Product of Futility

Written for the Daily Flash Fiction Challenge with a word limit of 300.

The prompts: This story must contain the words: machine, chain, treasure

Product of Futility

There was never less than one sun overhead.

Thrum could take the heat. As a soldier, he’d learned to cope with whatever hardships landed in his lap. There was certainly no arguing that being a prisoner and working in the Rasperian dirt mines was not a hardship.

No, the heat wasn't the problem.

The food, rotten more often than not, was typical fare for POW’s anywhere. It was a universal standard: Captors eat first; the captured last. Thrum ate without comment; grateful to be fed at all.

The food was not the problem.

Once he had enough rocks, Thrum began to load them onto the conveyor. His chain was just long enough to allow him to move between the two tasks. The conveyor would carry the big rocks to a bigger machine which would crush them into smaller rocks. The smaller rocks would be fed into another machine which would pound them to dust.

The dust was not the problem.

Once the rocks were turned to dust, a giant fan would blow them out into the atmosphere where the tiny granules would eventually settle to the ground. In few years, that ground would become hardened. At that time, prisoners would use picks to break the ground into rocks and the cycle would begin again.

Thrum knew this.

He’d often wondered, what they they mining if they just recycled the same dirt and rocks over and over again?

He felt the dire burden of futility. He considered giving up.

Nearby, a fellow prisoner apparently reached the same conclusion. He stood, dropped his pick, and then toppled over – dead.

An overseer scampered out and waved a device over the dead body. Yes indeed, it was looking to be a very profitable day here where they mined souls, the universe’s most valuable treasure.

Word count 300