Retiring

-

There’s always been something missing in the social facilities of Clarke Company asteroid mining stations. This one was no different. Nestled out amidst the cold expanse of the Kuiper Belt, they sat, these two miners, in what Clarke Company had originally called Ethanol Imbibing Station 12, but was colloquially named the Pig and Whistle Bar. Despite a hundred years of imported memorabilia, junk and general ‘pub decor’ it was still a sterile space, and the ceaseless scurrying of the maintenance micro-bots kept it that way. Nevertheless, it was the nearest thing to an old fashioned ‘local bar’ that was available at this end of the asteroid belt in 2950. All resemblances to an old twenty first century hospital operating theatre were entirely ‘intended by the Management’.


They sat and groused. Their voices just loud enough to be heard over the hum of machinery that ran ceaselessly, maintaining the atmosphere, the artificial gravity, the lights. In the view screens, which were supposed to give the impression of picture windows, the distant twinkle of entirely mythical stars sparkled with a flickering of the ambient sensor brightness controls.
"So, it's finally happening," murmured Gregor, his voice tinged with a mixture of resignation and anticipation, “are you going to have enough credit tokens to get by?


Mikhail nodded, his gaze fixed upon the blinking lights of the entertainment control panel before him. “Forty years in the mines, I’ve paid my dues to the Company scheme and I’ve got a decent wedge put by from all those overtime jobs we did back in the 20’s. So I should be ok. It’ll be good to get the grime of this place out of my skin anyway. I’ve booked into a retirement colony out on the Sun side. The brochure look great and I only have to survive one warp-speed stutter-jump in the retirement warp barge to get me there. Still, It's hard to believe."


Working in space had never been easy and even now after almost eight hundred years of human space-faring it was still the case that a single small error would kill you dead in an instant. Theirs had been long and arduous existence of prolonged periods of weightlessness out on the mining drones and then a crushing rehab in the artificial gravity of the Clarke Company station. For both of them it was now all so hard, their bodies worn and weary from years of back-breaking labour. Not only that, they were actually really old, and although the cryo-suspension system had saved them from the worst aspects of time dilation, that time stuff eventually caught up. In real terms they were each of them nearly 300 years old although they only looked in the mid-sixties. But now, a new thing. Retirement hurtling towards them from a distant event horizon. They found themselves confronted with a new kind of uncertainty.


"We'll be leaving this place soon," Gregor mused, his eyes scanning the dimly lit expanse of the Pig and Whistle. He kicked a maintenance bot out of the way that was trying to clean up his feet. “What will we do with ourselves on the other side?"


Mikhail shrugged, a faint smile playing upon his lips. "Who knows? Perhaps it’ll be like the brochure says and  we'll find peace in the quiet solitude of a distant colony,’ more likely we'll fade into obscurity with nobody giving a monkey’s.”


“Yes, either that or the rumours are true and you just get offed on the warp trip, the Company takes back all its credits and the retirement colony doesn’t really exist at all. Nobody would know, the warp ships are all AI controlled.”


“Well, I suppose that could be true, but I doubt it. I mean, I know the Company are a bunch of arseholes but even so, a deal is a deal.”


“Have ever even had a mail from someone who’s retired?”


“Well no, but I never was one for correspondence, you know me, I’m about a social as a frozen space turd.”


“Yeah, well, just saying.”


Everyone suspected, nobody knew. Not for certain. But space living didn’t come with lots of choices, and those that there were narrowed over time.


Their conversation drifted, touching upon the memories of their youth, girls they’d both loved and lost, sport, all the usual stuff. Their voices tinged with a sense of longing for a life that might have been if only they’d been dealt a different hand.


"Do you ever wonder what lies beyond the stars?" Gregor asked suddenly, his voice barely more than a whisper.


Mikhail shook his head, his gaze fixed upon the false representation of  distant dying star in the view screens. "I used to dream of exploring the cosmos, of uncovering the secrets of the universe. But it was never going to happen for me. I didn’t want to join the military and I never had the smarts to be an academic so it was always going to be mining for me - just like my dad and his dad, now…well I’m good with it I suppose. Anyway, it’s done now”


“I never married you know, and I don’t think any future miner is going to say ‘just like my dad and his dad before him.”


“Well fucking good for you I say. Really, it’s a living, this mining lark, but I wouldn’t lay this on anybody I actually liked.”


“Good point. You grim old sod.”


Their conversation grew somber, they spoke, without really thinking much about it, of the fleeting nature of existence and the fragility of their own humanity. Outside, the darkness of the cold vacuum of space stretched on forever. They both knew in their hearts, but neither would say, that when that final pay check came, it was done. Recycling, in all its stark, unpalatable truth, is the reality of surviving in space.


“Do you want another swally?”


“What else is there?”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Eli

-
Eli squinted, the unforgiving sun blazing relentlessly above. It has been years. A lifetime of this relentless brightness. His aged face, which bore the creases of someone who had lived through a particular era, looked out over the shimmering dunes of the desert, which seemed to go on forever. The tales of a bygone era, when the celestial expanse shimmered with countless stars and the serene glow of the moon illuminated the world, had faded into obscurity. Here, the past seemed to slip away, the moon a distant memory.  He embodied a bygone era, a living testament to a time when Earth's deteriorating ecosystems compelled a frantic quest for a fresh abode. This desolate, scorching planet, Proxima B, had provided the solution. But what is the price?  However, a gust of transformation swept through. The days gradually and inevitably became cooler. The sun appeared to sink lower in the sky. After months of careful observation, Eli confirmed a clear trend: the sun was gradually lowe...
Read more

The Kite.

-
He was definitely what you would call a weird man. No doubt about it. Bartholomew Wizzle lived in a charming little town that was like something out of a story book. The streets and alleyways were all narrow and twisty, with interesting nooks and surprising squares. The buildings all ancient and astonishingly close together. There was a Main Street, but it was mostly a market place and although the Main Street was paved with large stone slabs, the rest of the streets and alleyways were cobbled with the local blue-grey cobble stones from the silvery river that ran through the town. The town was surrounded by whispering forests and rolling hills. It was delightfully old fashioned and quaint. You wouldn't call Mr. Wizzle a regular guy. Nope. Not in a month of Sundays. What he was though, was a master of the esoteric arts, a dealer in anomalies, and a merchant of wonders. Hidden along a winding cobblestone alley, his little shop held an assortment of oddities, many of which would amaze...
Read more

The Spinney

-
When I was a boy, aged about nine or ten, I think, I used to ride my bicycle to a long, narrow wood. It was about a mile long and perhaps a quarter of a mile wide and filled with old, tall deciduous trees. There was a path down through the middle, from which it was not possible to see the edges of the wood in summertime. The path crossed the same stream three times along its length. It was called The Spinney.   A liminal space between a main road and a vast golf course, which was strictly private and where angry men in odd trousers and check argyle pullovers would shout at you if you ventured out of the Spinney and into the bright green sunshine. But it didn’t matter because the Spinney was, in my imagination, a vast and endless forest stretching for all eternity and filled with beasts and birds, hidden dangers, lurking wild men and aliens.   I went often with friends. We would dam the streams and race along the path through the middle. We would cook sausages on sticks over a ...
Read more