The Shock of the New

Chapter 16: Massive Attack

After doing her daily check on Sofia, Eleanor made her way to work. Sofia appeared to be slowly recovering from her husband's untimely death. Eleanor on the other hand was still fairly shaken by the recent death of Shaun Daniels. Which wasn't surprising as most of the W.E.R. was feeling exactly the same. He'd had such a promising career ahead of him which had been snuffed out in an instant by a tragic accident. According to the concert officials, the equipment hadn't been set up properly which had lead to it malfunctioning and subsequently exploding.

As Eleanor sipped her daily coffee, her mind kept flashing back to the image Shaun Daniels burning alive in front of her. She'd only ever seen one person die in front of her before and that was when she was too young to really understand everything. But this was different. Daniels was young, he was a true patriot and he had a long life ahead of him. To say nothing of the mysterious message Eleanor had found hidden within the incident.

She wondered what the whole thing meant. Maybe it was somebody's sick idea of a prank. But then nobody she knew would be willing to go that far. Maybe it was the P.R.E. striking another attack against the W.E.R.. That's what some of the pundits of the W.E.R.'s tv network were claiming. Quite a few of them were baying for blood

"Let them have it!" one of them had declared on his nightly tv show "We should bring the wrath of god down on their vile heads as vengeance for snuffing out an innocent young life!"
Eleanor wondered if the W.E.R. would really do it. They were always threatening some form of bloody vengeance on the P.R.E., but nothing really changed.

Checking the time on her phone, Eleanor then realised that it was getting closer to the start of her shift. She quickly paid the bill and made her way over to the mining officers.

When Eleanor arrived at the offices and signed herself in, she was once again met by Collins

"Good to see you're on time again" he said "Now listen up. We've hit a large deposit of titanium oxide. This could be the break we need to make up for the drop in productivity and I'm gonna need the whole team focused on this one! So get yourself down to Department 3C immediately!"
"Yes sir!" Eleanor replied.

Most of the actual mining on the moon was done using specially built robots which were typically controlled remotely from the mining headquarters. Although it almost certainly would have been far cheaper to send humans down into the lunar caverns, it was so dangerous that in the end, the W.E.R. mining companies had decided it wasn't worth having to constantly rehire personnel on a daily basis.

Eleanor's station were monitoring one of the main diggers as it slowly dug it's way through the various rocks to the titanium ore that both states of the world craved. As the technicians in the control centre continued monitoring the systems, Eleanor felt a slight sense of normality and for the moment, it seemed like nothing could go wrong. A second later, however this proved not to be true.

Eleanor was busy monitoring the computer station she'd been assigned to during the operation when it buzzed. On the screen a message read "Main systems corrupted. Catastrophic failure imminent"
"Fuck!" she cursed. Then messages began popping up all over the many screens in the room, each warning the same thing. Despite the technician's desperate efforts to stabilise the digger, everything around them just seemed to be breaking down with system after system crashing. Then another message popped up on Eleanor's station which simply read "I'm terribly sorry". A second later, all hell broke loose

The corruption of the digger's computer systems caused it to completely overload and break down. Then the whole thing exploded in a fireball which set off a chain reaction of other diggers exploding which in turn, blew out the entire cavern and destroyed the valuable titanium ore and took down the entire payload that the company were banking on with it.

"You mindless fucking morons!" Collins yelled at them.

After the dust had settled from the blast, Eleanor's entire division had been held responsible for the disaster. Collins had summoned them to his office to give them the disciplinary action they deserved. As he angrily ranted, none of them dared say anything, instead simply taking the verbal assault

"Thanks to your fucking stupidity, we've lost out on a major profit margin, and we've had several expensive pieces of machinery destroyed beyond repair! When you came to the moon. you promised you'd give us your very best and serve the white race every chance you had! And how do you respond to this? By blowing up our equipment, crashing our computers and losing an extremely fucking valuable piece of ore!"
Collins stopped to catch his breath. Then he resumed his tongue lashing.

"So since the entire company has been crippled until the whole thing gets fixed up, you stupid fucking shitheads are gonna be punished. You will all get a black mark on your records and you'll be suspended without pay until the systems are back online! Now get the fuck out of my sight and consider yourself lucky you're not being shipped off to a prison colony for your fucking stupidity!"

When Eleanor got home, she burst into tears. Not only had she lost out on at least a month's pay, she'd completely let the whole W.E.R. down and cost them millions in revenue that would allow them to triumph over the P.R.E. Eleanor cursed the P.R.E. and their hateful ways for trying to destroy the state. She hated how they'd cost her the money she needed to survive and hoped that retribution towards them would be swift and just.

Then Eleanor stopped. She remembered the apology message that the computer had shown her before the whole thing had exploded. That didn't seem like the P.R.E. at all. Usually a message from them would have read something along the lines of "Fuck you, you dirty W.E.R. scum!"
Now she was really confused. Just what the hell was going on in Lunaville W.E.R.? Why was she seeing these messages everywhere she went?

Eleanor then shook her head. Right now she had to figure out how to get through the month with no pay. The mystery of the messages would have to wait until she was back to work and able to afford basic life amenities.