When I checked that box on my job application that said "Willing to relocate," no one explained that this meant the moon.
We're a little collections agency, sharing a building with a college administration office and a struggling real estate agency. We served no purpose whatsoever on the dusty plain of Mare Serenitatis, but that's exactly where we had been placed.
This isn't Mission Control we're talking about, or an army base. It was a call center, nothing more than rows of upholstered plywood cubicles with computers and phones and busted up swivel chairs at each desk, a couple flat panel TV screens for displaying company statistics and the occasional ball game, and some offices for management and technical support.
No oxygen tanks, you could only last a couple days on the food supply, and there was a sign on the front door saying no guns allowed.
I first saw the earth out of the corner of my eye, while I was working an account for a Mr. Todd McKlintlock.
There was a lot going on with his credit card. I had to change his address, phone number, send him a billing statement and collect a payment. I heard people hollering like a bunch of high school students, but they do the same thing whenever the repo man comes and takes someone's car away, so I ignored it.
By law, an official payment analyst has to come by and verify details on all transactions to make sure they are correct and legal.
When I did this, I at last turned and saw the source of the commotion, a view of the earth from the Maemus Mountains.
I did a double take, wondering if my psychiatrist had messed up my prescriptions.
"Oh my God," I said. "Is that real?"
Pat Toomey is a super dark skinned older woman with strong Native American features and long black hair. Ordinarily she sits in the desk behind me, but when the incident happened, she was in the middle of the aisle with her swivel chair, staring out the window.
She glanced at me with an unsettled expression. "Lord, Jeezus, I sure as hell hope not!"
She sighed and shook her head. "Lord Jeezus, if this is real, have mercy on our souls!"
"Dis someone call for a verify?"
I looked up the aisle, and there was our new floor manager.
It's been my experience that the coolest managers often have something wrong with them. This is why I found Martha Jones suspicious the moment Integrity hired her.
I would walk by her desk as she talked with debtors, and hear her advising against medications, speaking a foreign language, or encouraging people to seek a second medical option. Sometimes she would catch a customer in a lie about this or that disabling illness. In other words, she seemed way overqualified for the position.
Secondly, the accent.
About seventy five percent of my coworkers are black, but Martha was the only one who spoke perfect English. In fact, she made the trainees giggle when she asked them to adhere to their "shedules".
Sure, she'd throw in a few slang expressions here and there, but still her diction seemed suspiciously above average.
Third, well, she looked like a fashion model.
Although we have some slender tarty nineteen year olds that thing spandex leggings are acceptable pants to wear around the office, we spend eight hours a day in a chair, talking on a phone. If you're a pro, you're generally not in the best physical shape.
Which reminds me. She also doesn't smoke. Smoking is pretty much a requirement for any management position. I've yet to see a supervisor that doesn't.
Except her.
In a two piece suit dress, she was overdressed, even for management.
Narrow bodied, light brown skin, hair swept back in a spiky sort of bun. Her mouth appeared to be her largest facial feature, the others rather dainty and small. Still picture perfect, over all.
When she saw what lay out the window, and the neighboring windows at the ends of the other rows, she blurted, "Not again!"
Not, "What the hell is going on," not "How did we get on the moon." Just "Not again."
"Uh, do you know something I don't?" I asked.
"No," she said. "But I have a hunch. Do you need a verify?"
I checked my computer and nodded. Somehow Mr. McKlintlock was still on the phone.
"Funny, you wouldn't think the phones would work up here."
"There are a lot of things that you wouldn't think would work in space," she said, picking up the receiver on my phone.
"Am I seeing things?" I asked.
"Nope," she said in an almost bored tone. "We're on the moon."
And then, to the customer, "Thank you for holding, my name is Martha Jones, this call will be monitored and recorded for quality. Am I speaking to Todd McKlintlock?"
She went through the usual verbiage every manager does when they check a payment.
On average, we have thirty people scattered amidst a hundred and sixty desks. On a good day, like Monday, we have a hundred. This is not counting Fannie Mayes College Loans, a small division on the opposite side of the room, packed with thirty or forty people, or Citibank, which sits at the far end in its own separate room.
We were transported to the moon on a Monday.
We had five managers on duty, and they were all busy talking to people.
Sam was my team manager. Martha had only come to verify because he was busy fine tuning various bill collection software.
Gruff, gray haired guy, kind of a bulldog's face. He had a cluster of people flocked around his desk, among them a lanky slack jawed black guy with a basketball shirt and short buzzed hair, a coffee tan girl with flatironed hair, a multicolored blouse and tight leatherette leggings that were not dress code appropriate.
"We're working on it," Sam was saying.
And then, as some other people approached, he shouted, "All right! Everyone back to your desks! I need you on the phones, dialing accounts! I'll answer questions later!"
People argued they shouldn't continue working, on account of being on the moon, but this only made him yell louder. "Back to your desks! Don't think I won't write you up!"
A couple desks from me, I saw Dannika Miller gawking at the scene out the window. She had a window seat, so it was hard for her to get written up for gawking.
She was a strange looking twenty year old, butch haircut, face of a young boy. I always expected her to use the men's restroom. Even the voice confused me.
"Remind me again why we're working?" she said. "We're on the freaking moon!"
"The power should not be working," said a bearded African man seated to my right, his accent difficult but not impossible to understand. "Electricity comes from telephone wires. We would have none of it in space."
That didn't sound exactly right, but I agreed with the sentiment. It shouldn't work.
"We shouldn't even have gravity!" Dannika said. "Or air. This is just an office building. All the air should just seep right out."
"Lord Jeezus, ain't this a mess!"
Pat Toomey was rocking in her swivel chair, watching the window. "My God, I just tried to go outside for a smoke, and the door don't even open. Lord have mercy!"
"I think this must be a gag from some movie company, " Dannika said.
All this time, Martha had been talking with the customer about the late fees and what he could do about them, making sympathetic comments about the man's divorce and his new baby and something about health insurance as she sent the man a billing statement.
Then the power went out.
It's a little known fact that power outages in call centers are not complete blackouts. The phones are usually the last to go, which is bad when the computer containing all the information has gone dark, and you're pulling facts and figures out of your butt.
We had half power, with half the fluorescents out, and half the emergency lights on. The computers showed the default administration login prompt, the one none of us had passwords to. The phone screens still glowed.
Incessant beeping sounds filled the air in annoying repetitive rhythms, machines alerting everybody of the obvious power failure. The computers and monitors shut themselves off, their backup batteries only doing so much.
Martha talked the an off the phone, then told me, "You had everything documented. It should be okay."
"You...seem oddly familiar with all this," I said. "C'mon. Let's hear your hunch."
"Trust me," she answered. "You don't want to know."
A bumpy face appeared at the window. People started shouting and screaming.
"Told ya," she said.