It was dark in the cavern, wide and gaping like a bleeding wound carved unnaturally into the surface, the blackness creeping over any hand so the only thing you saw was dampened light from violet headscanners in the distance. It was so quiet, the silence louder than the darkness. The boy’s hand swept over the words engraved on the echo chamber, “… without a doubt it is more comfortable to endure blind bondage than to work for one’s liberation; the dead, too, are better suited to the earth than the living.” - Simone de Beauvoir.
The drag of filtered wheezing punctured sporadically throughout the ever-expanding silence, the innominate adult Man turned to face them, ‘’ It has been almost a century since the Coalbrook mining disaster. A day deemed… worthy of nine hundred deaths. We must remember the past, even if it must be branded on our own bodies, to never forget the sacrifices for this future. Coalbrook should serve as a reminder for all you gullible children, that mining is not something to play around with.’’ The Man’s ghastly helmet arched into the boy’s face, gloved fingers harshly peeled back the protective sleeve flap, ‘’Daniel…ay?’’. A prickling sensation raised the hairs on Daniel’s skin, the glowing head of a laser iron pressing into his skin. He opened his mouth into a soundless scream, held in a vice-like grip, as a painful vibration tore into his arm. The Man released his arm and shoved Daniel forward, already reaching for the next child’s arm. The same debilitating silence covered him like an uncomfortable blanket. The ghoulish glow of his scanner brightened as he looked down at his blistered skin; 1/21/1960 as if to remind each miner that death had happened. How contradictory, these foreign numbers on the boy’s skin and the words on the wall.
Now they had reinforced steel metal pillars, little poles stabbed into the rotten earth. The boy tugged down his headlamp helmet and adjusted the glass bulbous head covering. It always reminded him of a suffocating fishbowl. Of course, it never really stopped the radiation, the dust wormed its way like a snake into any small opening. The boy remembered the cool touch of his mother's hands that morning before they had pulled him away from her embrace. Her futile attempts to hide peeling red skin as she held him, radiation burns from combing through the mines for material fragments, blamed on nonexistent outside cold. A foreshadowing of the dangerous conditions that would no longer classify him as a child, the younger days of childhood play stripped away. It was only cold down in the depths of the mines, in the jaws of death.
After Japan had been found with a booming almost infinite earth mineral industry, China had swooped in faster than any bigger brother to snatch it since their own were depleted. It had begun this way, small movements of change in the mining industry once the climate activists had begun storming these encroached holes, causing more problems than prudent change. They did not realize that Earth minerals were used for their electric and hybrid cars that they championed to change the world. 2024 had risen with the Chinese government restricting the exportation of seventeen rare Earth materials hard to find and difficult to extract. This had resulted in protests all over the world, tension hovering just below the surface.
Old miners had been laid off for new ones, those adapted enough to use electrodeposition, a process in which detectors would produce a low electric current. This would cause the metals to more easily be deposited in the desired cans, yet more thorium miners began to be infected by the large volumes of radioactive material. Foreign ministers had begun to throw grenades instead of words for this new technology. The trade war had escalated after China had taken Japan’s minerals, causing the walls of mines to shake and shudder like the living breathing thing it was.
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When the battles had begun, no one in Minamitorishima Island had thought it would really reach them, as the government promised no harm would come to them. After all, no one had been allowed to inhabit the island until 2030, and the only people allowed there were poverty-stricken families trying to escape the wartime rush. When the Great Drafting began, almost 90% of the young men in the country had been given two options; die quickly in war or die slowly in the mine. The boy’s brother had chosen the second, being one of the earliest users of electrode positioning. While electrodeposition had created a protective barrier to reduce friction and prevent tarnishing of the rare Earth material, it had disrupted the stone’s radiation enough that it could leak radiation through or burn the skin. His brother’s had turned a ghastly boiled blue before he died of its poisoning, worn down by grueling days of exhaustion. The cavernous tunnels, like an endless void, as you took the miles-long walk under encroaching tons of water, moving through piles of sludge taller than you. Due to the debilitating battle over what is now known as the Shinigami (god of death) mine, all the young men who were not drafted into the military were thrown into what some considered an even deadlier profession, spending over twenty hours a day in the mines. Scottie had died, and the boy had been taken by the guards quicker than Daniel’s own ability to process Scottie’s death, to take his place. With the ruins of his father’s farm and his mother already conscripted as a Comber, they had no ability to pay off his brother’s dead debt. After all, the government had only moved a selected amount of struggling families here, trapping them in a cycle of inescapable pain.
The Man in a faceless mask shoves him forward with his manufactured words spewing out, ‘’ Sweeper Group 3 you may head towards the core of the mine. Begin deposit.’’ Daniel stumbles, the rough push forcing him back into his horrible present reality. The purple glow of his scanner began to darken, leading into an almost ear-splitting screech. The sound was something he was unable to grow comfortable with, yet what came next was worse. The battle above waged on for so long that there were no longer canary birds to indicate the presence of dangerous radioactive levels in the mines. Daniel was unsure if this awful noise was close to what a canary sounds like, as there was nothing to compare it to. Their death was like freedom of their own, one the boy almost childishly craved for. He is halfway down the mine when it happens, the floor rising up to meet his gloved hands, its useless protection doing nothing to stop the burning pain of raw skin. He sees the others stumble, the world-shaking like a child’s snowglobe. Dust rained down from the ceiling but the pillars did not shudder. They crouch, yellow sirens blaring in the air; ‘’Stay calm…. it is only a minor incon—.. -v–...’’. The walls shake with wrath as the boy rages. All this sacrifice and for what? For material conveniences? For lives to be moved across mines like chess pieces.
As if an eerie calmness overcomes him, the child stands and throws down his deposit can. ‘’ Daniel! Daniel! Where are you going?!’’ the Man screams to be heard over the grind of gears. His chest heaves, struggling to fight against the coverage of protective lead over his chest, ears ringing with the pounding of the cavern. His father’s farm was poisoned by the running acidic rivers, his mother’s miscarriage promoted from the combing she did for the mines, and his brother’s death from radioactive poisoning skin turned boiled blue. The boy sank to his knees. When would it end, this slow killing of monotonous death? When would our society stop craving for technology, without the realization of the lives they held in their hand? He closed his eyes. ‘’Till death do we part’’.