ByWeight
Everything in bay 05 is bought by weight. That is all a thing is worth.
Noise first.
Always noise first. Then it resolves, into the sound of a conveyor carrying scrap.
On the horizon, Neocity. White and gold, and humming.
This is the Future, and the Future is an era of prosperity. Everything anybody needs is free. The light of it stops at a wall, and past the wall is where the city sends what it has finished with.
Not ruins.Products.
Bodies. Limbs. Housings. Last season's models. A hand still opening and closing. An eye-light still on. Nothing in the graveyard is broken. It was upgraded past.
A dozen diggers with lanterns, heads down. One of them is a Hollow, who chose to erase every memory and begin with nothing. It pulls a music box out of the heap, holds it with no recognition at all, and drops it in the sack with the rest.
In your helmet there is a chip. It is your name, your wallet, and your door.
Slots the chip. The scale chimes. He is paid. He sits down and slots it again. His eyes go bright. His body goes slack. He is smiling at nothing. He has gone in.
Slots hers. It is split down the middle. Half a second of the same brightness. Out. She does it again. A habit, like redialling a dead number.
Half a second is not long enough to go home. It is just long enough to read one number.
“Come on. I'm a person. I have a balance.”
She digs lower than the others. Lower than is safe. The good weight is at the bottom.
A socket in the crown. A face with no face. She knows what stone is. It is the top line of the board.
There is a ring in the dust beside it. It weighs nothing, so she leaves it.
Climbing out with the best find of her life on her back, she tries the door home once more. The way you would.
Half a second. Out.
Dark again before her hand comes down.
Nobody works the scale. It is automated, like everything.
Head on the plate. To be paid she has to slot the chip, and a cracked chip does not register. The queue behind her sighs. She is glaring down at it, swearing under her breath.
It was looking at her. Curious. She pockets the chip and walks off without looking up. A receipt prints. She does not read that either.
The head tips onto the conveyor, still lit, and rides away from her. And everything it passes wakes.
- A dead eye-light.
- A cracked screen.
- The hand that was closing, open.
- Two notes from a music box, in a sack.
A slow wave of colour rolling through the graveyard and going dark behind it, like the wake behind a boat.
Nobody looks up. Except the Hollow, who stops, and turns, and does not know why.
She is walking away from the only colour in the world, with her back to it, counting.
MEZAME
The first thing that wakes is not him. It is the yard.
The complaint
The board said three. She was paid two. She is going back over one coin, and she is not going to like who is behind the hatch.