The Agri World Farm Hand
Chapter 1(farm)
Pablo Fernandez squinted in the harsh light reflecting off the canal water. The worker transport boat was rocking and swaying as it chugged along the irrigation canal, sending silver carp leaping out of the water as it passed by.
The boat was heavily overcrowded with over 100 migrant workers, and had a full crew of further migrant workers shovelling farm waste into its biomass gasifier furnace, keeping the crude carbon monoxide fuelled gas engine supplied with a steady stream of fresh fuel gas.
The boat was local made, a crude barge with a crude engine of greased cast steel. Here on the Agri World of Yambini, most everything was a crude and labor intensive affair. If it wasn't made local then it simply cost too much to buy on this planet.
The crowd of migrants huddled together for warmth on the crowded boat, it was just past sunrise and the cold was bitter to these migrants. It was only 25 degrees centigrade right now, utterly freezing to migrants from a much hotter planet.
Pablo and his fellow workers all hailed from the barely habitable hive world of Mia Rho, a planet with out of control global warming from way too much pollution. The average midday temperature back home on Mia Rho was 60 degrees centigrade, and 30 degrees was considered freezing cold in that place. The ecosystem had all but collapsed, much of the economy had quickly followed, and now over a trillion migrants were leaving the planet to find any work they could get.
Pablo had been on the planet Yambini for a few weeks now, but he still couldn't handle the cold weather here. The sun was so much brighter here than on the pollution choked surface of Mia Rho, but it was colder than he could have imagined possible, it only got to 40 degrees at the hottest time of day here!
The air here was so fresh and clean, no smog to be seen anywhere. The lack of the warm comforting smog gave this chilly air a stark quality that Pablo didn't like, it was sterile air, dead air, just cold and totally clean. He didn't like it at all.
The boat chugged sluggishly up the wide canal, continuing to spook the hated silver carp into leaping out of the water to hit them in the faces. They all disliked these jumping fish, they were dangerous, always smacking people in the face and covering them with slime, just beastly animals these fish.
Many cold fish in the face later, the unhappy migrant workers disembarked from the barge at a dock next to today's farm. Every day they worked a different farm, picking crops all day long, hard hard work but very much appreciated by these poverty stricken migrants.
The 100 or so workers walked from the dock to assemble on a bare dirt track around a parked wood gas powered farm truck with a white skinned man leaning against it.
"Hop in," the man said, pointing to the tray at the back of the truck.
The migrants stoically clambered inside the back of the truck as best as they could, but their wasn't room for all inside. Pablo and many of the others were forced to hang off the outside of the truck as best as they could.
When all were more or less aboard, the white guy entered the drivers seat and very loudly put the chugging gas engine into gear. The truck lurched awkwardly forward, and then became more smooth in its travel as it started to gain momentum.
Pablo looked around at the scenery as the crude gas truck chugged along, and saw only endless rows of fruit trees, miles and miles of orange trees, apple trees, and many other varieties of fruit trees. It all needed to be harvested, and even 100 workers would not be able to harvest so much in a day. The farm was no doubt getting more than just one batch of workers for today's harvest, probably thousands of workers would be working this farm today.
The truck slowed down and was put out of gear, these wood gas engines could not turn off their gas supplies until the gasification fires in the fuel furnaces burned out, and had to keep running even when not in use, simply idling in neutral when parked. It was not at all efficient, but at least these sort of engines could be powered by almost any flammable biomass.
The mass of workers disembarked from the idling truck and found another white guy waiting for them next to a huge pile of work gear they would be using, like ladders and fruit sacks and pruning shears and the like.
"Kay boys, y'all know what to do, get harvesting," the new white guy said stoically. Really he didn't have to tell them how to do what they did every day anyway.
Pablo and the others collected their work gear as the truck driver shovelled fresh wood chips into the gasification furnace of his truck, the loud grinding gear change could then be heard as the truck was put into gear again and driven off to presumably get more workers from the dock. With gear in hand the migrants immediately went to the fruit trees and scaled ladders to get at the fruit.
Picking fruit is extremely repetitive and tedious work, just maddeningly boring work. Pablo had a specially designed fruit sack hanging from the front of his chest, and he soon filled it with 20 pounds of fruit before climbing down the ladder to empty the sack in a waiting trailer.
Again and again he filled his sack, up and down the ladder carrying 20 pounds of weight in the freezing cold 30 degree centigrade air. His arms ached in weird places like his forearms, from repetitive straining, his legs and back throbbed with cramps and aches, but he just kept working.
He got paid not by the hour, but based on how much he harvested. The more he harvested each day, the more he got paid. He could average a good 9 credits per hour if he worked as hard as possible, being lazy would just lose him money. Honest work farming, you get what you give.
Up and down the ladder he went, and the white guy stood by the trailer with a clipboard and pen, marking off each time a worker emptied a full sack into the trailer. Each worker wore a vest with a number on it, letting the supervisor identify them by their vest number. It was a good system.
Before long the chugging sound of the truck engine could be heard approaching, and another 100 migrant workers soon joined them in the fruit harvest. This happened many times over the next hour, until workers were everywhere and the harvest was getting picked much faster.
The sun slowly creeped over the sky, and the mass of workers stripped the trees of fruit very quickly now, moving from one row of trees to the next, stripping the branches bare of their bounty of fruits. It was just endless repetition up and down the ladders with sacks of fruit, nothing to break the monotony of the work.
As they worked the workers helped themselves to fruit. They didn't get meal breaks, didn't get meals, but they were permitted to eat as much fruit as they liked as they worked so long as it didn't reduce the harvests too much. It was the one perk of this extremely dull job.
Pablo and the others were given access to a water keg and disposable paper cups as well, to keep them hydrated as they worked. They also paused periodically to piss at the base of a fruit tree. A few even took a dump at the base of the trees, the supervisors always gave them toilet paper when needed, the farmers certainly didn't mind the free fertiliser for their fruit trees.
Hour passed hour, one tree after another was stripped of fruit, and the work just ground on and on. Pablo got a thorn in his leg, someone else got stung by a local insect, really nothing more interesting than the odd work mishap occurred.
The sun gradually went down, and it got too dark to work. The workers were simply given tiki lamps full of plant oils to light and impale into the ground for lighting, and the harvest just went on until it got too cold for the Mia Rho workers to continue. Some of the harvest was lost, but the workers could not go on in the cold 20 degree centigrade night air! Too cold!
Pablo was shivering violently all the way back to the truck. He received his pay with chattering teeth, and then climbed up on the truck for the journey back to the boat. The exhaust from the truck was deliciously warm as it wofted over him in the night air.
At the dock the migrant workers gathered frantically around a number of burning braziers, full of merrily burning apple tree branches, set up for their comfort by the benevolent farmer who owned the farm, in thanks for a fine day's work. The people of Yambini were very fond of inexpensive labourers, and did little things like this to make the migrants a little bit more comfortable. It was lovely.
After warming up in front of the fires for a few minutes, the migrants felt strong enough to embark into the waiting passenger barges, and huddled together onboard for the journey back to town.
Pablo was snugly located right in the middle of the huddling mass, and it made it slightly more bearable as the barge chugged off, down the irrigation canal system that doubled as the primary transportation route on this region of Yambini.
A few damn silver carp still managed to leap clear over the crowd to swat Pablo in the face. He cursed loudly as the freezing fish slime covered his face. The entire crowd of people was cursing as leaping fish hit them in the face, the irrigation canals were infested with these easily spooked silver carp, they were a real nuisance! Especially when you were already freezing cold and sore from work!
Many many slapping slimy fish later, and the boat pulled up at the dockside in the town of Jil, the biggest settlement in the immediate area. Jil was just a country town, but it contained enough temporary accommodation for the many thousands of migrant workers who were living in town during this harvest season.
The migrants all fled through the night air to the warmth of their lodgings, not stopping or slowing until they were all huddled in front of fireplaces in their rental rooms.
Pablo shared his own room with nine other men. They each had a bunk in one of the 5 bunk beds in the room, each had a suitcase for their stuff, and shared a bathroom with 30 other people on this floor of the small bed and breakfast they lived in. At the moment all the men were huddled around the single fireplace in the room, stacking it up with a pile of wood to get the room to a pleasant 40 or more degrees for the night.
It took a while but they got the fire blazing hot enough to really get comfortable, and they finally relaxed for the first time that day. They had each taken a pound of fruit home with them for their dinner that night, and had a meal of assorted fruits, mostly apples and oranges and pears.
After dinner Pablo bathed in the bathroom, enjoying a nice hot shower that took away some of the aches from today.
That night Pablo slept peacefully, so tired from the day of work that he dropped off to sleep as soon as he got into bed. It was a hard life, but the sleep each night was wonderful.