Scheduled StoriesNext:None scheduled at this moment.Next Empty Day:Mon, Dec 9th
After grabbing a few books from the library, I later found Mark and Stephen at the monorail station about to board with Peter, a long-term miner taking my two sexual partners into training.
Laura had given me a nice lunch box in the mean time (with a little note about how much she enjoyed spending time with me) and once we were alone in the monorail car, I announced that I would be spending the day with them learning about mining.
“You can’t, sorry Harmony…”, Mark explained.
“And why not?”, I said, insulted.
Peter took the stand. He was calm, gentle but somewhat firm at the same time.
I realized that he was just as handsome as Mark but had somewhat softer features.
“You have to wear protection clothes in the mine, and you are a girl.”
Oh, right, the whole Girls can’t wear clothes things.
“Are there spare clothes at the mine?”
“Sure”, replied Peter.
“I’ll tell you something. I will put one of the spare uniform, visit the mine, and we’ll keep this between you and I. It’s not like I will become a miner. I just want you help you guys become better at your jobs.”
I could almost see them think hard. Mark eventually said: “One hour. That’s it…”
I shook his hand, and asked questions about mining.
Like on Earth, there are 2 types of mine: underground and open-pit.
Peter works in an almost fully automated underground mine which extracts heavy metals like copper, gold and silver with occasional rare elements, but there are open pit surface mines.
Apparently, the colony (like many similar colonies) has an excellent mining scan drone able to pinpoint where to build a mine and which kind of mine to setup. It can even build a map of the future mines to ensure the best output.
We arrived and once again, used the escape ladder like at Tiffany’s wheat field. The train of course abandoned us once we were down.
I was rather excited… it wouldn’t be for long, but I would be wearing clothes for exploring the mine!
The four of us first jumped on a small buggy, sorry for the lack of better term, and after a 30 minutes drive, we reached the mining complex.
Because this was a much better term than “the mine”.
As far as I knew, a mine was a hole in the side of a mountain or the ground which let you go underground.
In this case, the complex was in a small valley and there were multiple mine entrances all around the valley.
There was a big dump truck, you know, the type for mines, too wide to fit in a single lane and which you need an ladder to get into, and a crane for loading the material in it.
I guessed that this is how they brought mineral back to the port.
“Hey guys, what happens when it’s full… we are rather far from the city, no?”
Peter replied: “When it’s full, I take a day to drive it back to a oat field which is half of the way from here to the city. I come back with them, and the next day, I drive it home.”
“So it takes you 4 days to bring back the minerals? How often do you do it?”
“Well, it takes me 2 days to fill the bucket when it’s good, 3 days when I have problems.”
“Wait, so you are working less than 50% of the time? No, this doesn’t work. Don’t you see it?”
“What else can I do?”, Peter asked, perplexed.
“Stephen, you know how to drive a truck like this?”
“Yes, I think so… I just need to know where to drive it.”
Peter explained to just follow the monorail until he sees the oat field manned by Patrick’s Jessica.
We would still have a serious problem: if it took him 4 days to come back, and it was filled every 2 days, we couldn’t increase the mine output without better logistics.
The bucket was currently 75% full, and as such, Stephen quickly left to return this new cargo to town.
Meanwhile, we all changed into the mining clothes, which meant that for a brief moment, all three of us were completely naked.
It both felt really good to wear clothes again and weird. Perhaps I was getting used to my permanent nudity…
I noticed something odd, Peter and Mark looked a lot like each other, with Peter being the one who got the muscles and the good looks, perhaps from working in a mine rather than doing simple repairs.
“Are you two related?”, I asked.
“Peter is my kid brother…”
Oh, that’s why they look the same.
We jumped on a small wheel cart train with many wagons in a row and entered one the mines. It was much deeper than I had thought.
“So your father had more than 1 wife, right?”
“He had 2, Elsa, our mother, and Karen. Elsa also had 3 girls, our sisters, and Karen had 4 kids, our half-brothers and sisters”.
“But you barely knew them growing up?”
“Well, here, we don’t grow up a lot with our parents, but we are kept close to our siblings. It’s important to know your root. We can’t date our family…”
“Of course”.
Good.
“You father only had 2 wives?”
“That was a lot for then. There were a lot of single wive families, but now, 3 is getting a lot more common, with 2 being the norm. If you join my family, we’ll be one of the lucky ones with 4 sister-wives.”
“Then why was I not assigned to one of the smaller families?”, I asked, puzzled.
“It depends on which family is ready to accept a new sister-wife. Not all men are able to handle more than 2 sister-wives. I had space between Cassiopeia and Penelope who don’t need a lot of attention.”
Peter joined the conversion, “Just like my Cassandra. She keeps mostly to herself, it’s no wonder she’s friend with Cassiopeia.”
We then reached the current mining spot. I wanted to ask a lot more questions, but soon enough, the mining rig was making too much noise to carry a conversation.
I now knew why Peter had carried noise cancelling headsets! The ground was almost shaking from the vibrations.
There was only one mining rig and it was a one man operation.
However, the work involved alternating between drilling, loading the cart and carrying the extracted metals outside.
With my guidance, Peter was left on the extraction, which was the slowest task, while Stephen and I (ok, mostly Stephen), loaded the cart. It was much faster to load the cart than to mine, giving us time to relax a little.
After the cart was filled, Stephen and I carried the cart to the surface, where he proposed to leave me so I could undress again.
I just proposed to wait another cycle, to see Peter’s progress, and I discovered that in short, if Stephen quickly alternated between loading the carts and emptying them outside of the mine (by simply pulling a lever to dump everything in a huge bin for the crate), Stephen would be able to work fast enough to let Peter mine non-stop.
After our next trip, I undressed and stayed outside to ponder how to carry the extra output to the town.
If Stephen and Peter extracted one dump truck per day, and the dump truck had a 4 day round-trip, we’d be in trouble…
I had to think outside of the box, I had to find another solution and sadly, I wouldn’t find it here, in the middle of nowhere.
Instead, I read an excellent book on masonry and another on tractor repairs.
Honestly, I didn’t care about either subjects, but the weather was great and it was kind of nice just relaxing outdoors.