Saturday, November 18, 2006

Part 12 – Mining Concrete 23/7

It all happened in a daze. I had parked in the blue headquarters of CareCorp, and was already being escorted into a full tour by two wonderfully pleasant guides, a matron-like woman and a neatly dressed man in a suit. Everyone here seemed so very nice, with sugary smiles and waves wherever I went. It was quite odd.

My arms swung in wide arcs as I walked peacefully into this company of friends. They had assured me that despite my lack of skills in various tasks, they’d help teach me. This felt all too good compared to the total chaos at Jita, or the dangerous life avoiding bullets and the trigger-happy scales of justice.

“So…” I began quite charmingly to my guides. “What would you think I could do at your fine institution?”

The man looked thoughtful, but maintained that somewhat vacant if serene smile. “We can provide you with the skills and training you’d need. Perhaps after a course you can drive one of the Procurers in the garage. I think we can find a spot for you in the .9 Sec Concrete Mining Division.”

Concrete mining? Was that an actual profession? Why on earth would anyone do that for hours at a time? It might be safe, but if I was lucky, my profits would probably top out in the high peanuts. While considering this terrible truth, my attention was suddenly drawn to a room beyond clear glass now entering my sight.

It was a small room, with golden floor tiles and marble pillars, sticking out compared to the usual cheap furnishings elsewhere. Nothing was there but a small assembly machine that read ‘BPO: Money II’ atop of it in big golden letters. As it chugged alone, it seemed to consume piles of scrap metal, garbage and a couple of cheap goods, while spitting out stacks of high-value bills on the other side. Inflation be ****ed I guess as long as somebody was able to swim in bathtubs made from pure 24 Carot Megacyte.

Before I could ask, I was ushered along quickly into the garage. There she was too, my new Procurer. It was a fine craft, different from what I was use to. All the wheels touched the ground at the same height, and it even seemed designed from the ground up to work. I could no doubt strip-mine entire fields of concrete effortlessly in this thing.

"We'll talk about full time employment and orientation after you have a while at the wheel." The two guides turned, smiling vacantly at me and each other before walking away.

***

Before I knew it, I was at the wheel and driving to work in the concrete fields out back. As I drove to my new workplace, mining worthless concrete, I looked longingly across a shallow red line reading ‘0.4 security past here’, and the piles of gold and silver just heaped up along the roadside, ready to be collected. It seemed so alluring, yet so far away. I felt sick almost at evil eyes staring back at me, and started mining concrete.

“Don’t look past there.” Said one of my fellow CareCorp employees. “It is forbidden to think of entering the 0.4” he whispered, eyes wide and glazed over. “It is said by the Most Secure One that if you even think about crossing the ‘Low Security Line’, that you will be killed in horrible ways.”

Perhaps after hearing him speak in such a tone was when I suddenly felt like something was truly wrong. This was an area the police deemed ‘0.9’ security, and yet there were dozens of workers here, all with utility vehicles of their own, mining nearly worthless ore tirelessly! They moved as one, with hive-like efficiency. Also of an odd coincidence, except for that man who spoke to me and a few other talkers, almost all of the rest happened to be blank-eyed and silent Asians, working 23 hour shifts like automatons to mine this worthless ore.

My mind raced at these strange occurences. I knew I would need to get to the bottom of this soon…

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