There was something deeply loathsome about Karen’s cheery affection for her labor and her coworkers. Sagging within her locked boneware, Vera blinked and gaze-tracked her way through a nest of menu options.
Look at that: Karen had abused the mine’s mediation. She had tagged the rocky cave walls with virtual wisecracks and graffiti, plus a tacky host of cute icons and stencils. Could anything be more hateful?
A shuddering moan came from the rock overhead. Black ooze cascaded out and splashed the shrouds around their legs.
Karen cut the drill. Vera’s stricken ribs and spine finally stopped shaking.
“That happens down here sometimes,” Karen told her, her voice giddy in the limpid trickling of poisoned water. “Don’t be scared.”
Vera was petrified. “Scared of what? What happens down here?” “Just keep your hands braced on that big vein of dolomite,” Karen told her, the lucid voice of good sense and reason. “We’ve got plenty of safety sensors. This whole mine is crawling with smart dust.”
“Are you telling me that this stupid rock is moving’?”
“Yeah. It moves a little. Because we’re draining it. It has to subside.”
“What if it falls right on top of us?”
“You’re holding it up,” Karen pointed out. She wiped her helmet’s exterior faceplate with a dainty little sponge on a stick. “I just hit a good nasty wet spot! I can practically smell that!”
“But what if this whole mine falls in on us? That would smash us like bugs!”
Karen sneezed. All cross-eyed, she looked sadly at the spray across the bottom of her faceplate. “Well, that won’t happen.”
“How do you know that?”
“It won’t happen. It’s a judgment call.”