The Information Paradox

Chapter 1 - The Secret Project

International Base-3, Luna, South Polar Regions, 2103 C.E.

Deep below the surface of the Earth's moon in a secret facility in an abandoned portion of ice mine #2, an engineer carefully inventoried his equipment and supplies. After months of careful scrounging, bartering and purchasing, he finally had all he needed for phase two of the project. The most difficult commodity to acquire was the 1,000 liters of pure lunar water distilled from the South Polar ice mines deep in the Shackleford crater. The most valuable items were the 250 kilograms of barley and 2 kilos of hops he had grown in a rented hydroponics bay over the course of the last nine standard months. In addition, the few hundred grams of seed stock had been imported from the gravity well of Earth at the cost of nearly a month's salary.

As he was joined by his friend and co-conspirator Kira Ko, Sidhartha King James Mohammed Miller, glanced down at the re-purposed airlock door from which she had entered. His unusual name was a promise made by his father to any god who would listen when he was trapped in an ice mine cave-in years before his son had been born. His friends just called him Jim. "K, were you followed this time?"

The tall, lithe Lunarian-born woman shrugged. "No Jim, I did a little modification to the security feeds. No one from main base bothered to check that the security cams in corridor 7-alpha were showing the same image as 2-delta. We should have plenty of time to get things started before shift change up top."

The engineer gestured to the immaculately clean stainless-steel equipment on the Lunar aluminum work tables, the plastic bins of grain and then at the carefully stored 50-liter bags of pure water. "We're all set, the last of the water was delivered last dark."

She gave a low whistle. "I'm guessing that I don't want to know where you got this?"

He gave her a wicked grin. "If you don't know, then you don't have to lie about it. But I assure you it's all legal, mostly anyway."

She rolled her eyes. "You mean avoiding the water tax?"

He shrugged. "I prefer to consider this a tax deferral, just a few minor monetary consequences we'll sort out later. Our future customers each invested a future portion of their water ration to the project, I just had to do a bit of creative accounting to take, ah, early delivery, so to speak. Anyway, don't ask and I won't tell. Shall we get started, my friend?"

Kira smiled at her friend and lover. "Okay then, what do we do first? We know that we can brew 5 liters at a time, but a thousand? I'm sure that you have read a few books and watched some videos and the like."

Jim smiled and shrugged again. "Yeah, all of that and more. It's only a question of upscaling our previous operation. Okay then carrying on, all of our equipment has been thoroughly steam cleaned."

Kira laughed. "How did you manage that?"

Jim gave her a wry smile. "You know, I know a guy who knows a guy down in water reclamation. Anyway, everything is as sanitized as possible. For this next, and I hope the final batch, the water has been filtered but not distilled. The whole idea is to preserve the flavor of the 3 billion-year-old lunar ice."

Kira picked up a sample beaker of the pure lunar ice meltwater they would be using to make their brew. "Right, whatever that is."

Over the next few hours, Jim and Kira carefully brewed the barley and hops into wort, capped it off in stainless steel containers and linked the monitoring of the two 500-liter vats to their portable comps. As they finished their very long day of beer brewing, Jim gestured to the steel door leading to their secret sub-lunar complex. "Ki, these vats should be okay for about 36 hours, I have my padd set to alert if any parameter goes out of limits."

Kira gave him a wide grin. "And if something goes FUBAR, what will you do if you are on shift and 12 levels down in the Power Production section? It's not like you can just take a long lunch break."

Jim shrugged. "Not sure, but I'm not worried. We've made half a dozen batches with the same formula, ingredients and procedures. If it worked for five liters it should work for five hundred or a thousand right?"

Kira laughed. "If you say so, Mister Brew Master. Anyway, let's lock this place up, and cover our tracks, so to speak and go home. After my last three overtime shifts, I'm in desperate need of at least six hours of sleep."