Jason felt a lump in his throat. In the social order of the Moon Base, the miners were at the very bottom, ranking just above the prisoners.
The old government had hired them from poor nations in Africa and Southeast Asia to save money. They paid them pennies just twenty or thirty thousand dollars a year to do backbreaking work in a vacuum.
Under the old system, a single stalk of grown celery cost a hundred dollars. For these men, fresh vegetables were an impossible luxury.
But the end of the world had changed the rules. The economy was gone. Money was useless paper. Now, everyone ate from the same pot. To lift spirits, yesterday's ration packs had included a small portion of fresh vegetables.
That single serving of greens was why these men were looking at him with tears in their eyes.
A crisis shows who a person really is. Some of the "important" people on the base fell apart when things got hard. But these miners? They were tough. They were hard to kill. Throughout the chaos of the riots, they had stayed at their posts, keeping the lights on while the world burned.
"Everyone, listen to me," Jason said, his voice thick with emotion. "I promise you. In three months, we won't just have cabbage. We will have rice. We will have bread. We will have a future."
"But we have to build it together!"
The miners cheered. Rice, bread, staples they hadn't seen in years were the stuff of dreams.
The young miner snapped to attention and saluted. "Mission accomplished, Sir!"
-------
The spirit of the miners was catching. The people of Moon Base One were resilient. No one wanted to die. Surviving the end of the world only to starve a few months later was too cruel to accept.
Death was chasing them, snapping at their heels. There was no time to hesitate. The only way out was through hard work.
People turned their grief into work. They worked until they collapsed. After several workers passed out from exhaustion, Jason had to set a limit: fourteen-hour shifts maximum, and no one worked alone.
Of course, not everyone was a hero. There were slackers, people paralyzed by depression or just lazy. Peer pressure fixed most of them; friends and family would shame them back to work. If that didn't work, they were given cleanup duty.
For the few who still refused to help, the solution was simple: cut their rations. The Base couldn't afford parasites. As the saying went, "He who does not work, neither shall he eat."
The biggest headache for Jason, however, was the "Lunar Society."
Ever since Calvin predicted the apocalypse correctly, his cult had grown massively. But the teaching had changed. In Calvin's new gospel, Jason was the "Son of God" the superhuman leader sent to save them.
It wasn't quite a religion; it was more like extreme worship. Jason didn't know how to stop it. Calvin was locked up, but the belief had taken on a life of its own.
Maybe people just needed something to believe in. The Society wasn't violent; they just believed in trusting the Savior. So, the new government let it be. Jason hoped that once the crisis was over, sanity would return.
After leaving the mines, Jason rushed to the agricultural sector.
The upper levels of the Base had been cleared out. Every spare inch of space was filled with growing trays, shallow metal pans stacked in racks from floor to ceiling.
Under the purple glow of the grow lights, Jason could see the faint green fuzz of new plants.
"Lieutenant Jason. These are the fast-growing rice strains," Dr. Roman said, walking beside him. He looked tired but satisfied. "Almost all of them have sprouted. We're using hybrid seeds from the Federation vault."
"This batch takes three months to grow. We expect a harvest of ten thousand tons. That feeds fifty thousand people for a year."
Roman pointed to another rack. "Wheat seedlings. They take a hundred days."
"And here, fast-growing vegetables. Bok choy, spinach, celery. We need the vitamins to stop scurvy. The bok choy will be ready to harvest in thirty days."
Jason smiled. "So, in a month, we eat salad?"
"Yes. That's the plan," Roman chuckled. "The power of technology."
Workers in clean suits moved through the aisles, checking the nutrients and CO2 levels. Outside the glass walls, off-duty workers stopped to stare at the seedlings.
The tiny green shoots were a physical sign of hope.
"Dr. Roman," Jason said suddenly. "I have an idea. Let everyone who meets their work quota 'adopt' a seedling. Just one. Let them name it. Let them sign a tag on the tray."
Roman wasn't a politician, but he understood the implication. "A real connection. I like it. We can use sticky notes."
They continued the tour. If all the planned expansions worked, they would have enough food saved for three years.
The cost was huge. In the old world, this project would have cost trillions. They were burning through water and chemical stockpiles that had taken decades to build. But money didn't matter anymore.
"Once the crops are stable, we move to animals," Roman said. "Pigs, chickens, lab-grown meat. But that takes longer. Ideally, we need a self-contained ecosystem."
"Are the breeding animals safe?" Jason asked.
"Oh, absolutely. The pigs are eating better than we are," Roman laughed. "They might be the rarest animals in the universe right now."
Jason stopped in front of a sealed glass room. Inside were ten plants that looked like small trees, sitting in huge tubs. As he got closer, he could feel the temperature drop.
"The Super Rice," Roman said, his voice full of pride. "Modified by the Perfect Element."
"They will grow to be twenty-five feet tall. Each plant can produce two tons of grain."
Roman sighed, looking at the giant plants. "That is the power of the Element. Imagine if we could unlock that kind of potential in ourselves."