Alright, two good meals, the orientation meeting, and a nice
walk around Moon Base, and I definitely feel better.
First, a bit about Moon Base: the name is not very exciting, I know, but it is one of the few colonies that has been continuously inhabited since before the Revolution. The site was built by NASA, and taken over by business interests about 100 years later. It was added onto multiple times, and now serves as the training center for any miners who come through. That’s how it justifies its existence, but there are people who were BORN here, citizens of Moon Base! They were divided into Bakalov and Senfte castes after the Revolution, of course, so they could officially reintegrate into Earth society.
I don’t think any of the Moon people would be able to truly reintegrate, however. They’re all lithe, short-haired, with the tiniest noses I’ve seen. Their fingers are long, and although they wear the same suits with magnetic boots as anyone else, they look like a stretched out version of a human. I’ve heard that there’s so much space between the discs of their vertebrae that they would break in half under a full G.
I’ve stared a little too hard at them, bordering on the rude even for someone of a higher caste, but none of them seem to mind. With so many rough-around-the-edges miners coming in and out of the station all the time, they must be used to questions and stares.
Our orientation meeting laid out the plan for the week that we’re here. A week doesn’t seem like enough training, but we were assured that we were all picked for this excursion because of how our specific skill sets fit together. We had tried to piece this together ourselves at the Breathe Easy headquarters, but the Gadhavi in charge of the presentation actually showed us a diagram of how our talents would work. Since I did so much gardening, I should be able to pick up on hydroponics and the aquaculture needed to make sure we have food, and Chloe’s and my sewing skills will help us repair suits and necessary industrial fabrics. Ihsan also has gardening skills, according to the presenter, although he did not say where she gathered that information from. Apparently, Zariah used to mine asteroids, so is used to space travel, and she served a stint in the Araboa colony before joining the mission with Yuda. Bainbridge Island is an isolated, salty sea-beaten land where we dump our used electronics, and the Araboa harvest what they need from the pile. I had never thought about it before, but we will need people with computer skills to help us survive, since everything will be run by a crystalline core computer. I suppose I should work to be nicer to them. I always assumed the Araboa would not be very bright, or maybe that they didn’t even speak the same language, because they intentionally did not integrate with our society.
The Senfte members of our crew, Budur and Ghadir, are also good at gardening and textiles. Budur took up knitting years and years ago, while Ghadir worked in a restaurant and not only knows a thing or two about gardening, but about preparing and storing food. I’d never tried canning or preserving before, since I wanted to eat the delicious food that I grew as soon as possible, but I guess it will be important.
I smiled at Ghadir and nodded to indicate my respect for her skills. She grinned back at me.
We also have two Bakalov ladies, Haven – whom I’ve mentioned before – and Durada, who was a farm manager. She, too, learned gardening skills, but she was a farm manager, which will make her a great help to Haven with production, and also a good person to inventory what our food stores look like. I hadn’t really thought about it, but since Europa is mostly liquid water, we will be able to grow a considerable amount of food for ourselves on the moon using aquaculture! It’s very exciting.
I shouldn’t be surprised, but, including Ihsan, we have four Ikin total. We will be performing a lot of manual labor, so it makes sense that they would be attracted to this sort of work. Besides, as of the last census, there are far more Ikin in our country, compared to other castes. No one has said, but I think that large groups of people sneak into the country and join the Ikin, since their labor won’t be questioned. I can’t blame them, we do offer a better life than other countries on the planet. We’ve managed our resources better, human and otherwise, while the ice caps melt. Some other countries don’t even exist anymore, because they were unprepared!
Anyway, our lovely Ikin crew are Ihsan, Vivien, Natsuki, and Samira. Vivien worked closely with animals, so she should be able to pick up husbandry – and apparently, we will be bringing fish eggs with us, as well as octopuses! We’ll be in charge of raising and training octopuses, like sheep dogs in fairy tales, to lift barrels of water to the surface of the Conamara Chaos region, where they will attach to a ship for transport. Natsuki apparently has close experience with hydro- and aquaponics, working on less efficient oxygen farms full of algae for years. Samira, like many of us, has experience with textiles and putting them together. She will be able to help us use our 3D printer, which can make filters for our air and water systems. If Breathe Easy is giving us a 3D printer with some specially-licensed patterns just for us, then they must deeply trust us and hope we succeed. No one is allowed to own any kind of item that might reproduce copyrighted materials, from food to clothing to lenses.
We will be responsible, as we travel to Europa, for teaching each other our current skills. That should help us get to know each other better. However, for the next week, we will be learning the basics of the mining operation itself, how the harvesting system should be set up and maintained, and also the barest information on water-based farming, octopus training (!!), soldering and computer programming, and industrial textile creation and maintenance. All of this in a week!
The presentation took four hours, total, and had been slotted between breakfast and lunch. I wouldn’t normally enjoy hot gruel for two meals – rehydrated eggs with one, stir-fried rubbery chicken with the other – but after yesterday’s distressing space travel, the warmth of the food is comforting. It reminds me of home, of soups I made for myself. I wonder if any of the food products we’re fed are grown on Moon Base, but it seems like not. Almost all of the space is taken up with training rooms, living facilities, docking stations, and workout equipment. The Earth-based people need strength and flexibility training if they have an extended stay on this base.
And oh, the base. It is truly beautiful, a centuries-old feat of engineering that I can’t quite believe. The exterior walls are metal – actual metal, not carbon filaments! – and all of this was hand-assembled by a crew of astronauts, long ago. They didn’t hire professional builders to print and weave material on-site, designed specifically for the occasion. Then again, this base is from a time when skyscrapers could not reach more than two kilometers into the air. I suppose that’s what makes it so impressive, that it is still here.
A newer layer of carbon filament, lined with plants, runs throughout the inside of Moon Base. Lichens, mosses, ivy, and roses, lots and lots of roses. The plants take the carbon dioxide exhaled by the residents and miners and exhale oxygen, which we inhale. It’s a beautiful system. I worked up the nerve to ask a Moon resident if the plants were all that was needed, and she informed me that there are also tanks of algae underneath the base, which supplement the current filtration system. I bet something like this will be useful on Europa.
Rather than head to the gym, as we were told to do, I wandered the halls of Moon Base, my feet clinking into place as magnets pulled the soles of my suit down. It keeps us mostly oriented, although I had moments of dizziness like a flashback to the trip. I’ve been told that gradually fades over the week, so we’ll have just enough time to get reacquainted with directional sensation before being shoved back out into the dark universe.
But I am, truly, grateful to be here. In a way, the end of the week just can’t come soon enough!
First, a bit about Moon Base: the name is not very exciting, I know, but it is one of the few colonies that has been continuously inhabited since before the Revolution. The site was built by NASA, and taken over by business interests about 100 years later. It was added onto multiple times, and now serves as the training center for any miners who come through. That’s how it justifies its existence, but there are people who were BORN here, citizens of Moon Base! They were divided into Bakalov and Senfte castes after the Revolution, of course, so they could officially reintegrate into Earth society.
I don’t think any of the Moon people would be able to truly reintegrate, however. They’re all lithe, short-haired, with the tiniest noses I’ve seen. Their fingers are long, and although they wear the same suits with magnetic boots as anyone else, they look like a stretched out version of a human. I’ve heard that there’s so much space between the discs of their vertebrae that they would break in half under a full G.
I’ve stared a little too hard at them, bordering on the rude even for someone of a higher caste, but none of them seem to mind. With so many rough-around-the-edges miners coming in and out of the station all the time, they must be used to questions and stares.
Our orientation meeting laid out the plan for the week that we’re here. A week doesn’t seem like enough training, but we were assured that we were all picked for this excursion because of how our specific skill sets fit together. We had tried to piece this together ourselves at the Breathe Easy headquarters, but the Gadhavi in charge of the presentation actually showed us a diagram of how our talents would work. Since I did so much gardening, I should be able to pick up on hydroponics and the aquaculture needed to make sure we have food, and Chloe’s and my sewing skills will help us repair suits and necessary industrial fabrics. Ihsan also has gardening skills, according to the presenter, although he did not say where she gathered that information from. Apparently, Zariah used to mine asteroids, so is used to space travel, and she served a stint in the Araboa colony before joining the mission with Yuda. Bainbridge Island is an isolated, salty sea-beaten land where we dump our used electronics, and the Araboa harvest what they need from the pile. I had never thought about it before, but we will need people with computer skills to help us survive, since everything will be run by a crystalline core computer. I suppose I should work to be nicer to them. I always assumed the Araboa would not be very bright, or maybe that they didn’t even speak the same language, because they intentionally did not integrate with our society.
The Senfte members of our crew, Budur and Ghadir, are also good at gardening and textiles. Budur took up knitting years and years ago, while Ghadir worked in a restaurant and not only knows a thing or two about gardening, but about preparing and storing food. I’d never tried canning or preserving before, since I wanted to eat the delicious food that I grew as soon as possible, but I guess it will be important.
I smiled at Ghadir and nodded to indicate my respect for her skills. She grinned back at me.
We also have two Bakalov ladies, Haven – whom I’ve mentioned before – and Durada, who was a farm manager. She, too, learned gardening skills, but she was a farm manager, which will make her a great help to Haven with production, and also a good person to inventory what our food stores look like. I hadn’t really thought about it, but since Europa is mostly liquid water, we will be able to grow a considerable amount of food for ourselves on the moon using aquaculture! It’s very exciting.
I shouldn’t be surprised, but, including Ihsan, we have four Ikin total. We will be performing a lot of manual labor, so it makes sense that they would be attracted to this sort of work. Besides, as of the last census, there are far more Ikin in our country, compared to other castes. No one has said, but I think that large groups of people sneak into the country and join the Ikin, since their labor won’t be questioned. I can’t blame them, we do offer a better life than other countries on the planet. We’ve managed our resources better, human and otherwise, while the ice caps melt. Some other countries don’t even exist anymore, because they were unprepared!
Anyway, our lovely Ikin crew are Ihsan, Vivien, Natsuki, and Samira. Vivien worked closely with animals, so she should be able to pick up husbandry – and apparently, we will be bringing fish eggs with us, as well as octopuses! We’ll be in charge of raising and training octopuses, like sheep dogs in fairy tales, to lift barrels of water to the surface of the Conamara Chaos region, where they will attach to a ship for transport. Natsuki apparently has close experience with hydro- and aquaponics, working on less efficient oxygen farms full of algae for years. Samira, like many of us, has experience with textiles and putting them together. She will be able to help us use our 3D printer, which can make filters for our air and water systems. If Breathe Easy is giving us a 3D printer with some specially-licensed patterns just for us, then they must deeply trust us and hope we succeed. No one is allowed to own any kind of item that might reproduce copyrighted materials, from food to clothing to lenses.
We will be responsible, as we travel to Europa, for teaching each other our current skills. That should help us get to know each other better. However, for the next week, we will be learning the basics of the mining operation itself, how the harvesting system should be set up and maintained, and also the barest information on water-based farming, octopus training (!!), soldering and computer programming, and industrial textile creation and maintenance. All of this in a week!
The presentation took four hours, total, and had been slotted between breakfast and lunch. I wouldn’t normally enjoy hot gruel for two meals – rehydrated eggs with one, stir-fried rubbery chicken with the other – but after yesterday’s distressing space travel, the warmth of the food is comforting. It reminds me of home, of soups I made for myself. I wonder if any of the food products we’re fed are grown on Moon Base, but it seems like not. Almost all of the space is taken up with training rooms, living facilities, docking stations, and workout equipment. The Earth-based people need strength and flexibility training if they have an extended stay on this base.
And oh, the base. It is truly beautiful, a centuries-old feat of engineering that I can’t quite believe. The exterior walls are metal – actual metal, not carbon filaments! – and all of this was hand-assembled by a crew of astronauts, long ago. They didn’t hire professional builders to print and weave material on-site, designed specifically for the occasion. Then again, this base is from a time when skyscrapers could not reach more than two kilometers into the air. I suppose that’s what makes it so impressive, that it is still here.
A newer layer of carbon filament, lined with plants, runs throughout the inside of Moon Base. Lichens, mosses, ivy, and roses, lots and lots of roses. The plants take the carbon dioxide exhaled by the residents and miners and exhale oxygen, which we inhale. It’s a beautiful system. I worked up the nerve to ask a Moon resident if the plants were all that was needed, and she informed me that there are also tanks of algae underneath the base, which supplement the current filtration system. I bet something like this will be useful on Europa.
Rather than head to the gym, as we were told to do, I wandered the halls of Moon Base, my feet clinking into place as magnets pulled the soles of my suit down. It keeps us mostly oriented, although I had moments of dizziness like a flashback to the trip. I’ve been told that gradually fades over the week, so we’ll have just enough time to get reacquainted with directional sensation before being shoved back out into the dark universe.
But I am, truly, grateful to be here. In a way, the end of the week just can’t come soon enough!
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