[ WP ] The mines have run dry

Robert tugged the sleeve of his coveralls over his hand and wiped the grime from a safety sign as he passed. MSHA was mostly busy with the newer mines these days, overseeing exploration teams, but a little caution never hurt anybody. Idly he shifted his nicotine gum from one side of his mouth to the other and leant over a railing that had once been yellow but which was now sporting more of a blackish-gray hue. Below him a bank of zinc thickener cells bubbled serenely away. Metallic pustules on a slick surface of water and chemicals. Smelled strongly of pine... someone must have been getting fancy with the xanthate. Nothing looked to be going wrong so with a bored sniff he went about collecting his samples. Seemed like it'd be just another ordinary shift. 
 
 `` Got ya some dirt, little lady!'' he called cheerfully as he strode into the assay lab carrying a stack of metal pans. The young technician he'd spoken to looked up from weighing a sample and sighed angrily at the sight of his sample stack. 
 
 `` Mills? Seriously? Why the fuck are we still running this shit?'' 
 
 Robert smiled - he always tried to bring in his mill samples around this time of day, just to get the chance to hear the little foul-mouthed firecracker bitch about it. A petite science major holding her own with the crass miners and the snide operators. Really was a delight to watch her in action. He shrugged when she glared at him. 
 
 `` Got ta calibrate the floats, even if there ai n't much in there,'' he offered. The lab tech threw her head back in obvious exasperation, then went back to her task. She spoke as she continued to weigh up fluffy white powder from an envelope. 
 
 `` Calibrate them to flat fucking zero, christ! What the hell do you think's gon na be in there!? We're running straight tailings!'' 
 
 `` Now that ai n't true in the least,'' Robert objected. The girl turned her head to glare questioningly at him and he grinned. `` Some'a that shit's backfill.'' 
 
 `` Oh my god just fuck off and leave me to die,'' she groaned. With another frustrated sigh she leant forward to see to her scales again, gesturing to the sample piled up on her microbalance as she did so. `` This shit's bone white, dude. *Bone. White. * It's been a quarter flour every single run. I'm not even getting a silver correction because my *goddamn inquarts* weigh more than the sample dore. Five hours of work to get a report full of zeroes! What's the damned point?'' Suddenly her head snapped back around in a flash of pique and pointed angrily at Robert's stack of samples. `` And I can fucking tell you right now what your assays are gon na be on that pile of crap you just brought. Eight percent lead, nineteen percent zinc, your unit cell's sitting at a nice fat tenth of an ounce and I'm pretty sure I could n't tell a bucket of gravel from the conditioner feed. We're just *rolling* in the dough here.'' 
 
 Robert smiled, a tinge of sadness to his face. `` Yeah, well...'' he muttered. Then sighed. He took off his hard hat, stripped a glove off and rubbed tiredly at his balding crown. `` Look, I know it's been a real shitshow these last few months. But far as I see it we're all damn lucky to have a job. Not many operations willing to invest runnin' their own backfill. Red Dog just plain shut down, you know? Kensington too. Lotsa guys out of work now. I'll gladly take nineteen percent zinc over nothing so long as it keeps food on the table.'' 
 
 `` The only reason we're even getting the recoveries we are is because the old crew was so stupidly inefficient running the real ore,'' the tech grumbled bitterly. `` We owe our precious *jobs* to a history of pervasive incompetence. Forgive me if I'm not super enthusiastic about that.'' 
 
 `` Aw come on now. Let's all thank the old dead bastards for bein' a bunch'a dipshits, then, got ta have a bright side.'' With a bright grin to counter the lab tech's dour scowl Robert flipped his hat back on. Much as he'd like to hang out in the fire lab shooting the shit with the little lady he really had to get back to work. The Met boys wanted their new system ready to operate by next week. Hopefully this latest gadget of theirs would manage to bump the gold recoveries a bit, give the assayers something to do. Net a nice bonus, maybe. Not that they got many bonuses these days. Ah, well... man could dream. 
 
 A wave, some friendly parting words and Robert left to see to his duties. Lab girl was right, of course - their recoveries were damned pitiful. And they'd only be getting worse. Soon enough that zinc con would drop; 15 %, 10 %... 5 %. Could n't keep feeding the same pulp through the same process and expect anything much different to happen. ( Even if those starry-eyed metallurgists kept insisting their new circuit could work miracles. Robert could n't reckon the thing as more than an oversized cyclosizer. ) Still, that dreary end was probably a good ways off yet. For the time being they had their tailings pile and thirty years' worth of backfill to work through. Plenty of work to last him through retirement. 
 
 Six or so hours later he heard the sound of the mill office printer clunking to life. Daily assay reports. Smiling, he reached over and grabbed the sheet before it could miss the tray and sail for the floor. 
 
 **Pb Con 8.4 % | Zn Con 18.9 % | Au 0.97 OPT | Analyst comments: `` FUCKING CALLED IT. `` ** 
 
 Robert laughed and shook his head fondly. Yeah... they'd be fine. 
 

