Chapter 3
Episode 3mining now B
The mining rig hums under the floor, a low vibration that travels up my spine like a second heartbeat. I sit on the edge of my cot, needle in hand, and watch the pattern grow. The fabric is the color of the regolith outside—grey with a trace of rust—but I am stitching lines of white thread, straight as laser cuts. B. Why B. The second letter, the second attempt.
On the wall, my Mondrian dress hangs like a flag of a country that doesn't exist. Red square, blue rectangle, yellow plane. I made it when I was ten, when the moon was still a home, not a cage. Now I am mining something else. Not ore, not helium-3. Something beneath the surface of the day.
My mother’s voice in the next room, speaking Russian on the comm. She does not know I listen. Slovo za slovo—word by word—I learned her grammar before I learned her love. Facultative. That was the word she used for my sewing. Optional. A hobby. But I know now it is the only thing that is not optional.
I push the needle into the cloth. The puncture is a small crater. A tiny impact. The thread follows. I am making a B, but it curves wrong. I pull it out, start again. Mining now. Mining the shape from the cloth, the meaning from the thread.
The clock on the wall ticks in base 8. Lunar standard. Everything here is measured different. Even time. Especially time.
I hear the drill below. Mining for real. For water, for oxygen, for the colony to breathe. But I mine for something else. For the line between lonely and alone. For the stitch that holds the self together when the self is only a projection—an avatar in a suit, a reflection in a helmet visor.
I finish the B. It is not perfect. But it is mine.
Outside, the Earth rises. Blue and white and impossibly small. I touch the thread. This is real. The rest is just surface.