FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"The stars are out. Huh." I thought to myself as climbed into my pickup truck, springs squeaking in protest as I boarded. While it was still morning, the sun was already beginning its long jaunt across the heavens, and should of scattered the others by now. Yet a few remained, unmoving and shining like all stars do. Eventually my focus switched to the morning ritual of starting my vehicle, which was starting to become more and more of a struggle each month. The truck itself was weathered and dusty, with more years on the road that I have been on this planet, and more miles than the odometer can count. I vaguely recall something about it being my great grandfathers first fuelcell combustion mix, and how I should be honored to receive such a family heirloom, but I didn't care. The only reason why I hadn't scrapped the thing and gotten a new truck is because it worked, and I was too damn lazy to find a replacement for something that still worked.

Today, I got the truck running in less than twenty minutes, giving me some time to kill and putting me in a good mood. On my way to the rig I remembered that I forgot to make a note to myself to fix the receiver that broke yesterday, so the media center could only play recorded podcasts and music. The drive itself was boring, like usual, cruising down the same dirt road, with the same arid landscape that stretched on forever, listening to tunes that I had heard countless times already, even though my library has around a million to choose from. The rig itself was a good hour away from my place, and it was another two hours to the nearest settlement. Between their and my place, and for miles around, was nothing but scrubland and a piss poor excuse for a savanna. Reminded me more of Arizona than Africa at any rate. Sure, things lived here, but I hadn't bothered to find out what they were for the past two years, and I wasn't about to start now, whether it be wildlife or neighbors.

Three quarters of the way their I diverged from the road and onto what was more of a trail. My teeth clicked my tire bounced off a pothole that I failed to avoid. The tires on the truck were the old 'honeycomb' design that held no air and used a hexagonal mesh for spokes. They were designed to last forever, just like the truck, and comfort was an afterthought, just like the truck. The rig had been moved to a new site at the end of last year, and the trail had yet to be broken in and smoothed by the repetitive traffic. As I got closer, I could see the tell-tale dust cloud that after enough time, one could tell the status of the machinery and if everything was running smoothly or not. This morning the cloud was looking a little on the smaller side, and I figured that a few stations probably had broken down over the night.

Upon arriving at the site, I felt proud that my perception was correct. A few of the pumps and drills had stopped functioning, and the foreman had my day all mapped out for me already. Assessments of some of the machinery showed easy fixes, and I dispatched drones with the correct tools to each of them. Then I got my own toolset and walked to the few with more serious issues. Hundreds of wells populate the miles around the rig, in various stages of either construction, expansion, or production. The main site is a mobile refinery, which technically is mobile, if you call a week to set up and tear down mobile. It also houses offices, tool sheds, vehicle bay, and landing platforms, and looks like a giant offshore oil rig, its predecessor.

Pipes and cables are strewn haphazardly across the dry dusty landscape, punctuated by the occasional shrub or bolder, all radiating out from the central rig. Most pipes have the paint sandblasted off of them, and the remainder of the red paint is baked and cracked under the oppressive sun. The din of machinery was loud, but not loud enough for me to miss the occasional thunderclaps in the distance. That was also odd, for there was not a cloud in the sky, and it wasn't quite the season for heat lightning yet. Remembering the first odd thing today, I look to the sky to where the stars used to be, but couldn't find them. "Sun must be too bright now" I thought, "They might have been a star cluster going supernova. Bernie would know what's going on". On my knees with arms covered in grease as I tighten a massive lug nut, I decided to not pull out my PCD and foul the screen, and made a mental note to look it up after work.

The day went by slowly, and the thunder seemed to taper off before noon. After fixing the broken wells, taking inventory and queuing up replacement parts to be printed, and recovering a stranded drone that got caught up on some cables, I took my break. About half a dozen of the other rig workers were in the break room when I got there. The ones that had completed their shifts were lounging in the worn and faded lazy-boy chairs, drinking boxed beer from the dispensary and eating the plastic wrapped sandwiches. The others were just milling around, fiddling with either their own PCD's or grazing on the free refreshments. That reminded me to send Bernie a quick message about the stars this morning, and to check to see if I had any missed mail. Seeing only social mail and automated messages that I had to sign up to when I moved here and got this job I pocketed my PCD and collapsed into a lazy-boy, sending puffs of dust out of the worn fabric.

"-unexpected show, isn't that right Tony?" said one of the news hosts on the TV.

"You got that right, a show indeed!" replied the other host that must be Tony. I gave the TV slightly more attention than I had earlier, if just to be informed about some celebrity gossip for this unexpected show they were talking about. The man continued, "The shower will continue throughout the day. Scientists are now telling us that it was an iron conglomerate rock that must of been carbon coated that broke apart in orbit earlier this morning. We have reports of service outages in several areas, and the government is telling us that those satellites have been unresponsive. It would be exciting to expect some space junk along with this shower, and will put on quite a show."

I sit up a bit, slightly more interested now. Did this have to do with the lights I saw in the morning today? Was the rolling thunder actually small meteorites? Or are they called meteors? How will this affect me? If something of mine gets hit, do I get insurance? What would happen if a rock hit one of the wells? Would I have to fill in the hole and fix it, or could I just call it a total loss and let my supervisor fret about it?

"Messages from our governor say that the service outages will be restored within the week, and none of the orbiting solar collectors had been damaged. They are asking people to please turn in any spacejunk that survived re-entry so they may identify it to find out which sats actually were brought down by this unexpected -" The TV droned on, it was obvious the guy was reading from a teleprompter now, and I stopped listening.

Government satellites falling from the sky? Those big birds were expensive, and had a lot of sophisticated hardware. They were also shielded from micrometeorites and hardened to withstand ionization and radiation, and it was feasible that some or all of the internals survived re-entry if it survived collision with whatever rock knocked it out of orbit. If I got my hands on one of those, I could become rich! Smiling to myself, I planned my evening after work.