It seemed like no matter where I dug, how fast I dug, and with what precision I dug, the cold air that day seemed to pour down whatever small shafts I carved in the earth like so much water. In retrospect it was actually kind of strange, knowing that my small tunnel connected to a quarry where dozens of people like myself were furiously tearing through the earth, blasting through the dirt with every last drop of energy and perspiration they could muster. The frigidity was alien, but then again, so was the terrain I was covering. While everyone worked like frenzied ants under the promise of pig-mole meat, I twisted my drill bit about in a relaxed, precise path that was still more efficient than what the others could muster. Pig-mole was as luxurious a dinner as one got in my position. Me, I was just happy with the money. It was brutal work to most people, and was only marginally less so to me. It paid well however, and I could live relatively comfortably.

My parents are dead. I dig for that reason, technically speaking. The tectonic plates were and still are harsh on our lives, and it was common for our settlements to be torn apart by seemingly random earthquakes. We had to keep moving, digging along, up and down, left and right, digging for our dear lives. My parents died in one of such incidents when I was young. I never ended up with much of an education. Instead, physical labor took over my life. That's how I'm known. It's all I'm known for. For however many few that acknowledge my existence, anyways.

I'm Simon the Digger.

My shift was just about over. Whatever unfortunate sap that would be taking over my tunnel had a hell of a crawl ahead of him. Moments before I was ready to pull the drill away and give my goggles the last good wipe-down for the period though, the tip struck something hard with a dull clunk. My heart sank for a minute, thinking about what I'd just done. Our protocol ensured that our personal shafts were pretty much failproof, but punching into inconsistent rock had unforeseeable consequences. Someone could do what I just did and found himself crushed by a few miles of dirt that just suddenly decided to shift downwards a foot, pulverizing everything in its path. I listened carefully, hearing nothing of the rumblings that preceded an upsetting of the earth. Carefully, I started to strip away the dirt around what I had just discovered.

A quick jimmying of some string, a knot at the top and bottom, and voila, I had myself a makeshift necklace. I couldn't help it if my pockets were either full of tools or dirt. More often than not it was the latter. The dirt-dispersal systems in most of our hand-drills only went so far. I slung the small relic, a tiny drill bit with a looped end, around my neck and headed back out into the town's main plaza. I liked to collect the smaller treasures I found, and even if I found anything that wasn't really aesthetically pleasing, someone was usually willing to take it off my hands for some modest money.

The environment was sterile and lifeless. People moved about the small featureless plaza in uniform brown robes and cloaks, none of them involved in or planning on any leisure beyond small talk or discrediting gossip.

I was one of many acceptable targets.

"Gross, it's that digger, Simon," one of a group of girls chirped. With the way they were always standing directly in the path of my departure from the current dig site I was sure at least one of them was denying something. "He gets covered in dirt every day... maybe he enjoys it?"

I opened my mouth to make a rebuttal involving my wage, but was quickly cut off by her aficionado.

"And he's holding something weird, too... he's gross... and he stinks! And he's LOOKING AT US!"

"Watch out, if you're not careful around him you'll fall into a hole!"

"Well, I am, I..." I trailed off as they fled back into the shadows. "..I... I was, I... oh forget it."

I turned away to slump off defeated, but before I could even finish the first 90 degrees, a slender hand slapped down onto my scalp with enough force to nearly send me to the floor. I flailed a bit as it ruffled up my dust-ridden hair, and grumbled as its owner made himself known. A slender man (as he always insisted on himself being referred to as), in waist-tied but otherwise loosely fitting dark workpants, chest-area bandage-wrappings and little else, quickly cast his gaze down upon me. "Don't let 'em get to you. It's not as if they'll ever know what truly makes a man."

I sighed wearily as I returned a cutting stare to him. He flicked his orange-red shades up, quickly shielding his ragged blue hair as he stared back down on me with his smoldering red eyes. Eyes that typically said that he'd just finished doing something ridiculous at someone else's expense and he was ready to escape intact. "You done work for today?"

"...yes."

He gave me another hard slap on the back. "Great. Let's go grab some grub, boooooy do I got a story for you. I was planning on... hm, where'd you get this?" his hand suddenly darted for the drill around my neck, tugging it in his direction with enough force to pull lightly on my windpipe.

"Found it in the-"

"Heh. I like the symbology, it fits you. A drill is a man's soul! Plowing through whatever's in its way without a doubt!" he let the trinket drop against my chest with a thud. It was only then that I realized how heavy it was. "Anyways, c'mon, let's get out of here before-"

"Before you get caught."

"Yeah yeah, let's move." he started to shove me along in the opposite direction. I heard a cry of disgust off in the distance.

Kamina was the settlement's delinquent. He considered himself a revolutionary, but everyone else, especially the quarry warden, was content with merely referring to him as the village idiot. I'd been instructed not to actually hang out with him, both on account of his wild upbringing and the fact that, well, he was kind of a douchebag. When Kamina insists that 'we go get grub', what he really means is 'Simon get me grub'. Kamina wasn't really interested in working for his living beyond a state of subsistence, so while he lived, he'd mooch off me for various things more often than not. That lead us to where we were now, the crummy run-down building that was the closest thing to a cafeteria we possessed. Its roof and a lot of its furniture had been damaged in the last quake a few months ago. Nothing was done about it. For now though, Kamina and I settled for a large plate of low-grade meat and deep-fried insect husks.

To most people this raises the question of why I put up with Kamina's crap. I would answer, because he puts up with mine. Friends were always hard to come by, because of my... less-than-desirable career, my social incompetence, or simply because any other people I DID managed to associate with were eventually killed off by the earth, inside the mines or out. It made it a lot easier to put up with Kamina's bizarre behavior and his constant demands of me. Having someone to talk to that would talk back was worth what financial obligations followed. He made the constant claim that we were meant to be brothers, blood bonds be damned. When I pointed that snippet out to him, from that point on we were what he classified as soul-brothers. He would be my aniki.

The morally responsible would accuse me of giving in to desolation. My response would be, no shit Sherlock.

Kamina spewed out food as he talked. "Then, old hag Trilia is ranting and raving about how she things the color orange is so disgusting, so I decide to sneak around to the supply center in the middle of the night, and get the paint to lather her home with! You should've seen the look of horror on her face when she stepped out her door the following morning!"

Though the thought did humor me, I was still a little turned off by the action. I spoke with a dullness that embodied my entire environment. "You must've been really bored."

I was surprised to see Kamina's boisterous expression suddenly die a little as he leant back in his chair. "...yeah, I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel here, aren't I. In retrospect it was way too much effort even for that reaction."

He looked like he was trying his hardest to stare through the nearest wall.

"...hey, Simon..."

"Hm?"

"Do you ever feel like you just... wanna get out of here?"

I couldn't lie.

"...a bit."

"Well..." he stared me back in the face. "...why don't we?"

"Because there's nowhere for us to go. You heard what the warden and the chief said, and you know what we've been told all our lives... the earth is constantly closing in on us and we need to expand our town."

Kamina shook his head weakly. "Bah. You know what I mean."

"Actually, no I don't."

Kamina pushed himself forward over top of the half-finished dishes of what resembled food, and raised his palm to the air. "We gotta reach out to the sky." He closed his hand in a tight fist and gave it a good shake. "Reach out to the sky and make it our own. Every little facet of our meager existence down here is controlled. We gotta make our own dynasty, Simon, you get me?"

"Well, you know what we were also told, and it's that there is no sky to speak of. There's nothing above the dome ceiling. Unless you're thinking of just breaking right through it, and who knows what kind of damage you could cause that way? Probably annihilate the settlement with that kind of cave-in."

Kamina smacked his palm down hard against the table once more. I bounced back into my seat. "I KNOW there's a sky up there. My father took me there once... he wandered out into a blistering waste, beckoning for me to follow in his footsteps one day. It was a world as far as the eye could see, none of this rock keeping him or I bottled in, and a haze of red and blue and white all around me, and a hazy sun watching over it all. It was a thing of beauty, of freedom. It's what I aspire for."

"Then you know of a way up there?"

Kamina stopped short, grumbling. "How the hell would I, it was so long ago... but that's not what's important here! I'm sick of being tied to this gap in the dirt and the people that keep it that way. I'll rise to greatness. No, WE'LL rise to greatness. What'dya say? Let's make a push for the surface! That's what we do as men, right? We go beyond the impossible, and kick reason to the curb! We push until we break, then push some more! Eh? If a drill is man's soul, then our drills will take us to the heavens!"

See, that was another thing that Kamina was abominably good at, taking the most ridiculous plans and aspirations and presenting them in a manner that, while being absurd at every possible angle, demanded people nearby to follow along. As much as people in the community despised him, he wouldn't have lasted as long as he did without possessing his godslaying charisma.

"So you'll let me know when your master plan is in motion?" I sighed.

"OUR master plan, Simon."

Of course, OUR master plan. I would never have the motive and/or courage to attempt such a thing on my own, or offer my input on such a scheme for that matter, but Kamina was well prepared to cover for me in that regard. That's how it usually played out. Kamina was in pretty well every way my antithesis; for all intents and purposes I was the most boring person in the universe and Kamina was poised to offer explosions and/or a dramatic soundtrack to such humdrum.

We both returned to eating. Eventually him and I bade each other farewell and I returned to my quarters for a good nap. It was all I could think of doing, to be totally honest.

I couldn't shake the fiery glare he was giving to the drill the whole time, though.