Tevun-Krus #50

Dave - @AngusEcrivain

"Dave" originally appeared in Tevun-Krus #36: A Very Merry SteamPunk Christmas

Dave

by AngusEcrivain

Acceptable Losses

Cogs turned and hefty, industrial springs sprung, contracting and releasing almost fifty times per minute.

Thick with steam and smoke the air was acrid, unbreathable to all but the hardiest of individuals.

Grease and oil pooled upon the floor, a hazard no doubt but one that fell well within the parameters set by the bigwigs at Moon PLC, though one ought to consider the last time any of the aforementioned bigwigs set foot upon the floor or, indeed, the Moon itself, was at least three decades prior.

As long as the Moon, the largest of Earth's unnatural satellites, remained in orbit, health and safety concerns really were the last thing on the mind of any of those thirteen individuals, a baker's dozen of people who had most definitely made it to the Big Table by giving a crap about anything but lining their own pockets.

"...and unless there's any other business, I think it's high time we discussed our annual bonus. And our Christmas bonus. And our pay rise because let's be honest, we deserve it."

The Chairman of the Board glanced along the length of both side of the vastly disproportionate table, hewn from the very bedrock of the actual Moon, the original and, quite frankly, inferior model, as far as he was concerned. He quite easily and readily understood why his Grandfather, the founder of Moon PLC, had seen fit to replace the lump of grey rock that some said had, once upon a time, been Earth's sister planet. So preposterous were some of those claims, that they even went so far as to say the Moon had never actually been a satellite, saying that it actually formed the other half of a binary planetary system.

His Grandfather had loved the Moon so much, that rather than have it labelled as anything other than what he considered it to be, the only natural satellite of Earth he had, at great personal expense, removed it, and had almost gone bankrupt in the process.

Then he conceived the idea of Moon PLC and with financial backing rumoured to be somewhere above one trillion sterling, he commissioned the construction of an unnatural Moon, the largest structure ever built. All he had to do after that was to simply sit back and watch the cash roll in, and roll in it did.

By early 1904 the annual turnover of Moon PLC was a figure so high one would be unable to fit that many 0's on the side of an end terrace house.

And now, some eighty years later, those sitting around the Big Table, Moon PLC's Board of Directors, were the richest thirteen people on the planet, though that really was the mother of all understatements.

Between them they owned everything; such things as tobacco companies, hospitals, car manufacturers, football teams (both American and everywhere else, where they actually called football, 'football,') and, to be fair, countless other sports' franchises. One particular member of the Board actually owned one hundred percent of oxygen which, thanks to the incredibly high Oxygen Tax, had proven to be a very lucrative investment, indeed.

"A three hundred percent pay rise sounds reasonable enough," said Grant Smythe, patriarch of the Canterbury Smythes and of those gathered around the Big Table, he was most definitely the one most likely to drop dead at any given moment.