Stephen Burns - Down Under Crater Billy

Illustration by William R. Warren, Jr.

It began with the office routine of Binkovitch telling me, Cmon, Dave, this babys 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 UNNTSTOAs 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 wasand ismy dream vacation.

I took another look at the invoice inset at the bottom of the screen under Binkovitchs 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 moods 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 feelingsand then translate them into safe testing protocols. My recurring ulcer and chronic insomnia were just fringe benefits.

I sighed. So whens it coming? I was still clinging hopefully to my one fallback position. Maybe I could stall it in the manufacturers own testing department for a while longer.

Binkovitchs 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 Lunas Earth-side youll 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 Colonels 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 14S 50W is another area deemed dangerous enough for this same exclamation-pointed warning.

Thats 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 dont, 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 raceand for ourselves in the bargain.

We dont 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. Its buried under ten meters of solid rock, and hard to get into or out of as a prisonnot that it is one, were 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, 1 left my office and headed off to check out this new threat to our safety and my sanity. Some items weve 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 ants life of tunnels and caverns deep underground. Not me. Im 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 hadnt 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 Billys main computer system, spoke up through my wristlet.

Weve 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 2Fs 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.

Its not your fault, old buddy. So whats up? Code C meant that it posed no danger to life, limb, or Crater Billys 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? Im 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. Dont 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 tonights entrees.

I assume thats 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. Dont go near the kitchen, Dave. Its a feta worse than death. He went on, laughing.

Thanks, Jim, I needed that, I called after him.

Jims report is quite accurate, Sorry continued. The smell flugged all the air sniffers in the area. Furthermore there was a subsidiary bug in the abnaddled progging. It had to do with the Swiss-like gas bubbling the enties put in the product.