Skin

The suit was tight and bright orange, it clung to my skin like latex, but it felt firm like plastic when I ran my fingers over it externally. We didn't like how the helmet felt over our heads; and how little we could see through them. 

"Bartek, can you see me?" Oscar waved his hand over Bartek's visor, but he didn't react to it.

"Yes, I can see you, imbecile." Having enough of it, he swatted Oscar's hand away. 

These were my co-workers. Before and now again for this job.

We were porters at Halden Electric's main headquarters on 12-Freedom, it was an easy gig, but we were offered this new job by a higher up as a promotion of sorts.

It surprised me how easy it was to get trained for it; especially with what they're asking of us to do. At least it pays well. 

"George," Bartek said my name with a heavily emphasized G, a result of his thick accent. "Do you remember how we're supposed to get to the planets?" 

"I think in the training, we're supposed to search for one manually through the computer." I pointed to the monolith of an ancient computer that sat at the side of the ship where the main controls and monitors were.

"Yeah, isn't that obvious?" Oscar interjected.

"I took the liberty of giving it a look through while you two were signing your contracts, it's actually pretty intuitive for such a fossil" Oscar walked over to the computer and logged himself in.

"There's a whole questionnaire you take once you login. At first it seems pointless, but I think I figured out what it's really for-" 

*Clunk*

A clipboard fell to the floor with a resounding thud. 

It was the other employee; he had dropped it from where he was on the top bunk.

He said nothing as he retracted his arm, it looked like he had tried catching it but failed.

He was here before we had boarded the ship, already suited up; from as far as I could tell, he was mute.

"Ahem, as I was saying." Oscar looked back at the computer, his hands typing away. 

"My theory is that it's meant to test the aptitude of whoever is currently using the terminal."

"Aptitude, what for? Pointless nonsense, I tell you." Bartek asked.

"It's not pointless. It's meant to act as a failsafe; to test HUMAN aptitude.

The word Human seemed like it lingered in the stale recycled air of the ship. 

"And your facts to support that claim?" Bartek crossed his arms, I could see him struggle to maintain his arms being crossed; the suit did not like being strained. 

"Why make it mandatory?" Oscar fell quiet as he answered us, and so did we.

A jingle began to play over the speaker-comm; it was the jingle we heard playing when we began our training over the phone. 

A voice followed, it was robotic but had the charming accent of a salesman; it made my skin crawl. 

"Welcome to your first day on the job. This is your very own autopilot ship where you will eat and sleep for the duration of your contract-"

What followed after the word contract was a garble of legal nonsense sped up to the point where we couldn't make out a single word it had said. 

"Make yourself at home. To complete the onboarding process read the instruction manual and sign into the company computer, we trust you'll be a great asset to the company."

The robot's voice ended, leaving us four alone again. 

"We're currently in deep space, just letting you two- I mean three, know." Oscar spoke up. 

"So, the planets-" 

"Moons, actually. If you had read the instruction manual, it tells you that we're going to moons." Oscar interjected Bartek.

"Moons," Bartek grumbled as he corrected himself, "What moon will we go to first?" 

"The ship has recommended 41-Experimentation, it has it as our first stop on the main monitor already." I could see from where I was standing that it was already preset as our destination on the monitor. 

I walked over to main controls and looked at the information displayed on the main monitor.

"Population: Abandoned." I read aloud, making sure that Bartek could hear me.

"Arid, Thick haze. Low habitability, worsened by industrial artifacts." I skipped further down, my eyes catching the final section at the bottom of the moon's information.

"Fauna: Dominated by a few species." I felt my throat tighten as I read that.

"Dominated by a few species? I'm imagining some tiny subterranean critters. No way can a dustbowl of a moon like this support complex life beyond that." Oscar scoffed as he heard me read it.

"Let's start heading over, we're wasting time here while we could be fulfilling our quota."

I agreed with him, we were wasting time.

I pulled on the lever to set the ship's course to the moon; we arrived there within mere minutes.