“SpaceTech at its finest.” He looked back at the image of the mine behind him. “But mining the lucole correctly is tricky. Humans have a much better success rate, probably because they value their lives more than a bot controlled by SpaceTech’s greed does.” He swiped his finger, and the image was now a close-up of the mine. Crystal shards stuck out from the rings carved into the ground.

“Bots ensured no loss of human life, but two billion dollars per robot cut heavily into the bottom line. Especially when they started blowing up faster than they could be replaced. SpaceTech figured if they offered up a high salary, enough desperate people would show up. They were right. The trick is not to get blown up.”

“So how do I train for that?”

He tapped his finger, and the image of the mine shifted to a video. It was a compilation of people mining. The miner would tap the crystal with a hammer. Sometimes it was once, and sometimes it was three times. Then he’d either move on or flip the hammer around to use the tiny pickaxe on the other end. They’d carefully tap around the base of the crystal with the axe, while holding onto the crystal with their other hand, chipping until the crystal came free.

It seemed pretty straightforward. I didn’t get why a bot had so much trouble doing this.

“The first tap will tell you a lot.” He paused the video, rewinding for a second before it started again. “See here.” The person tapped once with the hammer side of the tool. “Each bit of rock emits a special frequency—a tone. Tapping the crystal—firmly, yet gently—emits it. Only those with the correct frequency will work for SpaceTech’s purposes. The rest? They’re unstable.” He walked to the side of the room and grabbed a box.

Maybe the test wasn’t so random after all. “This is why the test had questions about tones?”

He started walking back to me. “Exactly. I added that. Tone-deaf people can’t do this job. Too damned dangerous for them to even try.” Something rattled inside the box as he set it on the table in front of me.

I wasn’t tone deaf, and being Aunare meant that I knew all different kinds of frequencies, so I should be okay, but… “How will I know which crystals have the right tone?”

“The crystals have four specific classifications of tones: neutral, first ring, second ring, and explosive. You have two taps to decide if it’s harvestable or not. If it’s harvestable, a third tap will make it neutral again. If not, the third tap will make it explode.”

That was definitely something I wanted to avoid. “Is that why the miner in the video sometimes only hit it once?”