Location: Lunar Mining facility; Sea of Tranquility. NLMC ore refinement facility
Driving along the service route, my EPV (electric patrol vehicle) whining a high register hum as its single speed motor was reving at its limits, I heard the call,"2N4...a possible shaker in the north canteen...proceed at once...
"Damn another one. That makes 6 in 2 months. All the psychological tests on incoming contractors and still the problem are getting worse. Off world work was once a promising alternative. Come Off world, give us 6 months and make 3 years salary tax free…. Free room and board and flight….make a small sacrifice for the betterment of Earth…. "
"Well that was the pitch that attracted the first miners. Earn great money for a short period of time and helping with Earth's energy problems. The problem is that an infrastructure needs to grow with the influx of new colonists. More people require more supplies; more supplies require more people to provide supplies and so on. Any disruption in the supply model and black markets arise. Divisions among miners arise: old/young, black/white, Latino/black and so on. Sound like prison rules? Yes sir, except you elected to walk right into prison cell willingly. In the end, whoever controls the yard controls the prison. Here, the same rules apply. The unintended side effect for New Lunar Mining Corp (NLMC) is that these divisions worked in their favor. Who needs direct supervisors when established clicks mete out the job functions? Don't like it, well fuck it, leave…oh wait you can't… What are you going to do? You are stuck on an uninhabitable rock, inside a dome, inside a suit, staring at the planet you left .Earth mocking you, laughing at your stupidity, always there to remind you but just out of reach. So you do your time, grudgingly at first then you just deal with it. Unless you become a "shaker"…
"Shakers started happening within the first year of operations. First, the NLMC docs ruled it as just another version of home sickness. Some anti-depressants and you are good to go. However, shakers became more and more common and harder to control. Shakers would either stay in a semi-catatonic state. They were not productive but they weren't harmful. That all changed with the first airlock explosion. A shaker just walked right to the airlock door and then detonated an explosive pack. The explosion took him and half of B shift right out the opening. Thirty-one souls lost in a nanosecond. NLMC took notice and started to bring in more medical staff and security to help control the problem. That is where I came into the picture….."
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