concluded that if this new job was as described in the notice, then it should be similar to his current one, just with more responsibilities and busywork. He would be able to figure it out as he went along.
More importantly, it said here that his replacement would be arriving with the next supply transport. That was in… Fritz checked the calendar. Two years. Two more years at the edge of explored space, and then he'd be back in the central clusters. Honestly, he felt like he would miss this place once he had left. It was his own little corner of the universe, a slice of peace and quiet where he could relax and train with no one to bother him. No one to interrupt his movie binges, no pirates he had to fight off. No one to contest for rare resources, no egotistical upstarts he had to spar with. Nobody to talk to, no food to eat. Fritz shook his head. Alright, maybe he wouldn’t miss this place so much after all. He’d been here for almost 3000 years, so he couldn’t help it if this little garden world had some sentimental value. Still, to get back to civilization proper? Fritz couldn’t wait.
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