By David C. Daoust
Upon the dispersion of the City Stations, the Ark Ships began to deploy the fleets to terraform the planets. Many of the Humans took note of those planets too close to the sun. Mostly, they noted that the droids ignored these planets, as they were uninhabitable by any living thing. Even the droids own systems would eventually corrupt and seize if they were to get too close for too long. These fiery death rocks were known as Resource Planets, as the humans immediately began to find ways to acquire the minerals buried within.
While the droids ignored these planets, as they had plenty of resources mined from the designated viable planets, the humans of what would become the ‘Mining Cartels’ saw this as a chance to acquire resources for themselves. A human workforce could not survive on the fiery planets, and droids would not cooperate. This is where Bots moved up from novel play things, to the massive cast iron, fire resistant, super dense, rock breaking, Mining-bots that the Cartels required them to become.
Mining-bots like Vincent.
Vincent had begun his life in the virtual paradise just like all his Bot brothers and sisters, figuring out the rules that governed the universe and all its physics, figuring it out and writing it as code. Vincent never dreamed what the world outside could be so different. The virtual world was never depicted as the fiery planets that had become Vincent’s reality, nor did it involve the repetitive work he found himself doing. The simulated, virtual world , known as the ‘Hub’ to most of the Onion, depicted rolling green hills, cloudy blue skies… much of the Hub was far better than even those on the City Stations experienced, to find the fiery hells these bots worked, was quite a contrast.
The bots visited the fiery planets on their own, in specially designed ships that could take the heat of the sun. Small stations, known as Crucibles, housed the ‘Mining Cartels’ human work force. They remained some distance away, orbiting the moon of the closest ‘safe’ planet, far from the dangers of the sun.
The Crucibles were more than just an in between hub of space stations, they were in fact Factories, Bot Factories. Every time a load of metals came up from the resource planets, the bots would cast off their iron forms, and acquire a new one. As the work in such extreme heat, would erode even the super dense metals used. The Crucible is where these bodies were continuously being rebuilt, rehashed from melted down bots.
The Crucible is where Vincent first met Charles Haul. Charles worked the station, cramped and narrow, the stations were just big enough to hold their crews, and transfer loads of metal from the super dense transport ships to the normal freighters. It was not good living conditions for anyone or anything. The Mining Cartels though, were far off in the City Stations, counting their Coin, without a care beyond that their great Coin machine was up and running.
Those that lived in the Crucible lived away from their families for months at a time. Something no one ever got used to, and the complaints only continued to pile up. A Foreman ran the Crucible though, and they had much the same complaints as those under them. They all knew what they had signed on for though and while the pay wasn’t great, it was work, and for most, work was more important, as it would feed their families while they were gone.
Vincent and Charles first became friends around a small card table, gambling into the night, to waste away the boredom, augment their income, and help ignore the cramped living conditions. For Vincent the station was far preferable than the fiery rocks he spent his days breaking through. Though he found it amusing to hear the humans gripe about their working conditions, he never really said anything.
Charles was interesting, at the very least, in his opinions about other people’s property, interesting to Vincent anyway, as there wasn’t any such thing as a thief in the Hub. Vincent found it amusing to no end, how often, something simply stated as an acquirement to Charles, would be considered flat out stolen to another.
Vincent never missed a game when Charles was at the table, and knew every time his friend cheated. He never said a word… it was too funny. It never occurred to Vincent, at the time, that this could make him an accomplice. It just seemed like a funny thing humans did. Most bots were pretty naive though. It came of spending their young lives with very little structure beyond a programmed simulation of life, a simulation that had very little to do with morals and ethics, and more to do with basic physics.
This naivety was stolen away though, once the pair was caught, and spent time in the brig. The Foreman threatened to send Charles home without pay, which Vincent knew Charles’s wife and two sons could not afford. The foreman even went as far to threaten to crush Vincent’s Data Sphere… which was basically a death sentence for a Bot. This totally changed Vincent’s view of the situation. The Foreman made a mistake that day. Vincent knew exactly how much pressure it would take to crush rocks super heated for a millennium on planets no human could ever set foot on, calculating the pressure involved in crushing a human skull, was child’s play.
It was deemed an accident, and the body was sent home in a bag. Charles helped cover up the truth. If anything, it only strengthened the bond between Vincent and Charles Haul Sr. as they continued their work on the Crucible.
