The Shock of the New

Chapter 4: Working on the Moon

Without a doubt, one of the greatest achievements of the post Giga Wars world was the advances in space travel. As soon as the W.E.R. and the P.R.E. had established themselves, they began unparalleled investment into space travel, primarily as a method to one up each other.

Soon citizens from both states could enjoy holidays in specially built space colonies (providing they were rich as hell) or even live permanently in space. But it didn't stop there. Eventually the two competing nations of the world had established permanent colonies on the moon and by the time of this story, were engaged in a fierce mining war to get a hold of as much of the precious metals that the moon was rich with as possible.

Of course there is a major downside to establishing a colony on the moon. Namely the fact that it has no indigenous population and so must export workers from the Earth. Although the W.E.R. was able to set up some of their richest members of society to run the big businesses and industries, good cheap labour for a trip away from Earth that would last for months at a time was hard to come by. So in the end, the Lunaville W.E.R. government had to swallow its pride and allow none white and minority workers to work there. Although a fair number of them had been eliminated by the time Lunaville W.E.R. had been set up, there still existed enough non-whites across the W.E.R. who were willing and able to do the lower level work that was needed to keep Lunaville W.E.R. running

Among them was a young Australian by the name of Eleanor Johnson. Being mixed race (Half Aboriginal on her father's side) Eleanor hadn't had the easiest life. In fact, she'd largely grown up in poverty and spent most of her years constantly being reminded about how she was part of the lesser races in comparison to the holy white race who'd built the utopian world she lived in and how she had to be grateful to them at all times. Eventually with the lack of genuine employment available in the W.E.R. for someone of her colour available, Eleanor had managed to scrimp together enough money to immigrate to Lunaville W.E.R.. Once there, she'd been given the training she needed and was hired as a low level computer technician for an office for the Hrimfaxi mining company located in the Ayn Rand district of Lunaville W.E.R..

This had been going on for about 3 years and for her, today was very much the same as it always was. Eleanor always liked to stop in a small coffee shop just a couple of streets away from the company office and enjoy a simple brew of synthetic coffee. Although the job wasn't the best paying job in the world, Eleanor always managed to save a small bit of money to spend on a small luxury. Right now, as she sipped her coffee, Eleanor was watching the shop's TV and following the news for Lunaville W.E.R.

After the usual broadcasts about the war with the P.R.E., the station then brought in the news from the Yiannopolis gardens, Lunaville W.E.R.'s food production district.  According to the recent reports, productivity in the factories had resulted in a 10% improvement in overall food production and those within a certain rank were to be allocated a rise in food rations.

For a second, Eleanor was elated at the thought that she might be getting more food per week. A second later of course, her hopes were dashed when she saw that her ranking in the colony was not high enough to get a raise.

"Well shit" she muttered. Eleanor however didn't feel too disappointed. Growing up, mixed race in the W.E.R., you gradually accepted the fact that your lot in life was always going to be lower. Eleanor then finished her coffee and set off to the computer station.

The station in question was located a couple of blocks from the shop which was partly the reason why Eleanor always had her morning coffee there. After checking herself in and collecting her work gear, Eleanor walked out onto the vast control room where the computer was housed. Computers were of course a fundamental part of the new world and had advanced immensely in the years since the Giga wars. Although the vast majority of them were small enough to fit on a desk, there still existed a vast array of supercomputers running things behind the scenes. Of course, no matter how advanced they were, they would always find a way to break down and thus there was always an opening for computer repair and programming.

As Eleanor stepped into the room, Collins, her boss walked up to her

"Morning Johnson" he said "On time as usual I see"

"Thanks" Eleanor simply replied "I do my best"

"Well your best is needed right now" Collins explained "The number systems for the finance computer are acting up and it keeps printing out figures 5% smaller than they should be so I need you to take a look at motherboard A on module 22. I figure even someone like you can handle a job like that."

"Yes sir" Eleanor simply nodded "I'll get right down to it"

Finding module 22 wasn't difficult. All the financial computer's modules were housed in a specific room and each one was numbered 1-25. Soon Eleanor had located it at which point, she plugged in the debugging system the technicians used and began sorting her way through the coding. After searching through the mountains of code for about 10 minutes, Eleanor found the problem. Inside a pair of calculating brackets, someone (most likely some stupid kids thinking they were being clever by hacking the system) had placed an incorrect line of code.

As Eleanor went to correct it, she noticed that it was not in fact a random string of letters and numbers like she'd originally assumed, but instead a sequence of letters that read "In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king"

This caught Eleanor off guard. Usually if something like this happened, the hackers would leave a message like "P.R.E. FTW!". Certainly not something like this.

Eleanor simply sighed and corrected the message. The P.R.E. hackers were certainly starting to get creative. She corrected the error before returning back to Collins to report it into the log.

When Eleanor told Collins what she'd discovered, his eyes widened slightly

"What's going on boss? Eleanor asked "Something wrong with that?"

Collins shook his head "Oh no. It's just an interesting choice of message for a hacker to leave"

"I agree" Eleanor nodded "In fact I think-"

"-You and your kind aren't paid to think" Collins interrupted "You're simply paid to keep the system running so the profits keep coming in. Understand?"

Eleanor nodded a second "Yes sir"

Collins patted her head "Good. Now get back to work. The company system isn't gonna maintain itself!"

The rest of Eleanor's shift progressed fairly normally. Once it was all over, she clocked out and took the Lunaville metro back to her home in the Breitbart housing complex (named after one of the greatest journalists in history who before the Giga wars, had lead the charge against the liberal fake news media that constantly brainwashed the population into hating white people)

Once Eleanor got back into her apartment, she made herself a hot cup of coco and flopped into a chair to see what was happening on the Lunaville airways.

Eleanor had only been doing it for half an hour when the door buzzer rang. She groaned and got up to answer the door.

When she did so however, Eleanor was not in fact met by the sight of a salesman or W.E.R. political activist going door to door, but instead Sofia Martinez, Eleanor's next door neighbour and long time friend. What shocked Eleanor was that Sofia appeared to be completely distraught.

"What's the matter?" Eleanor asked her "You look like complete shit"

"It's Matias!" she said between sobs, Matias being her husband

Eleanor's eyes widened "What's happened to him?"
Sofia sobbed again "He's...he's dead!"