A man walks into a stone chamber, unadorned besides the marble desk in the middle of the room. Another man sits behind the desk, face masked in what appears to be a high tech vr headset.
The man who walks into the room has a serious look on his face. “Commander.”
The Commander lets out a grunt and presses something on the marble desk. After a few more seconds he replies “Birdie, what is it?”
Birdie “We have received a message. It’s for you.”
Commander “Can’t it wait? I’m in the middle of an important meeting.”
Birdie - “He says it’s urgent.”
Commander - “Who..”
………
BEEP! BEEP! Birdie looks at the clock, 4:30. He scowls, turning off the only other thing that wakes him up as often as his nightmares.
“One. Three. Five. Seven. Eleven…” Birdie counts. The numbers calmed his nerves. It was time to warm up for the day.
“One, two, three…” A thousand pushups. A thousand situps. A thousand squats. A thousand chinups. Birdie was sweating and shaky. It wouldn’t be many years before he could no longer do a thousand of each set, but for now he would do it as long as possible.
He was still shaking as he got in the shower. The cold water cooled him down and settled his body, but it would take a few minutes to recover. As he waited for his body to settle he massaged himself. He sharply prodded, jabbed and squeezed into his arms, legs and torso trying to dig out the knots that had formed overworking his body.
Birdie hummed as he brushed his teeth. He would be heading to the mines today, looking for that mineral he had read about last night. Hopefully something new would be going on, and he was always ready for something to break the monotony of jail life.
BZZZ. The cell doors were opening, but Birdie took his time. He would not be going to The Pit today, and that meant he didn’t need to be one of the first to pick a job.
Birdie continued humming as he walked to the common room. There he saw Anetta, Alex, and Steve, but he didn’t see Beth. “Hey, anyone see Beth? She’s always here first, but she’s not here.”
“Yeah, Beth decided to take a day off. I guess Mac isn’t back yet and she’s sulking. She said she was going to go back to sleep and wait.” Alex stops talking to Steve to answer.
“Oh, good for her. It’s been over 4 years since any of us have decided to take a break. Last time we almost broke curfew running a game of dungeons and dragons. We decided to continue the next day. Mac was punished for missing a day in the pit.” Birdie clicks on the mining collection job, and walks over to get his free breakfast.
No Mac and no Beth huh? Guess I won’t be missing anything by going to the mines. Not that I hadn’t already made up my mind. Birdie walks over to an empty table, pushing out all distractions and wondering if he will be able to find the mineral mentioned in the article. He eats his food in silence, and lets his thoughts run wild.
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The bell for 8:00 rings and shocks Birdie out of his reverie. The room buzzes and Birdie smells the sterility of the clean room. Around him a hundred people walk off the warp platform. To the right wall the cleaners walked. Grabbing the tools they were given to collect the scattered debris and hauling it over to a processor. Every 5 feet cleaners would be putting up bracing allowing the Miners to pick the walls endlessly. Their rulers knew how to work men efficiently, even if they never gave the prisoners good tools to do the job.
Birdie follows the miners to the left wall. There he grabbed the equipment he would need to complete the task he had chosen. Miners were generally given gloves, a mechanically enhanced suit, a stone saw, a pickaxe, chisels, a metal and radiation detector, a shovel, and a helmet. The helmet was the fanciest piece of gear. Worn like a motorcycle helmet, it shut out even the most ear piercing noises, protected the eyes and face from flying stone, and contained a filter that would turn lung burning gasses into pure air.
After packing up their gear the crew left the clean room. A hundred people formed up in front of the great doors parallel to where they had appeared. As the last person fell into line the great doors cranked open with a hiss.
“Here we go.”
“This stuff is heavy.”
There was a sound of sniffling.
“Hey, did anyone else hear that?”
“I want to go home.”
Birdie ignored the chatter. He popped his helmet on as soon as he was in the airlock, letting the silence wash over him. He didn’t hear the thud of the doors he walked through, or the hiss of the doors opening in front of him. He just watched, wondering how it had changed. It had been a while since he had last been in the mines, and it just kept getting bigger.
Finally the doors opened; it was darker than he remembered. The idiots that had been working while he was gone must have slacked on running the string lights. There were only two new clearly marked areas that he had not seen before.
“At least someone worked those places right.”
As he could see, the central cave had been hollowed about a third more. Metal beams ran here and there, holding up the latticework used to prevent cave ins. Construction equipment was laid out here and there. The sleek metal design of electric vehicles shone under sparse glowing orbs near the outer walls. There were eight large areas brightly lit near the center. Each had a building nearby, the processing buildings.
“Hey Mint, is there a reason I can’t see here?” Birdie turned a dial on my helmet to the comms station Mint was always on. Mint was an anomaly. He never returned to the prison, but was the fourth longest survivor. Mint had seemed to enjoy mining, and since there wasn’t much oversight up here, he decided to stay. The bomb collar wouldn’t explode as long as he fulfilled his quota, and he did.
“Oh, Birdie, it’s been a long time. I didn’t think you would be coming back.” The old man responded to Birdie. Birdie didn’t give an answer.
“Mac is gone, and Beth is taking a breather. Where’s the lights?” Birdie decided to humor the old man, but he wouldn’t be getting away with improper maintenance.
“Mac died? Never thought a monster would be made that could stand up to that boy.
“The lights stopped coming a while ago. Around three years ago, upper management decided it would be more economic to make us use our terrain scanners. The helmets now pick up on the smallest bit of light and use echolocation to give us a picture of our surroundings. It helps when the air is filled with visible particles. The caves are nowhere near as beautiful now.”
“Ah. Fuck them. Now we have to use the radiation and metal detectors a lot more.” Birdie sighed. “Is it easier to find the warp stone at least? I know they glow so light probably makes it harder to find.”
“It depends on how far into the tunnels you go, and what direction. Some veins of warp stone have reached their end while you’ve been gone.”
“Which numbers are cleared out? I’m heading to 350 at the moment.”
“Pretty much all the odd tunnels are worthless, and 1 through 120 are all cleared. 50s are and have been pretty scarce since before you got here though. Why are you headed there?”
“Newspaper has some new type of mineral on it. Some people say it gives super powers if consumed, so I want to try my luck. Maybe I’ll get something that will break me out of this collar and free me from the jailors.”
“Superpowers you say. Interesting. And what might this mineral look like?”
“It glows. Kinda like the warp stones amber, but blue and brighter.”
“Oh, so that’s what that was. Only saw it once, being carried away by a cleaner. There hasn’t been any glowing ore besides amber since. I’ll tell you if I find any, but I have first dibs.”
“I shouldn’t have told you about it.” Birdie chides.
“No, you shouldn’t have.” Mint chuckles. “Now I’m getting back to work, gotta fill my quota before lunch.”
“Cya.”
Mint cuts off the communication, and Birdie traverses the rest of the tunnel, his specified cleaner in the passenger seat next to him.