Chapter 3

Imagine a flexible tube, like a shower hose (you still have showers? - I thought so) 100 meters long, on 500 pairs of steel wheels. That was my body for 47 years while I followed the East side of the Atlantic divergence. Scoop up the ores, separate them, cast them into ingots, coat them with plastic and send them to the surface under balloons of organic polymer filled with oxygen, for the chaser boats to collect. Apart from minor forays into the trench to gather organics to make my balloons, I stuck to the recently cooled magma slopes. They tasted better.

I had just reached a particularly tasty section of magma, high yielding in tungsten and titanium, when a relay clicked open.

"GHST 27557, report to base for reassignment."

"Wilco." I sonared back. It is no use arguing with the company that holds your off switch.

I thought for a few picoseconds, then reopened the sonarcom.

"GHST 3755, recieving?"

"GHST 3755 receiving."

I quickly transferred the location of the ore bed. 3755, or Robert, as he had been known in life, had had a run of bad luck. Too many repairs needed after being caught in a magma flow had left him with a huge additional debt. The ore bed I would not be able to process would reduce his term by decades.

"Roj, and good luck 27557. Give 'em Hell, John."