Luna's Glow
"The Canteen" Image Prompt Writing
The Canteen was an afterthought.
The place was a near-literal hole in the wall, nestled in what used to be a storage room between Processing and the air refreshers. The whole place was little more than a few grimy tables and stools, a small bar with a news holo by the only window, and a vending replicator in the far corner. At some point Management named it The Void, but no one ever called it that. As far as the refinery staff at Ringside Extraction Solutions was concerned, the only name it ever had was the Canteen.
Erich held a bottle in his hands, sloshing its contents absentmindedly as he jostled it to and fro, Luna’s pale blue light reflecting off the glass . He didn't want it. He hadn’t even ordered it–a drunken coworker had pressed it into his hands shortly before stumbling out, leaving him with a beer he never asked for. On one hand, he supposed another drink wouldn’t hurt too much–it wouldn’t be enough for a hangover, and besides, it was free. On the other, he’d only really come to the Canteen on a whim. Even Earthside he hadn’t been much of a drinker, and despite the endless drudgery of the Processing plant, he couldn’t bring himself to sink into contented inebriation like so many of the other workers. He’d seen that dead look in their eyes too much already…..
“Hey, buddy.”
At once, Erich looked up, almost grateful for a reason to return to reality. There was the Canteen’s bartender–a short, rotund fellow with a friendly face and a short chin beard. He regarded Erich with something between amusement and concern. “You waiting on someone?”
“Er…no. Sorry. Just distracted, that’s all.”
“Alright, alright.” The bartender nodded as if he had suspected as much. “I’m just askin’ ‘cause you’re the last one left. I’ll be closin’ up soon.”
“Oh.” He’d completely lost track of the time. The other stools at the bar had emptied, as had the tables. The music he blocked out practically when he walked in had turned off, and now the only sounds were the muted transcripts of the red news-holo droning indistinguishably in the background. “I, ah, guess I’ll be heading back to Barracks, then…”
“Don’t sweat it, you can finish your drink. No sense wasting good beer, right?” The bartender smiled widely as he grabbed a bottle from the wall. “Almost as bad as drinking alone.”
Well, that settles things. Looks like I’ll be drinking after all.
Erich took a sip from the bottle as the bartender wrenched the top off his own with the side of the counter. “Hmm. Not bad.”
“It’s a Ringside brew. They grow the yeast in Aquaponics with the rest of the food. Ain’t cheap, but better than exports.” The bartender had by now taken the stool next to Erich, sipping from his own beer and nodding approvingly. “I hear some people say we grow ‘em on the reactor cores.”
Almost despite himself, Erich gave out a short laugh at the joke–an act he caught himself in almost immediately. “Wouldn’t want to drink that,” he said, his tone forcibly neutral.
This earned a chuckle from the bartender. “No, I guess you wouldn’t.” His smile grew even wider–then stopped, and slowly disappeared and moved to a slight concerned frown, as Erich regarded him silently. He tapped the side of his bottle absentmindedly, then took a short swig. “Something on your mind, friend?”
“Not really.” He shrugged, the hand holding his beer jostling slightly as he did. “Work's...well, it’s work, but it’s not like it’s worse than the jobs I did Earthside.”
The bartender nodded sagely. “I get ya. Anyone waiting for you back home?”
“No one I want to see.” The tone of his voice shifted, darkening. “No one who wants to see me.”
“So that's how it is, huh?”
“It's old wounds, friend. Nothing I don't know how to handle.”
The bartender now looked at Erich, with the expression of a man who had seen and heard just about everything at some point. “Well, if it isn't that, what is bothering you?”
“I….don't know.” He glanced up at the news holo, as though trying to find the answer in the day's latest financial news. The text passed rapidly through his vision, but it might as well have been meaningless for all the attention he paid it. “It’s not like I’m homesick. I don’t miss Earthside. I guess…I just haven’t been feeling like myself lately.”
The bartender stroked the stubble of his beard. “Hmm. You know what it sounds like?”
Erich could only shrug. “Boredom?”
The bartender shook his head and smiled knowingly, as if about to give a favored nephew some great and important life lesson. “In a manner of speaking.”
“What's the ‘manner of speaking? Boredom's boredom.”
“It's something about this place. Processing, R.E.S….hell, the whole Ring Complex.” He gestured out the window at the protruding towers nearby, and the distant twinkling far side of the Ringscape. “They call it ‘The Ennui’.”
“Nothing here's natural. Everything around you's metal and plastic and synthetic materials. The lights are artificial. The water's a byproduct of the hydrogen reactors–they stopped shipping water here decades ago. Even the air’s recycled. The only thing left from Earth is you, and somehow your body knows the difference.”
Erich glanced at the bartender sideways. “So what? I'm going crazy cause my body's homesick?”
“Not crazy. Nothing so dramatic as that. Part of you just….stops working. You get up in the morning, you do your work, you rest. Maybe you feel like something's wrong, but it's never bad enough that you actually do something. That's how it gets you. You barely even notice.”
“Like how I didn't.”
“Exactly. Over months, you start losing motivation. You show up to work, but you don't do much else. You get slow, stupid. More like a labor bot than a man. And eventually you can't get back out, even if you return Earthside.” The look in the bartender’s eyes suggested he’d seen this far more than he wanted to, and would surely see it again. Whatever else could be said about him, he wasn’t joking.
For a minute, Erich said nothing, simply staring dumbly at the news holo without reading a single word. Finally, when his voice returned to him, it was shaky enough to surprise even him. “So….I’m losing my personality? And R.E.S. knows about this?”
“Sure they know. But why would they care?” The bartender’s bottle was somehow already most of the way empty. “The Ennui don’t stop people from workin’. In fact, it makes workers easier to handle. No drinkin’, no carousin’, not even a need for entertainment….”
For the first time in a while, something stirred in Erich’s gut. Something cold, icy yet electric, sliding up his spine and into his chest and the back of his head. It took him a moment to realize what it was. He started to speak, but his voice caught in his throat. “I…I’m–”
“Scared? That’s good. Means there’s still time.” The bartender raised his bottle, pointing the tip directly at Erich’s chest.
“So what do I do?” There was a distinct edge of desperation in Erich’s words.
“Well, there’s a few ways to go about it. The most obvious is psycheval, but they never waste that on contract employees. You’ll just get put on the waitlist till your term’s over. Some guys keep it away by drinking, or gambling, or trips out to the Pleasure Spires. Keeps the brain distracted, but that’s just trading the Ennui for addiction. Plus, most of ‘em end up in debt sooner or later, and they stay on longer.”
Here, the bartender tapped the side of his head, and smiled conspiratorially. “But there’s a better way. See that?” He pointed out of the window, towards Luna’s bright, mottled surface.
“Yeah, why?”
Erich’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Luna’s gonna keep me sane?”
“Sure, it sounds crazy. But that’s the only natural light you’re going to see for a long time. It might not seem like much, but I tell you, it does wonders. Besides, a lot of that light’s reflected from Earth.” Here, his tone changed, became less jovial and more reassuring. “Gives you a lifeline to home.”
For a short while, neither man said anything. Erich had completely forgotten his bottle, and even the barman had stopped drinking. Instead, their eyes stayed fixed upon the window, both staring at the Moon’s surface. Even surrounded by the Lunar Ringscape, it dominated space, its steady beam of reflected moonlight causing the Ring’s outer edges to blend into the starry background as if it had never been there before.
“Tell ya what. I’ll just leave you here a bit, alright?”
The bartender disappeared into one of the Canteen’s few doors. Erich barely noticed. He was far too busy, transfixed by the last natural thing in his world, staring directly into Luna’s glow.
