A short snippet of April 14 at 50k words

When Nick came in the kitchen door two workers facing it looked up.

“Delivery?” one asked with a scowl.

“No, I’m the new dishwasher.”

One worker went back to seeding tomatoes and the other took his time looking Nick over head to toes.

“Fresh off the shuttle,” the other one said. It wasn’t a question. “At least you aren’t dragging luggage along so you must not be sleeping in hot slots.”

“I’m with a friend who has a very nice apartment,” Nick informed him. “I’ve been up here before and had a standing invitation to move permanently.”

“You went back to Earth?” The cook asked. He didn’t seem impressed.

“We’re both from Hawaii,” Nick said. “It’s really about as nice as Earth gets. She was my neighbor next to the place where I was a caretaker.”

“Ah, the neighbor is a she,” the fellow said cluing up. “You’re relieving me of dish duty on our busiest days so I wouldn’t care if you were a werewolf Sunday through Thursday. I’ll show you what to do. First of all, the rack of lockers behind you are for anything you need to store while you are working,” he said pointing. “I’m Hans and I’m not your boss but I’ll still tell you what to do even though they don’t pay me to supervise.”

“There’s no lock on them,” Nick observed of the tiny square lockers.

“No, but there’s a camera watching it and if anybody screws around with your stuff he won’t work here and any of us will cheerfully help you break his thumbs. Now, this is just my advice, take it for what it’s worth. I’d put my phone in there for at least the first couple of weeks. Karl over there at the stove is your real boss and he has eyes in the back of his head. Literally, with the spex he’s wearing. If you take too many calls, he’ll let you go even though it dumps the dishes back on me. Rushing off to the toilet every time your phone buzzes isn’t going to fly either. We’ve had problems with that.”

“I’ll do that and I have an extra shirt in case I’m too dirty to wear this one home.”

“Lovely, you plan on working. Stow your stuff and I’ll show you how to do your job.”