Another Day at the Office

A Story by sci-fi-nugget

Something I actually wrote a few years ago.

Planet Mars, Site 15, February 15^th 3150

Tim didn't really like his job all that much, but he believed in his work. The terraforming of Mars would take thousands of years, but it was the only real home humanity had left, and he wanted a place for his descendants nicer than the one he currently occupied.

Tim got out of his cot and slowly worked his way down the cold corridor towards his post with a cup of coffee. Tim was in charge of maintenance of the absolutely massive dynamo generator charmingly labeled “Site 15”. It's job was to melt the core of the planet, restarting the magnetic field; shielding it from radiation and the solar wind, still slowly stripping away the planets tenuous atmosphere.

“Am I interrupting?”

The man who had previously been reclined in his chair with his boots up on the console and his hat on his face slowly sat up.

“You're up early.” Sam said, rather dully.

“Couldn't sleep.”

“Seems to be a lot of that going around.” Sam observed.

“Yeah well, doesn't matter now, how's everything look?” Tim asked.

“Well It was looking good as of about five minutes ago, but you know this place, it's over a hundred years old and built by the lowest bidder, I bet somethings up.

“Well at least we'll have jobs for a while.” Tim joked rather dryly.

Sam leaned forward and checked the console, a quizzical look came across his face and tapped on one of the dials a few times.

“Can that be right?”

Tim leaned over the console and tapped the dial as well.

“I sure hope not, we don't have a video feed on that either.”

Tim rubbed his eyes, this was going to be a long day.

“Alright, issue an evacuation for any personnel that may be in the area, we are going to head down there and check it out. I really hope that is just a broken dial.”

“Just the area?” Sam looked a bit worried.

“Evacuating the facility would take an hour and according to the the gauge there, it's not critical yet.”

“Meh, suit yourself.”

“No, suit yourself, we need to get to the airlock. Now.”

Sam tapped in a few commands on the console for the evacuation notice and jogged to catch up with Tim. They worked their way down a few flights of stairs to the airlock, suited up, and went out side. The Sun was still low in the sky, shining through the orange haze of Mars' atmosphere. The two maintenance workers made their way to the garage, grabbed a dust covered truck and after a five minute drive were at the site of their inconvenience. The area was a conduit near the massive nozzle spewing a column of plasma into the core of the planet. A hundred yard's away the problem was immediately obvious, the conduit's magnetic field had gone out of alignment and was heating the side orange hot.

“Good thing we got here when we did. This is bad. Very bad.” Tim decided and started toward the conduit.

“Looks like the gauge was wrong, eh boss?” Sam chirped.

“Shut up and grab your tools.”

Sam worked his way back over to the truck and grabbed the bag of tools. He turned around to see a massive solar like prominence of plasma rupture the conduit vaporizing everything in the way of the arc, girders, pipes, earth and Tim's left arm. Sam sprinted to Tim, only catching part of his scream, the static of the plasma washing the rest out. Sam got to Tim and to his amazement noticed he managed to keep his suit pressurized, holding what was left of his suit closed with his remaining arm.

“Here, tie this off, give me the tools and get yourself and as many people away from this place as you can.” Tim struggled. “I got this.”

“You sure?” Sam asked absolutely dumbstruck.

“Yeah, I'm sure.”

Sam opened his mouth about to say something, and closed it again. There was no point. He rushed back to the truck, the heat still painful 300 yards away. He turned it around, started driving and saw Tim in the mirror working on the conduit, manually adjusting the magnetic field with a wrench. His suit started smoking.

Four hours later Sam went back . It took Tim nearly half an hour to get the fields contained enough for someone else to finish up, and another three and a half hours to get everyone out and get a determination from management that it was safe enough to finish the job. Sam approached the station where Tim was working, noticing on his way the ground in places still glowing red hot and Tim's prone form yards off. He got to the station, melted rubber all over the station from Tim's glove, his body charred. Sam thought Tim was the toughest person he had ever encountered, he had worked half an hour with one arm while boiling alive in his suit.

Sam finished the emergency repairs, the field was back and locked into alignment but would take another week or so to patch the breech. He picked up the remains of Tim and headed back to the garage.

***

A week after Tim's funeral, Sam walked down the hall towards the mess and stopped at the memorial wall. A new star to go with the 1200 or so others read simply:

Tim Holiday 3103-3150

Sam bowed his head for a moment, Tim was the third person he knew who had died that year. He ate his lunch and went back to work. Another day at the office.