The Hooman Saga - Book Two, Part 1

Episode 24

(This book is available everywhere online. I'm working as I can to get this posted to Wattpad. if you can't wait to see how this turns out, see https://calm.li/HoomanSagaBk2Pt1 for more information and links.)

Soo-she bowed her head again and forced her body to relax. Deep breathing helped calm her heart and bring an inner peace. She said a short prayer under her breath and felt the whiteness reappear, along with her memories.

"Pay attention, Sue Reginald! I won't repeat this so you can catch up with everyone else. Mark this on your slate!" Her classroom was small, and the students were nearly elbow to elbow. This was the fifth classroom they had used in this last solar year. The tunnels had been moving as they excavated to follow various veins of minerals. Those veins were left from the ancient volcanic activity, and so had taken the lines of least resistance to the surface, not straight ones.

Rooms were made in the leftover tunnels, as they could be sealed and pressurized. With the high production demands, converting old tunnels to usable space was no priority. If you didn't meet your quota's, it wasn't just the loss of prizes. You'd also lose supplies of food, water, and air. Broken tools would go un-replaced, and that would mean falling even further behind. The highest producers got the best supplies and attention from management and government. Because they could afford to pay the "management fees" that were required.

"Wage-slaves pay kickbacks, rich get richer and the poor get to dig more." That was the mantra of the Slaggers, those that brought the raw ore up to the fusion-kilns to be extracted for whatever wealth could be found. The tunnels were dug where the higher-demand minerals were located. And they lived in the old tunnels as long as they were safe.

It was up to the engineers to guide the slagger crews. The foremen on each crew also organized runners to ferry their ore to the kilns.

After school, the children would help where they could. Safety was key, but everyone helping was the only real way those quotas could be met. Everyone worked, everyone helped. School lessons were all oriented to being better workers, learning what you needed to know in order to be safe.

If you haven't guessed by now, there was no Welfare. No organized protesting. No strikes. Each colony had to take care of their own, but the harsh environment dealt out its own justice. Unaware or careless people could get others killed. Any colony with a large number of people not working would fall behind on their quotas and start losing materials to do their jobs. There was no excess to pay people not to work, or to be "professional protesters" outside government representative offices.

Children got to play, but after their school and work was done. More often than not, this was the treadmills and climbing walls. Everyone spent some time at these daily. While they were fun, it was not only a way to blow off steam, but also to keep your lungs and agility in shape. People who could run from a tunnel collapse tended to live longer. People who could climb out of a crevasse could be back working.

Sue loved her schooling, and had enough talent to become an engineer, she was told. Schooling was boring. The classes were tied to the median performance. Teachers had that job usually because they couldn't slag any more. Most often, this was because some accident had injured them such that they couldn't stay on their own job. So the brightest weren't the teachers, but might be slagger administrators. The old saying, "Those who can't do, teach." So she found herself out-guessing the teachers, but soon learned to be helpful to the slower students in the class, as that would raise the median score and get them more advanced texts.

Her mother would sneak engineering texts to her when she could, hoping that by raising one of her own to become an engineer, they'd have a better place to live and better rations.

Sue also hated that life. The constant orders and conditions in the mines were depressing. Some of the families had Bibles and books of poetry which she would borrow and read before the light's dimmed for the evening. Her favorites were Psalms and Proverbs, although some of the adventures were interesting. The trick was to get someone to explain what a "lion's den" was and the reason they kept wild beasts locked up.

There were no wild anything at the moon colonies. Everything had to be functional. Well, except maybe the royal elites. You never knew what they were thinking of doing. Somehow, they could afford to have yacht races between the colonies. Sometimes, after the video briefings that preceded the quota postings, they would show video of the races and which royal families won and lost in them. Supposedly this was supposed to be motivating to the slaggers. Mostly, they put up with watching them without any reaction. Elites were governed by who you were born to, not if you got elected. Especially if your parents were slaggers to begin with.

You did see people who became elites from the business or government positions, but the only stories of slaggers ever getting somewhere was in some old legend about a girl named Cinderella, who would pick up the minerals falling from the slag carts and bringing these to the furnaces to help meet the colony quota. She was a member of a business family who had run for government office and failed. But they were still invited to the gala balls. Her step-sisters kept her from going, but she met a royal prince somehow who recognized her genetic background and rescued her. They lived happily ever after, etc. Just a legend. No one she knew believed it.

That was why she would run on the treadmills as hard and as fast as she could. It became a metaphor for her life. Running as fast as you can to stay in the same place. But it helped get the stress out of her head. She felt trapped in that life. No matter how good she was at anything, there was no real way to get ahead. You were always working to just keep from falling behind.

Sue then felt the whiteness return and an idea to look for thought sending. She then dug around in her memories to find some of these. While her wolf friends were both fascinated and alarmed about human behavior, this wasn't going to do the wolves much good in dealing with their local ferals, both wolves and hooman.

So Sue Reginald dug deep, looking for answers they could use.

It was her grandmother that gave her the first inkling...

(This book is available everywhere online. I'm working as I can to get this posted to Wattpad. if you can't wait to see how this turns out, see https://calm.li/HoomanSagaBk2Pt1 for more information and links.)