Welcome to Sunday Morning Scifi Microfiction! As you know, I write microfiction to help you wake up and greet the day with a smile. I started by posting the following to Mastodon and Bluesky:
Today’s Sunday Morning Scifi Microfiction comes from @X31Andy@mastodon.green:
I hope you enjoy …
Moon Plumbers
“C’mon, one more minute!” Seymour yelled at the light, turning a wrench. “Fred, get over here.”
“Almost there.” Fred inspected with his flashlight, a quarter-inch line feeding the cooling systems inside a craterlet of Kircher. One leak usually meant two, so you had to look carefully. God knows, they weren’t paying for a second trip. “Whose dumb idea was it to put a sensor out here, anyway?”
“Impact monitoring, earthshine, who knows?” Seymour grunted. “Lots of times, it’s just a company or country, wants to say they have a moon project. First lunar base of Tuvalu or something.”
“And then it breaks …”
” … and then it breaks. That’s why we get paid the big bucks. Where’s your light, this stupid work lamp is toast. I told you that guy was scamming us!”
“Maybe. How’s that ice treating you?”
“Don’t ask.” Seymour straightened up. “Patch is secure – lost maybe fifty gallons. Not the end of the world. How do we get back home?”
“Excellent question,” Fred answered, not mentioning the obvious life support problems. “That battery was driving our radio and your work light. No sunlight down here, we’ll have to bring the solar panels, battery, and radio out to the surface. Charge the battery, then we can call for a ride home.”
Fred listened to Seymour use every curse word in every language he knew as they toted heavy, secondhand gear. It wasn’t just the weight, every trip was hundreds of uphill meters to the surface of Kirchner. Fred tried to be optimistic: “Look on the bright side, we’re getting all our cardio for the week.”
“Shut up and hold the light.” Seymour unbolted the moon rider’s radio from the chassis. “Watch that ice.”
“I’m watching it.”
The two moon plumbers made their third and final trip up the dark, gray powder and scree. Seymour and Fred reached the battery and solar panels, ready for the next boondoggle.
“Aw, geeze. The clips didn’t hold. I told you that guy was scamming us!”
“Dang it.” The terminals of their battery weren’t compatible with the solar panels and converter, necessitating a MacGyver’ed solution held on with alligator clips. The old clips slipped off at some point, meaning the battery wasn’t charged at all.
“What do we do?” Seymour asked. “Can’t stay out here forever.”
“I’ll have to hold it.” Fred knelt in the regolith, holding the alligator clips to the terminals by hand. “See? It’s already starting to charge.”
“Times like these – I really don’t know why I took this job.”
“I admire your optimism,” Fred answered. “Like we had a choice.”
“Nothing else to do but wait and save our air.” Seymour killed his flashlight, saving power for life support. “I told you that guy was scamming us.”
“Yeah, man. I know.”
The End
Thanks for the suggestion, Andy – I hope you enjoyed this Sunday Morning Scifi Microfiction called ‘Moon Plumbers.’ Feel free to grab some of my other projects if you enjoy these little moments of joy. Thanks again!
