As the despair faded and the will to fight returned, Jason made an announcement.
"I am launching the Food Reform Project."
Machines roared to life. The wheels of motors filled with grease. It was the sound of a new era. Fifty thousand people held their breath, gritted their teeth, and threw themselves into the work.
They had a choice: explode with effort, or die in silence. They chose to work.
Fifty thousand people was the size of a small town. But these weren't just regular people. They were engineers, scientists, technicians. With the colony's automated machines, they had the industrial power of a small country.
Jason shut down anything that wasn't essential. The massive particle collider, which sucked up huge amounts of power, went dark instantly. Dozens of supercomputers were turned off.
Research into missiles and theoretical physics was put on hold. If it didn't help grow food, it was cut. In the face of starvation, science had to wait.
There was a strange twist to all this. The corrupt leaders of the old Moon Base had actually done them a favor.
Every few years, the Base would go on a construction spree. It wasn't because they needed new buildings, but because they had to spend their budget. If they didn't spend the money, they would get less funding the next year.
So, they built useless things. Backup factories, extra nuclear reactors, warehouses they didn't need, all just to fake the numbers.
Now, those useless projects were lifesavers. When Jason saw the long-abandoned factories, he almost cheered. Every extra reactor was power. Every empty warehouse was a potential greenhouse.
Jason split the population into eighteen large teams. Each team had a specific job. This time, they weren't building for politics. They were building for the survival of the human race.
Under the new plan, everyone worked. Everyone was on strict rations. The food wasn't great, but it kept them alive. Every calorie was precious. Waste was a crime.
Money didn't exist anymore. The dollar was just paper. It was a survival system now. Shared meals. Shared work.
When you suffer together, you stick together. Fifty thousand people was a number they could manage. And the threat of starvation was a powerful motivator. If you didn't work, you didn't eat, you starve. Everyone understood the stakes.
To be honest, Jason had zero experience running a city. The first few days were chaotic, and he nearly made big mistakes. Luckily, his superhuman body let him work eighteen hours a day without getting tired. His enhanced brain helped him learn fast.
He handled dozens of orders every day, ran meetings, and walked the facility to keep morale up. It was exhausting, but seeing the Base come back to life gave him a purpose.
--------
Jason sat on the high-speed train heading to the Uranium Mining Team.
The miners were one of the most important of the eighteen teams. Their site was less than sixty miles from the main base.
The mine held about 80,000 tons of uranium. It was a massive deposit. Since 70% of the Base's power came from nuclear reactors, this mine was the colony's lifeline.
The Moon was a harsh place. Gravity was weak, and temperatures swung from freezing cold to boiling hot. Over thirty years, they had built special machines to handle it.
Because of the extreme temperature changes, the surface rock was brittle and easy to shatter. Giant automated machines did the heavy lifting.
These machines were huge, twenty meters high, or about five stories tall. They looked like a cross between a drill and an excavator. A drill bit crushed the rock, and a mechanical shovel scooped it up. It took a two-man crew to operate the beasts.
The rock wasn't just uranium; it had rare metals, too. They shipped everything back to the refineries.
Don't assume the Moon is silent just because there is no air. Sound travels through solid ground. Jason could feel the vibrations through the floor of the train—a rhythmic thump-thump-thump that felt like the heartbeat of the Moon.
When he arrived at the checkpoint, a group of miners was just getting off their shift. They peeled off their heavy space suits, breathing hard. The work was brutal. Even with power assists, moving in a pressurized suit for four hours was exhausting.
One of the miners spotted Jason. He froze, then ran over, pulling off his helmet. He was a young black man, maybe twenty years old, with sweat running down his face.
He looked at Jason with wide eyes. "You... you are Lieutenant Jason?"
"Yes. Good work today," Jason said, smiling and nodding.
"Hey! Everyone! Get over here!" the young man shouted, waving his arms. "It's Lieutenant Jason! He's here!"
This had been happening a lot lately. People were curious about the superhuman, the Alien Ship, and the Perfect Element. They wanted to know if the rumors of living a thousand years were true. Jason answered them patiently.
When they heard the truth, hope lit up their eyes. Even if the technology wasn't ready for them yet, the possibility gave them something to look forward to.
But this time, the reaction was different. The group of men surrounded him, but they didn't look curious. Their eyes shined with worship.
"Lieutenant Jason... The Savior... Son of God..."
They spoke over each other. Some stammered in excitement. It wasn't flattery. It was pure devotion.
It took Jason a moment to understand why they were so happy.
They were thanking him for the vegetables.
For years, the lunar workers had lived on nutrient paste. It was efficient, full of fat, sugar, and protein but it tasted like chalk and despair.
Yesterday, under the new rationing system, the agricultural stores had opened. Every worker had received a single head of fresh cabbage.
It was a small thing. But to men who had eaten paste for years, the crunch of a fresh leaf was a miracle.
Eating a head of cabbage... that was enough to make them look at him like a god.