Stephen Burns - Down Under Crater Billy

Illustration by William R. Warren, Jr.

It began with the office routine of Binkovitch telling me, “C’mon, Dave, this baby’s absolutely foolproof. ”

Then the schmuck laughed at this several hundredth-odd iteration of a joke that was stump stupid the first time he told it. As usual, that aggravating, annoying, sludgeforbrains haw! haw! haw! made me wish I could reach through the commscreen and whack him one on the top of his pointy head. Preferably with something like a nice big hammer in my hand.

Once again I vowed to actually take one of my unused leaves, venture the hundreds of klicks north to Copernicus Down, visit the UN level, casually drop by UNNTSTOA’s section, pop into his office for our first face to face ever, and proceed to beat the living crap out of him. Since I had no plans to ever risk the ride back to Earth and then visit some tropical paradise like Tahiti, that was—and is—my dream vacation.

I took another look at the invoice inset at the bottom of the screen under Binkovitch’s ugly ferret face. Half a dozen different new items were listed, but one in particular was giving me the sort of sinking feeling the mammoths must have felt when they visited sunny La Brea.

“Well, at least it was manufactured by Mercedes-Motorola Microwerks,” I said, trying to slow my mood’s descent into the tarpit. “Their stuff hardly ever goes screwlzy.”

“Hardly ever,” Binkovitch agreed with an evil grin.

As chief safety officer I had theoretical refusal of any item. But the priority tag the thing carried suggested that trying to navigate the bureaucratic maze it took to do so might be a Voyage of No Return. Aside from that, as CSO it was my job to have those bad feelings—and then translate them into safe testing protocols. My recurring ulcer and chronic insomnia were just fringe benefits.

I sighed. “So when’s it coming?” I was still clinging hopefully to my one fallback position. Maybe I could stall it in the manufacturer’s own testing department for a while longer.

Binkovitch’s grin grew even more hatefully gleeful. “Your chief of testing took delivery on it about twenty minutes ago.”

There was no way for me to avoid dealing with the damned thing. Not if Gloria already had her hands on it.

If you look over any current map of Luna’s Earth-side you’ll see several areas marked with holographic red domes, the legend DANGER! RESTRICTED ZONE! OVERFLIGHT AND/OR LANDING PROHIBITED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE!

The reason for the mapmakers getting worked up enough to use exclamation points is fairly obvious with most of them. Only a total moron would try to fly over or land on the Laser Power Columns, Meteor Defense Missile Emplacements, or Mass Catapults and risk being broiled like one of the Colonel’s chickens or shot down like a clay pigeon. The human race being what it is, of course a few people do it anyway.

Down in the Midlunar Lowlands at roughly 14°S 50°W is another area deemed dangerous enough for this same exclamation-pointed warning.

That’s where I live and work, along with around five hundred other lost souls trying to live something like normal lives: loving the ones we love, squabbling with the ones we don’t, petting our pets, watching our weight, dreaming of the greener grass on the other side of the fence, and spending the pay we get trying to make existence a little safer for the human race—and for ourselves in the bargain.

We don’t have any big lasers, missiles or catapults, and yet thanks to our reputation almost no one ever tries to fly over us.

The place is off the regular transport routes, out in the middle of dusty nowhere. It’s buried under ten meters of solid rock, and hard to get into or out of as a prison—not that it is one, we’re all here more or less voluntarily.

This hazard-marked place is Home Sweet (or at least Semisweet) Home to all of us living here down under Crater Billy.

Once Binkovitch was done getting his jollies for the day at my expense, I left my office and headed off to check out this new threat to our safety and my sanity. Some items we’ve been given to test bear closer watching than others. I had a feeling that this one would give me eyestrain.

When we were first brought here quite a few people had a hard time adjusting to the ant’s life of tunnels and caverns deep underground. Not me. I’m happy as a heavily medicated clam with the warm glow of lightpipes or sunpanels above me, a grass-covered stone floor under my feet, and nice reassuring rock walls all around me. I love the safety of traveling everywhere on foot in the dreamy lunar gravity, secure in the knowledge that there is no motorized transport to possibly break down or go out of control when it passes by, bringing my life to a sudden messy end.

My office is up on one side of Level 2. Testing Operations is down on the other side of Level 4. The most direct route was to cross my level by the Twomain tunnel, then take the ramps down to 4. There are elevators, but few of us ever risk using them.

I hadn’t gone more than fifty meters down wide, high-ceilinged Twomain, smiling and nodding at neighbors who were out and about when Sorry, the AI face of Crater Billy’s main computer system, spoke up through my wristlet.

“We’ve got a Code C in the kitchen of the communal dining area, Dove,” he said.

“Dave,” I corrected automatically, watching Lucinda Weems and Arturo Genovese prying Community Room 2F’s self-opening doors apart with crowbars as I passed by. We waved at each other.

“Sorry.” This was an apology, not an introduction. We were old friends.

“Forget it.”

He sighed. “I always seem to.”

He did, too. Several times a day. In Jameson Jargon this was an RITG, or Recurring Ineradicable Training Glitch. For my whole life, starting with my birth certificate, most machines handling my name print or speak it as Dove Murphy.

“It’s not your fault, old buddy. So what’s up?” Code C meant that it posed no danger to life, limb, or Crater Billy’s critical systems, and could therefore be considered minor. But as CSO it was my job to know about it. After all, there would be paperwork. There was no actual paper involved, but forms are forever.

“The Kentford ‘Kitchen Magician’ brand NT-based Commercial Duty Food Transformer being tested in the main kitchen turned flaky again. Would you like the gory details?”

I shrugged. “Why not? I’m already having a rotten morning.” In a side tunnel three kids were being stalked by a Sgt. Slaughter action figure gone renegade. They had nets, ropes, and apparently everything in hand. “Don’t forget to report, kids!” I called. They gave me the thumbs up.

“Not as rotten as Vangy Spencer, I think,” Sorry said. “It appears that her wristlet tumbled the enties’ progging. She was talking to her son while setting the transformer to produce a fifteen kilo block of synthetic tofu which she planned to use in one of tonight’s entrees.”

“I assume that’s not what they made.” It was hard to imagine it making something worse than tofu, but put Vangy and enties together and anything could happen.

“You got it. The device produced a fifteen kilo block of syncheese instead. One which combined certain identifying aspects of both Swiss and Limburger.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Ugh.”

“And a fine ugh to you too, white man,” said Jim Tallfeather, who had just come from that general direction. Then he laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. “Don’t go near the kitchen, Dave. It’s a feta worse than death.” He went on, laughing.