"Help Desk" by Kevin (Big Time)

This piece was written by my friend Kevin, who I have learned a lot about screenplay writing from (and have more to learn). He won 2nd place for “Help Desk” at the Newgrounds Writer’s Jam 2025. The writers were given only 4 days to complete the submission and were asked to write to a theme shared by all the writers.

The Moon: a colony with a population of 2.79 million people and counting, it’s the premiere destination for wealthy tourists seeking recreation unfettered by pesky government oversight, and the workplace for legions of migrant workers needed to service their lavish hedonism.

Meanwhile, hovering in high orbit eighty miles above the Moon's assortment of casinos, clubs and coliseums, there lies a cramped space station equipped with rows of secondhand computer terminals, phone equipment passed down from the colony’s technological refuse, and a malfunctioning coffee machine.

The phone rings. "Hi, Help Desk. How can I help you?" I answer.

This shithole is where I work.

A raspy, quivering voice answers the phone: "Hi, is this the Orbital Support Desk?"

Great. It's one of THESE callers. Here we go again.

"Orbital was our old name. We've since rebranded to Lunar XPP," I reply.

"What does XPP stand for?" she asks slowly, straining with each syllable.

"Export Platform."

“I thought you guys handled imports as well.”

“We do.”

"Then that's not a very good acronym."

I roll my eyes. "I'm aware. I didn’t come up with the name."

A pause.

I’m getting impatient. “Can I help you?” I ask.

She continues. “Anyway, I need your help, I can't seem to log into the website...”

The help desk team consists of twelve representatives, rotating every few hours based on call volume and expected flow of traffic. Our job: to take calls from commercial vendors experiencing technical issues while transporting their goods to and from the lunar colony. Officially, anyway. In actuality, we mostly receive calls from the same handful of old people encountering the same technical issues they encounter every damn shipment.

In other words, it’s a glorified babysitting service. The pay is low, the stakes are low, and the number of fucks given is low.

“Can you see the menu button with nine squares? It’s in the top-left corner of the terminal, looks like a keypad.”

“Hmm, I see a big red button with an X,” she responds.

“TOP-LEFT. That’s the top-right corner. You’re looking for the menu button in the TOP-LEFT CORNER. Do you see it?”

Another pause. “No, I don’t see it. I only see the big red button with an X.”

I slam my fist on the desk in frustration. I look at the call timer: 30 minutes. This is going nowhere.

“Ma’am, I think it would be best if you took a course with our education department. That way, an instructor can help you in-person, and—”

She cuts me off in protest, “Now see here, I’ve already taken a course. But there’s always a problem with this dang system. It’s not user-friendly, and I don’t know why the board decided to make all these changes—”

I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose in frustration. Well, I can either hang up on her now or let her complain until one of us dies of old age.

Ugh. I need a new job.

I push the “Make Busy” button on the console after finally clearing the queue. I take a drink of watered-down black coffee from my mug. I check my email inbox; a recent message reads: “HAPPY ANNIVERSARY! Thank you for three years of hard work at Lunar XPP. Please enjoy this gift card and a commemorative digital certificate.”

Digital certificate? They used to hand out plaques for multiple years of service, and now they’re too cheap to even do that. Or are they just that broke? Is the economy really THAT bad?

I lean back in my office chair. The station orbits past the Moon’s horizon and into its black shadow. During these brief moments of respite between calls, I’m left to my own thoughts. Three whole years. I was only supposed to be here for six months. With my education and credentials, I should be making double what I make now, in a career where my contributions actually matter. What happened?

I feel a faint buzzing against my leg. I pull my cellphone out from my pant pocket: “Yeah, Mom? I’m at work.”

“Scott, are you coming back this week?”

“This week? During the hottest time of the year? No thanks, I’m staying here. I’ll drop by Earth next month.”

“I thought you said you need to replace the radiation filters on the apartment this week.”

Oh right. I’d forgotten about that. “Can’t you get Kirk to do it? He’s not doing anything.”

“Your brother said he has important business to take care of.”

Important business, my ass. He’s probably scalping concert tickets and anime collectibles at a tourist trap somewhere on the Moon. “Can you do it?”

“If you don’t have time, I’ll just have to hire someone to do it for us.”

Man, I really don’t want to deal with this right now. I know she’s just looking for any excuse to coerce me to visit her. “Okay, fine, whatever. I’ll do it. I’ll head back on my next week off.”

“Thank you!” she cheerfully exclaims. “By the way, how’s your job search going?”

“I’ve been working at this crap shack for the past three years. How do you think it’s been going?” I retort sarcastically.

“Scott, I know you don’t like your job, but it’s a stable living that keeps us afloat. Just stick with it until you find something better.”

“Mom. You don’t have to tell me I need to stay with this job. I already know that.”

“Then, what’s the problem?”

Taking a deep breath, I sigh. I stare out the acrylic windows, at the distant twinkling lights on the Moon’s busy surface. “I’ve been doing the same thing since I started this job. It takes me three days to travel to Earth, I spend what limited free time I have doing chores for other people, then I spend another three-day commute just to go back to work. I don’t have any time to apply to new jobs or write or make music. I barely have any personal life to speak of. I feel like I’m swimming in circles, busting my ass just to make sure our family doesn’t go broke.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“I want… I want you to acknowledge that this is a problem,” I say slowly, deliberating on each word. “I want you to acknowledge that things cannot stay this way forever. Because this life is slowly killing me.”

A pause. “Okay, but even if you don’t like your job, it’s a stable living, okay? You need to stick with it until you find something better.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. This is going nowhere.

I interrupt her train of thought, “Hey, do you want to go to Black Rose Bistro when I get back to Earth?”

“Oh, Black Rose! That’s a good idea!”

“Uh-huh. Look, I gotta go back to work. We can talk more after I’m done.”

“Oh, right! Sorry, of course you’re busy. I’ll talk to you—”

I end the call before she finishes her sentence—better to hang up now before she asks for something else. I put down my cellphone, refresh my email inbox and take another sip of coffee.

Suddenly, the station’s emergency lights flash on, a flurry of orange lights activating along with the loud wailing of sirens. An automated message blasts over the Help Desk intercom: “ALERT. ANOMALY DETECTED.” I quickly check my computer terminal; a stream of callers has filed into the phone queue. Whoops, I forgot my phone status was set to “Busy.”

Shit.

I look outside the window. In the distance, a torrent of space debris is hurtling towards the nearest spaceport. It was probably the result of a crash between two colliding ships. Or maybe some billionaire jackass decided to chuck their industrial waste out into space, not expecting the Moon’s gravitational orbit to pull those objects right back to us. At its current speed, the debris will likely blast a hole in the spaceport’s artificial atmosphere and de-oxygenate the entire facility. Best case scenario, the spaceport would become unusable for weeks; worst case scenario, anyone who hasn’t evacuated the spaceport will get sucked into the cold vacuum of space, killing them instantly.

Shit.

I quickly sign into the office's messaging service on my computer terminal.

SCOTT > Hey Tasha. We’ve got a problem.

TASHA > Hey Scott. Send it in tomorrow. The board’s closed.

SCOTT > It’s an emergency.

TASHA > Right now?

SCOTT > Yeah. There’s a lot of debris heading for the North Spaceport.

TASHA > How much is a lot?

SCOTT > Look outside.

TASHA > Shit.

SCOTT > Yup.

TASHA > I’ll let ground control know.

SCOTT > That’s it?

TASHA > Yeah, they’ll pass it up the chain of command.

SCOTT > There’s maybe an hour or two before impact. We don’t have all day.

TASHA > Those are the rules.

SCOTT > Every alarm bell is going off at the station. I can’t hear myself think.

TASHA > Okay, then what do you suggest?

SCOTT > Tell them to shut down the spaceport and activate their blast shields.

TASHA > We don’t have that kind of security clearance.

SCOTT > Just impersonate someone who does. We have their login credentials.

TASHA > We’re not doing that.

SCOTT > Why the hell not? That’s our job.

TASHA > No, our job is to report issues. This is outside our job scope.

SCOTT > Seriously?

TASHA > Scott, you know this place is a dysfunctional mess. Just do what is asked of you. It’s not worth dealing with the repercussions.

SCOTT > So what am I supposed to do now?

TASHA > Just clear the call queue. Do your best.

I slump into my chair. The emergency lights continue to flicker throughout the office interior, the siren blaring at an annoyingly intrusive volume. “ALERT. ANOMALY DETECTED.” God, this sucks. How am I supposed to work like this? I push the “Make Busy” button on the console; the phone rings, and I take the next call.

“Hi, Help Desk! How can I help you?" I shout into the receiver.

I struggle to listen as a man responds over the phone. “Hi Help Desk, I’m having an issue with my shipment, my order tracker says it’s currently stuck in orbit— I’m sorry, what’s with all the racket? Is that coming from your end?”

I cup my hand over the receiver, attempting to block out the background noise. “Sorry, we’re just experiencing an issue right now!”

“What did you say? I can’t hear you!”

“I SAID WE’RE EXPERIENCING—”

“WHAT?”

“I SAID—”

“ALERT. ANOMALY DETECTED.”

Aw, to hell with this. This is going nowhere.

I disconnect the phone call and turn to the computer terminal, logging into the company staff portal. Maybe there’s an associate CEO or someone with the security clearance to do something about this.

TASHA > You shouldn’t have done that.

SCOTT > I don’t see the problem. We acted quickly and minimized the damage.

TASHA > Our legal department might have to get involved. You could be suspended without pay for this.

SCOTT > Okay.

TASHA > Or terminated.

SCOTT > Yeah, I get it.

TASHA > You’re not worried?

SCOTT > Maybe this is the motivation I need to find a new job.

TASHA > Yeah, except you won’t be able to use your employment here as a reference. You might even be permanently banned from working on the Moon.

SCOTT > 240,000 miles.

TASHA > What?

SCOTT > That’s the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

SCOTT > You know what I’ve noticed after travelling that distance over 400 times?

SCOTT > The worst part about going back to Earth isn’t the sweltering heat, the rising sea levels, the background nuclear radiation, or even the stabilized hydrogen fuel cells they use on the space shuttles that have a non-zero chance of detonating mid-launch.

SCOTT > It’s the commute that kills you.

SCOTT > If I have to spend my entire life traveling back and forth in an endless cycle, I think I’d rather crash into the Sun than stay in orbit forever.

TASHA > Um.

TASHA > You okay?

SCOTT > Yeah. Just a rough day.

TASHA > When’s your next week off?

SCOTT > Next week. But I have stuff to do.

TASHA > Uh-huh.

TASHA > Got any vacation days?

SCOTT > Yeah, why?

TASHA > I’m just asking. You may as well as use them if you got ‘em.

SCOTT > Yeah. Especially if I might not even be employed here after next week.

TASHA > Anyway, I’m outta here.

TASHA > Don’t work yourself too hard.

I disconnect from the chat. Silence, at last. Wonderful, peaceful silence. I pick up my mug and take a sip of coffee. God damn it, the coffee’s gone cold.

I look out the window at the now-dimmed lights of the North Spaceport. Maybe Tasha’s right. Maybe I need a vacation. Maybe I should go off and be on my own for a month or so. Or maybe I should reconnect with some friends, hang out and really decompress.

Or maybe I just need another cup of coffee before the end of my shift.

Ugh, I need a new job.

The phone rings. "Hi, Help Desk. How can I help you?" I answer.

An old, gravelly voice answers the phone: "Hi, is this the Orbital Support Desk?"

Great. It's one of THESE callers. Here we go again.

You can read more of Kevin’s past work on his Blog, and currently he’s working on video essays that will be coming soon to a YouTube near you.