The Recycler


The Recycler stood under the blazing sun, gazing over his
domains. Sweat fell down his fat, greasy cheeks as he
placed an open hand against his forehead, trying to
protect his eyes from the brilliant fireball above.

Mountains of scrap metal glittered under the fury of the
sun's rays, huge cranes amongst the seemingly endless
heaps of trash. A roar in the distance made him look up,
as a cascade of junk erupted from Zalem's
underbelly. Even after all these years, it remained a
remarkable sight.

The Recycler strapped his knapsack over his shoulder and
continued his search. Using a long metallic cane, he
began poking the scrapheap beneath him. A rusty skull, an
old carburettor, or a piece of broken machinery, one
could find almost anything in this wasteland. Deemed
useless by most, the Recycler knew that ultimately
everything was worth something to someone. Everything had
a price. Everything.

The trick was finding the right thing at the right time,
and it appeared he had just done that.

To the untrained the cracked shell he was tapping with
his cane would have seemed nothing more than that, a
spherical plate. But the Recycler knew better. The shell
was not hollow, there was something inside.

He knelt down and began to dig around it, removing the
small pieces of debris which covered it. When he finished
he sat back, contemplating his discovery.

The girl's hair had long ago wasted away, her skull was
cracked and worn. Her head and a piece of her torso were
the only things which were left. She was obviously dead,
or beyond repair, whichever applied.  Her face, however,
had remained curiously intact. The Recycler leaned
towards her, studying the cyborg's features more
closely. The girl was not beautiful, but she wasn't ugly
either. A pity she had ended in such condition. A real
pity.

The Recycler placed his thumb against her cheekbone and
his index against her eyelid, and pulled them apart. A
glassy eye blindly looked back at him. He repeated the
procedure and found the other eyeball was also there.

He grinned.

He opened his knapsack, taking out a small pair of
needlenose pliers.  Licking his lips, he opened wide one
the cyborg's eyes. He had to be careful not to damage the
eye when he pulled it out, as used eyeballs were not much
in demand, and cracked orbs were essentially
worthless. He gently began to wedge the tip of the pliers
beneath the eyelids.

A scream suddenly startled him, but he simply froze. He
slowly pulled away the pliers and turned around, using a
sleeve to wipe away the sweat which covered his face. He
got up and walked towards the source of the noise, just
behind a nearby trash mound.

A couple of minutes later he was kneeling besides a
twisted body. Even experienced scavengers sometimes lost
their footing on the loose piles of trash. The angle the
man's head made with respect to his body left no doubt,
even the spine thieves would have little use of him. His
luck had been particularly bad, too, since the bag he
carried was filled with a couple of arms and a hydraulic
heart which was in pretty good shape.  All in all an
excellent sell.

Very respectfully, the Recycler took his ex-colleague's
backpack. He began his way back when he heard a man
laughing. Cautiously, the Recycler approached the source
of the guffaw, and, hiding behind a semi-destroyed car,
peeked at this new intruder.

The man had found the remains of the cyborg girl, and was
joyously holding her high in the air, laughing harder
yet. The Recycler, however, kept still, cursing his bad
luck. After a few minutes he got up, and nonchalantly
began to walk away.

In his excitement the man didn't even notice him. The
fool obviously thought he had actually found something
valuable. The Recycler simply shrugged and kept on
walking.

He could hardly complain. It had been a good day, and he
was content with his loot, which was certainly more
worthy than a couple of eyes.

After all, what difference could another piece of junk
make?


_________________________________
marco@chinook.physics.utoronto.ca
Gunnm: Broken Angel
http://128.100.80.13/marco/alita.html