Torches.

Pluto was said to be a beautiful place.

Despite its inhospitable temperatures and low gravity index. The desire of humanity to expand amongst the stars had transformed the binary dwarf system into one of the most important, and prosperous outposts within the outer solar system.

Whatever... all that cumbersome nonsense was of no importance to me.

I had never actually seen the city with my own eyes, and neither had I ever met someone who had been there before. History was for prideful fools.

The true magic of the faraway mega-towers had always been hidden in its burning, distant lights.

Stories told that travelers in the faraway past used the stars to find their way back home. However, within the infinite void, Charon had always been the brightest. The lit branches of the cities rooting along its surface resembled an ancient, otherwordly tree.

A godly man-forged creature that anchored the two astral bodies together, with its roots made out of hand-forged metal.

Just like those ancient travelers, for us miners, the northern star guiding us home was the cord. Its wide, ever-shifting array of lights, joined both moons in their mad dance across the stars.

I still remember the reverence our people had for that light... In the midst of death, we would throw our maps away, and walk toward that otherwordly spark in the darkness.

...

[ 086097097109, first warning. Poor performance is not tolerated. ]

| I got too distracted. |

My gaze darted away from the faraway visage of the skyline to return to my post. A bothersome wide range of technical information was being displayed across the tactile device attached to the lower base of an automated industrial drill.

What had once been an automated industrial drill...

As far as we were concerned. Miners had not received any substantial upgrade to cognitive capacity in the last centuries, but bright flashing red warnings had never been a good thing, I could tell you that.

| Diagnostics are not looking good for you Mr.Driller. |

I said to myself in local comms, In usual fashion, the driller did not reply.

Still, the intuition of a miner never failed, or so they said. Mine told me this big boy was in very bad shape.

I had yet to check the main logs, but by what I had been communicated by mission control, I was pretty confident that at least one of its engines had failed badly.

I just hope nothing has become shrapnel on its insides. The handler wouldn't like that.

I thought quietly, careful to avoid firing too many of my cranial implants. The last thing I would want at the moment would be one of those bothersome misthinking warnings to be sent to my handler.

Consciously trying to empty my mind, I switched windows, preparing to consult the log of the massive device.

| Let's see. |

3/5/2355 123:30 The drill edge has found a thicker layer of material. Likely compacted ice...

3/5/2355 123:33 The rotor had encountered an outstanding issue and had failed repeatedly to activate the aborting protocol.

3/5/2355 123:34 Fatal failure in motor_3. Excess of expected resistance to torque.

3/5/2355 123:34 Fatal failure in motor_2. Excess of expected resistance to torque.

3/5/2355 123:35 Fatal internal failure... Overheat. Aprx(3321ºK) MaxTemp.

3/5/2355 123:37 Fatal internal failure... Overheat has reached a critical point. Activity will be terminated forcefully.

3/5/2355 123:39 Rebooting all systems.

| So it got fried from the insides... What an ugly death. |

I side glanced at a secondary panel at my left through the edge of my helmet. Which displayed the vague approximation of a very sad face. Also flashing bright red.

I didn't know what the humans were thinking about when they decided to waste their precious resources on putting a display of emotions inside the diagnostics post...

| Mine seems to be really sad though... poor thing. |

Moving my gaze away from that waste of a monitor, I centered my attention on the other diagnostics.

Core temperature, maximum depth tunneled, ice composite percentage...

I opened a nearby hologram displaying an old scan. For an inexperienced idiot, it was a beautiful display of blurry noise. To me, it meant the exact state of the lower crust whenever the driller had been deployed... Thirteen years ago.

The underground scan was part of the landing protocol of any modern head.

It would highlight problematic terrains, such as caves, gas residues, or hard structures, and would provide an estimate of the driller's life expectancy.

| No wonder... You are an old driller, already at the doors of death. |

I stared at the panel with an understanding expression, perhaps coated by a little bit of grief.

To say the entire subsurface under the machine was highlighted in bright orange would be an understatement. This driller had chosen to land on a spot covered by nothing but hard bedrock.

| Its orbit-to-land navigation must have been defective. |

Lesson one on what to expect from placing a miner-head in the middle of a field of hard, solidified iron chunks.

Get it burst in a mere decade.

| Tssk. Whatever... I guess. |

I said as I pressed two of the six small round buttons on the physical control console at my right.

Pshhh...

The sound of built-up pressure escaping into the vacuum of space, accompanied by the whining of metal as the frozen layer on top of the mine head crumbled.

The person-sized Motors 3 and 2 had abandoned the guts of the machine and now sat in the middle of the cold inhospitable desert that composed Pluto's surface.

...

[ How does it look Kev? ]

I voiced through the integrated communicator as I left the comfort of that small, relatively warm cabin. The thermally insulated door opened, allowing me to exit to the frigid no-man land that awaited outside.

[ As fucked up as they come. ]

A distorted, cranny voice answered through the comms.

Outside, near one of the man-sized engines that powered the dying beast stood the silhouette of an unmistakable, old-fashioned spacesuit.

Legends about Kevin Rough circled most miner circles. His fully grown greybeard, his round blue eyes, and his thick, stubborn suit, which had almost disappeared under layers of stacked parches.

I fervently believed If one were to leave aside the bothersome amount of field equipment and life support incrusted on his back, Kevin would not be mistaken for another man anywhere within the whole surface of Pluto.

[ Is there hope Sir? ]

A feminine voice asked, half ironically, half seriously... It was always complicated to discern with her.

[ Shut up and get to work Martha. ]

He replied. Not bothering with the girl any longer.

Clank!!!

That is what I imagined the steel parch on the side of the engine would sound like when being forced open.

Noise didn't travel through vacuum though, so I had to imagine sounds most of the time. It had become a bad habit of mine.

[ God damn it. This shit is pouring fire, Mack, bring me the big industrial insulator gun. ]

A faint orange glow started emitting once the lid of the engine was lifted.

I was not a mechanic, but by the looks of it, the components inside the machine must have been completely deep-fried.

...

[ Comming... ]

A new, far younger voice sounded in the coms channel. Mack was about fourteen years old, he was enthusiastic, passionate, and a fucking dick with everyone but Kevin.

Bunny hopping along the icy surface thanks to the extremely low gravity, Mack successfully managed to not break his helmet by a hair's width. He immediately kneeled down, giving the heavy goo-gun to the expert man.

[ Thanks. ]

The old man said, pulling the trigger of the cooling tool, Keving rapidly subdued the build-up heat inside the motor, letting it escape in a cloud of boiling... substance.

[ Tssk. This one here is done, we'll send it for recycling... Vaam, don't you stay there watching, go bring the mule closer to the platform. Martha, leave whatever crap you are doing and go check on the deuterium deposits. ]

...Kevin was an old cunt, had I ever mentioned that?

Even though he would refuse to admit it, Kevin was a legend not only for his outstanding knowledge and performance, but also because he was an old fuck. I didn't know for sure, but I had heard people say he already was in his mid-fifties.

That made it all more weird. People didn't get to be old around here...

[God. Fuck, where is this smoke coming from!?- ]

Kevin's screams were not the best thing in the world to be hearing whilst fixing an industrial, deuterium driller head in the midst of a frozen hell.

| I wonder if he made a deal with Devils... That would explain a lot of things. |

Contract with an ancient demon or not, for some reason, our people always seemed to die from natural causes from thirty onwards.

Our theory was the gene pool of each miner had probably been mixed up at random. Chances are we each had an expiring date placed somewhere between ages 30-45, so let's just say it was a hard ride for us from thirty onwards. One day you could be having a casual stroll around the base, perhaps even having a happy nap, and then woof!

You would get a spontaneous stroke and die.

No warning, no available method of preventing the inevitable. It was silent, fast, and lethal... For us miners, such a death was the dream come true.

It was that, or slow death due to cosmic radiation. Or being squashed by ice. Or eaten by a creature of the plains. Or being struck by a micro meteor...

Possibilities were plenty, but the point was you didn't get to choose.

Still. In exchange for such a stupidly short lifespan... Us miners had been designed with qualities and abilities that maximized survivability within the frozen nothingness of Pluto.

Unlike the frail human body, or any of its weakling variants for that matter. Which would not be able to survive for a single second subjected to the inhospitable Plutonian vacuum, the best of us had been conditioned and trained to endure it for hours, some even days.

...

| I wished I had been born a robot though. All of that lifespan bullshit would be out of the window right away... |

The sun was as pale as always. Given its distance from us, it was almost just another star in the firmament.

...

| Mmm |

In the emptiness of space, few things do shine...

[ What in the... ]

The mantle of stars was a fixed pattern.

It was eternal and perfect. It was a map of the freed souls, it was the little embers of dead men and miners, destined to journey along with Pluto and Charon in their eternal journey.

I had memorized the stars by heart. We all had.

Those... Whatever they were. Those were not stars.

Within the confines of that darkness, an alien, cyan light ignited within the embrace of a so-called dead universe...

Hundreds more to soon follow.