Southbrook is a small town (technically a shire) in an arid agricultural region with 523 inhabitants and a local median income of $44,000. It is also a town with a mismatched name which nobody understands (and quietly, thought the founders were pulling one over them), a single pair of cops who overlook almost anything as long as you're polite, and a bakery which sells the best sausage rolls for a thousand miles in any direction. Of course, none of that matters when the bulldozers rolled in.
"Uranium?"
"Yup. Major deposit. Right under here."
"But what about the town?"
The surveyor looks around.
"Sir, this hardly even counts as a town. Trust me, the compensation will be worth it."
The mayor raises an eyebrow.
"Compensation? But this is our home... it's where we live, ferchrissake! We've got families who've been here for generations, you can't just come in here and roll over it!"
The surveyor, too, raises an eyebrow.
"It's a very good compensation package."
"Not bloody likely"
The surveyor flicks his smoldering cigarette butt on to the dusty street. He's seen this before. And never, not once has his trusty Nucorp Financial Compensation and Relocation Grant failed in its duty. The amount of U235 underneath Southbrook is enough to make Nucorp untold billions - and that was if they sold it to the energy market, not the much more lucrative weapons market. Billions. With a healthy executive bonus for everyone involved.
He could wait.
--
The locals do what locals do in these situations, which is to call a town meeting which degenerates rapidly into an heated argument between the entire room and the entire rest of the room.
"I've looked over the numbers, it's extremely-"
"-preposterous, how can they expect us to just-"
"-could we get the High Court involved? I know-"
"-but how long would we have to-"
"-just wait it out, they can't run over an entire-"
"-and even if we did, where would we go?"
The Company representative sits at the back of the room, smiling quietly to himself. He, too, has seen this situation before. Once the seeds of doubt are planted, once the bedrock of the town is shaken, it's only a matter of time before it tears itself apart. And then the digging could start, and the bonuses roll in.
The mayor stands at the front, supposedly 'presiding' over the meeting. It's times like this he hates his job. He doesn't even like calling himself mayor, if the head of the local shire council even deserves a title like that. But still, he loves Southbrook, more than his own life. His father, and his grandfather, and all their fathers, have their names etched in peeling gold-ish paint on the big board hanging off to his side.
He leans over the ancient town lectern with a decrepit loud-hailer, which after a few piercing whistles, lets him yell at the crowd to calm down. Almost half the town has turned up. Not bad. Not bad at all.
"Alright everyone. We have a representative of Nucorp-"
A few tentative jeers emit from the crowd-
"-here to explain exactly what is going on here, with the bulldozers and the crane and the dumptrucks and the whole deal. Alright? So, er, here he is."
The company man seems to slide up to the lectern.
"Good afternoon, ladies, gentlemen. I'm here as a representative of Nucorp Industries, who has secured an exclusive permit from the State Government to access the Uranium ore deposit under your township"
A voice pipes up.
"Who told you you had permission? We live here, this is our place, go get your own!"
The company man seems not to notice.
"We believe the correct exploitation of this extremely rich vein will bring economic benefits to the entire region, including the relocated town of-"
He looks down at a sheet of paper in his hand
"-New Southbrook, located 44 kilometres to the east of here, where the ore vein is no longer tenable."
Another voice.
"What? You're going to move the entire town 44 kilometres to the east? What about our houses? What about our hall and our war memorial and our- our goddamned houses, goddamn it?"
The company man adjusts his tie.
"We have relocation experts who are well versed in these matters. Brand new facilites will be provided, and counseling will be available if any emotional stress occurs. Our legal department has already arranged purchase/relocation contracts, all they need is your signatures. I'll leave those here. Thank you for your attention"
He walks off and out the side door. The mayor retakes the stage.
"I'm, uh, not really sure what to do now. I think... we all need a little time. Uh. Meeting ajourned.
--
Six weeks, it takes. Six weeks of new heavy machinery rolling up every day just outside the shire's jurisdiction. Six weeks of pamphlet runs (though nobody at the post office claimed to have delivered them) advertising the benefits of a Nucorp Relocation Package. Six weeks of that stack of crisp, white contracts, just sitting there. Waiting. And then someone gives in.
A single mum. It's always a single mum, muses the man from Legal toting a clipboard and a pen so sleek that looks like it broke several international arms treaties. Always with the 'tough times' and the baby in arms. The town is, naturally, horrified. Again, they always are. It's the first sign of weakness, the single point of risk, of failure, who does what everybody else won't.
She justifies it. Of course she does. Everybody pretends not to listen, but secretly they've been thinking the same things. And it scares them.
"They're only things. It's only a place. We'll be so much better off, I can use the grant to put my son through boarding school, and fix up a brand new little house. It'll be a new start."
Pretty soon there's another. And another. And another. By Saturday there were seven, by Tuesday, 23. By Sunday, half the town is slinking off with their pre-filled machine readable signature slot. Still, nobody talks about it. There's still just a lingering sense of wrongness, that they're selling out of something more than just a pile of bricks on a concrete slab. And, one by one, they fall to the corporate machinery which has been arrayed against them as surely as the rows of yellow machines outside.
For a month, nothing much happens. Then, one day, from nowhere, the eviction notices appear, one for every door. The last contract. Signed. Nobody has any doubts about who it was. The Mayor, who had Southbrook ground into his bones, whose ancestors had built this town from a campsite, has finally bowed to the wishes of his constituents.
--
The move is done swiftly, efficiently. Trucks show up, to transplant lives and livelihoods to a 'temporary' demountable town to the east, while a new town is constructed from freshly poured concrete next door. You would never have seen concrete in what the locals are taking to calling 'Old Southbrook'. Just limestone slabs and flagstones, hewn from the earth itself under their feet. A new war memorial is constructed. It's a garish, chrome and glass monstrosity, which makes the residents avert their eyes as if some kind of vile creature is depicted. They are informed there will be no post office any more, that a mailbox will be provided by the Company, and they would take care of all postal business themselves, for free, as part of the Package. Nobody was quite sure what would happen to the postmaster, who had run his office faithfully for 30 years, but they told themselves it would be all right, that they were better off here.
And the dozers move into Southbrook, sending the sandstone and the limestone and the granite back to where it came from, only to be dug up and thrown in a refuse pit to make way for toxic dregs of yellowcake dragged from the bleeding earth. But life settles down again in New Southbrook, and children are born, and concrete houses painted, and trees are planted around the bleak-looking new town hall. The raging guilt they feel every time they look to the west and see the haze of excavations is calmed, every time they look at their bank balances. Apathy and acceptance take the place of whatever it is that the townspeople feel they're missing.
It is dawn when they find it. Everyone knows the mayor has been a little out of sorts since The Move (which is what they call it), but who hasn't? Nobody expected this though. A note, taped to the side of the Nucorp War Memorial, with a short, cryptic message on it. The Company man comes later that day, to tell the town that they found the mayor's body at the bottom of the pit where Southbrook used to be.
"He seems to have taken his own life in the middle of the night. Our thoughts are with you, we understand this is a terrible tragedy for you as a community. Nucorp counselors are available, if you wish to discuss anything, and a mayoral election will be held next week. Once again, sorry for your tragic, tragic loss."
The shock takes a while to take hold. Someone breaks down in tears. Nobody's quite sure what it is they've lost, but they know it's important, and they know they'll never get it back.
--
3 years later, New Southbrook is a ghost town. It's 'state of the art facilities' lie empty, the never-quite-replaced concrete prefabs are starting to crumble around the edges. Everybody begins to move away, a trickle at first, some to other towns, some to the city, and some to the shanty town which has sprung up to cater to the miners' "needs". Soon, there is nobody left. The memorial gleams in the dust filled sunset, a yellowing note still stuck to the side.
"What did we lose?"