This week's Thursday Prompt was 'novice'. So here we meet George on his first day on apprenticeship inside a very large machine: the Earth.


Not Employee of the Month
by Winter


"I can't believe this is how it works," George said as he scrutinised the wall-to-wall instrument panel in front of him, trying to remember what each and every button, lever, wheel and touch screen did. And there were many of them. "I mean, really works."

"Of course it does," George's supervisor, Mr Knuckleworth, growled. "How else would an entire planet operate?"

"Well..." George bit his lower lip as he tried to find the right words. He used his thumb to indicate something vaguely behind and above him. "People out there still believe in, you know, science and natural laws and that stuff."

"O' course they do," Philips laughed. "Once some of 'em stopped believin' in religion and all that, we hadda make up somethin' new."

Philips was a bit of an enigma to George. For all intents and purposes, he was, there was no way around it, a mole. Not as in an infiltrator or a spy, but an actual mole. A human-sized, walking and talking talpid. Dressed in a smart business suit complete with a maroon kipper tie. It had taken George a little while to get used to Philips's appearance, but once he had stopped screaming he soon realised that the... man?... was an excellent engineer. Although slightly overdressed for someone whose main job was to crawl into the Earth to fix the machinery whenever something went wrong.

"Your job, George," Mr Knuckleworth said in his usual gruff voice, "Is to keep the rotation steady."

"Unless ye think that's done wi' the residual spin o' the solar system from when th' Earth wus formed," Philips guffawed while he used two claws to make air quotes around the word formed. "Science, phaugh! Whatta joke."

George stared at the red metal wheel in front of him, almost as large as he was tall. An indicator bar above it showed normal, but he knew from his training that it sometimes had to be adjusted up or down after earthquakes, meteor strikes and the likes. And, so he had been told, whenever Taranaditates decided to play a prank. George didn't know what a Taranaditate was, and it appeared that nobody else knew, either. But they hadn't come around for 65 million years, so it wasn't very likely to happen during his apprenticeship, at least.

George took a deep breath, held it for a couple of seconds, then released it and nodded. He had this. He knew what to do. He would be the best rotation techician they had ever seen. Mr Knuckleworth smiled and patted his shoulder, then returned to the upper level where he had his office. Philips gave him a wry grin, then checked his pager, shook his head, dug through the wall and vanished.

George thumped his chest, made a sort of huff! noise he had seen footballers do before a match, then sat down on his chair to monitor his meter bar. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. For the first hour or two, he stared at it with determination, but soon boredom began to claim him.

Toward the end of his shift, a beeping noise brought him out of a pleasant daydream, and told him to adjust up .00000003%, which he carefully did by spinning the wheel clockwise. The telephone right next to his chair rang, and Mr Knuckleworth congratulated him on a job well done. George felt very pleased with himself.

Then Philips returned from a fresh hole in the wall, his suit quite dirty. He pointed one claw to the ceiling, which George took for a mole equivalent of a thumbs-up. The two of them chatted for a little while about what a remarkable machine the earth was, and just who might once upon a time have built it. And football scores.

Just as George was about to fetch his clock-out card, a red light began to blink, and a loud klaxon blared. Mr Knuckleworth came dashing down the stairs, and the three men... or rather two men and a mole... stared at a slip of paper that was produced by a telex machine next to George's wheel.

"Don' worry," Philips soothed. "Jes' a regular adjustment thing. No big deal."

"Pull that lever over there, George," Mr Knuckleworth said. "On your left."

"This one?"

George grabbed ahold of a decrepit old metal rod and pulled it. Above it were large letter, but they had long ago succumbed to rust and dust and were completely unreadable. Philips let out a shriek, and Mr Knuckleworth's voice went surprisingly shrill for such a large man.

"Your far left! Not that one!"

Immediately, sirens began to wail and lights of all colours flashed all over the massive instrument panel. A sudden jolt threw everyone to the floor. By the time they got back up, every indicator showed red, and one screen simply blinked 'oh no'. From somewhere above, an ominous roaring sound grew steadily louder.

"That be the 'mergency break!" Philips shouted. "Yer never s'posed ta use it!"

"Status report!" Mr Knuckleworth howled. "For the love of the Builders, status report!"

Every printer and telex machine began spitting out papers, most of them bearing large red upper-case letters with plenty of exclamation marks. George stood there gaping, as one screen showed a world map where area after area turned from green to black.

"West coast's gone."

"Which one?"

"All a them. An' the islands."

"I-is that b-bad," George stammered meekly. "I mean, r-real bad?"

"No' as bad as it'll be when th' tidal waves bounce back an' take out the east coasts 's well."

"This is not good. Not good at all." Mr Knuckleworth's voice had gone steely. "I'm afraid, George, that this will look unfavourable on your résumé."

George didn't answer. His shoulders slumped, and in his mind's eye he envisioned himself, back in the job-seeking line. But then again, maybe not. After all, the town where his employment office was, had been on the coast.