Pave the Universe

Yancy was opposed to the shelves on moralistic grounds, and made no secret of her desire to put Luna’s shelf meat company, NuBeef, out of business.

Yancy told me once that if she could, she’d gladly butcher NuBeef’s board of directors and start their tissues growing on their own shelves. I think she meant it. Yancy always seemed to be twice as angry with an issue as anyone else I knew. I told her that she should cool her temper, at least at work. "Somebody’s got to take a stand against those pavers," she said. "I know," I said, "but do me a favor and don’t get yourself fired. You’re the best friend that I’ve got around here." That brought out a rare side of her personality. "Thanks, Amy," she said. "I need to hear that."

Yancy felt loyalty to the Farms, we all did, but every now and then I’d hear her mutter a criticism of one of our biomes, or of a supervisor. We did a lot of cave cleaning together, shoveling you know what. But the menial tasks didn’t bother her. Her complaint was with management and management decisions. In particular she thought the company took too much of an ‘artificial’ approach to animal care.

One morning at work we were moving sheep into a new cave. This cave had been equipped with a brand new system of filtering light. It actually used less sunlight cabled from the surface than in our other caves, but was supposedly more beneficial because of artificially produced wavelengths of light that were added in. It was an attempt to give our sheep everything that sheep on Earth had in the way of solar radiation. Yancy thought the idea was lame. "You can’t reproduce Mother Nature," she said. "You can only try to mimic her, and good luck trying." She was probably right, but I didn’t think the company was being bad. They had the best interest of the sheep in mind after all.

The sheep cave bordered the long rail tunnel that led into the city. It had an old airlock that led to the tunnel, and when lunchtime came around, Yancy suggested we walk through the tunnel to the plaza for our break. The lock was easy enough to open, and soon we found ourselves walking beside the tracks that ran down the tunnel.

We were about half way in when the noise started. It was a loud knocking and rumbling, like a rickety, overloaded cargo car rushing down the tracks. There was a bend in the tunnel only a few dozen meters behind us, so we ran forward, and ducked into a service alcove, one of the many that lined the tunnel. The alcove had a rear cave that contained the usual maintenance stuff. We moved back into it to wait for the car to go by.

Only the noise got louder, and we realized that the sound was something very unusual. Yancy looked scared, which scared me. We started back toward the alcove, but before we could move a meter, a great rush of rock and stone fell in front of us. Yancy turned and pushed me back. I fell to the floor and she dove on top of me, and on top of us both fell rocks and equipment and I really thought that was going to be it. Yancy was trying to push me further back into the cave when something struck me in the head. Despite the dark, I thought I was seeing a bright light, and then I blacked out.

The first thing I saw when I awoke was Yancy, bathed in red light, clawing frantically at the rubble beside us.