Kaiju Preservation Society(24)

“We make fuel and plastic out of thin air,” I said.

“How do we do that?” Aparna asked.

“You all saw that refinery-looking thing by the airfield?” They nodded. “That’s where they do it. They suck carbon dioxide and water vapor out of the air and then catalyze it. Depending on the process, you get plastics or fuel.”

“Great, we’re polluting a second Earth,” Niamh said.

“If we’re pulling it out of the air, it’s carbon neutral,” Kahurangi pointed out.

“I’ll remember you said that the next time you’re sucking on exhaust fumes.”

“What uses fuel or plastic here anyway?” Aparna asked. She held up her wooden chopsticks and then tapped them on her wooden bowl. “I don’t see much of it. And I was told this base runs mostly on solar and wind.”

“The airships use the fuel, mostly. The plastic gets used to repair things we bring over, like laptops and tablets, and for some other things.” I pointed to the netting that encased the whole of the base. “That stuff.” I picked at our suits. “This stuff, too.”

“Yeah, what’s the deal with the jumpsuits?” Kahurangi said. “I feel like we’re being dressed by someone who watched way too many science fiction movies from the seventies.”

I flipped through the binder. “So, they keep the critters out, for one. They’re also designed to encourage evaporation of body sweat in hot and humid conditions, like this planet, all the damn time.”

“That’s not a joke,” Aparna said. “I feel like I’m swimming.”

“You feel like you’re swimming, I feel like I’m stinking,” Niamh said, slapping their jumpsuit. “These things make me want to take a shower every fifteen minutes. Which reminds me, why do they make us walk to a common lavatory to shower and shit? Why don’t we have those in our cottages?”

I flipped to the section about the showers. “Ease of plumbing, mostly,” I said.

“That’s bullshit. I protest.”

“Please don’t poop in our cottage,” Aparna said.

“I will not,” Niamh said. “But you know I’m right.”

“Ease of plumbing and also to help with collection of human waste,” I continued, “which when sterilized and treated is used for various light manufacturing purposes, and to fertilize the crops we eat.”

We all stopped and looked at our food. “Well, that’s just great,” Niamh said.

“Everything gets recycled here,” I said. “And everything we can’t recycle gets shipped back to human Earth. We’re meant to have zero ecological impact.”

“What about meat?” Kahurangi said, spearing something that looked meaty on his plate. “Is this, like, actually beef?”

“Probably,” I said a minute later, after checking. “We have some aquaculture tanks for various arthropods and fish stocks, and we bring in some foods we can’t easily grow here. Anything meat-, dairy-, or grain-based. Sugar and some spices. Coffee and tea. Most of the runs that the Shobijin makes are for supplies. Food, medical supplies, technology.”

“That sounds expensive,” Kahurangi said, swallowing his (probably) meat.

“From what I can see, everything here is expensive,” I said. “Or would be, if we had to consider what everything cost, which, apparently, we don’t have to, much.”

“It’s a socialist paradise!” Niamh crowed.

“It might be easier just to bring along a few chickens, is my point,” Kahurangi said.

Aparna shook her head at this. “They don’t want to run the risk of introducing foreign species here any more than they have to.”

Kahurangi smirked at this. “I think if a chicken tried to escape here, it wouldn’t last very long.”

“It’s not just the chicken, it’s everything that comes with the chicken,” Aparna said. “Microbes. Parasites. Viruses. Life here is different, but it’s probably not all that different. Well, not on the smaller end of things. And the creatures here don’t have any defenses against anything a chicken might carry. A bird flu could wipe them all out.” She turned to me. “I’m guessing the greenhouses are the most biologically secure buildings on the base.”

I flipped to the greenhouse section. “You would be correct,” I said. “Airlocks and heavy air and water filtration and hand pollination.”

“Someone’s job here is to swab flowers,” Niamh said.

“Actually,” I said, and flipped to another page, and held it up. “It’s most people’s job at some point. Everyone here has one or two primary roles that they do, but there are only a hundred fifty of us at the base, and a lot of jobs that need doing. So in addition to your full-time job, every day everyone gets chores that have to be completed and reported in as done.” I pulled out my phone, which was connected to the local Wi-Fi. “There’s an app.”

“Enjoy your swabbing,” Aparna said to Niamh, who threw a crouton at her.

“What about the kaiju?” Kahurangi asked.

“What about them?”

“I mean, look,” Kahurangi said. “We’re in a place where monsters roam free and things that humans have never experienced wait for us, and so far, all we’re doing is wearing plastic pants, catching up on required reading”—he tapped his two binders—“and being told we’ll be doing menial tasks.”