Pickup Time

Marta awoke in a dumpster. The metal hulk shuddered whenever a Chicago Streets and Sanitation rig rumbled through the alley. She sat up on a high tide of society’s slop: rotting leftovers, coffee grounds, and misbinned recyclables. But the driverless truck’s camera boom whacked the lid shut, knocking her back into the malodorous darkness.

“Rise and shine, Marta, my dear,” her twee, dark-haired second-in-command Razzi knocked on the lid with one hand. With the other, she lifted the too-long sleeves of a once-stylish chemise, now sewn with Siren Renegades gang patches. “The back-loaders will be here ANY second.”

A fingerless-gloved hand punched open the plastic lid. Marta popped back up. She held her hyper-distressed blue ball cap in one hand while gathering her ponytail, stuffing her black hair through the rear strap hole of the legacy registration premium from a local bank’s 5K run.

“Gorgeous,” teased Razzi. “Don’t worry, hone, those robocops sniffing around for us all night are long gone. Alley’s ours.”

Two hands strengthened by seasons of rummaging gripped the dumpster edge. Marta vaulted out onto the warming asphalt, collected herself and stood straight and proud, muscles rope-tight from transporting stolen goods and petty crime. Balancing in her untied sneakers, the girl gang leader barely adjusted the faded designer scarf she wore over her work shirt and bedraggled dungarees before hugging her companion.

“Eww,” they both lamented after hiding in garbage all night. Backed off, then hugged anyway.

A rusted back-loader navigated the corner to head up the alley, stressing its hardened suspension as it positioned itself for the first dumpster of many in this stretch. The specialized garbage truck rumbled in place as forward-facing forks poked out to find the right slots to jerk the big dumpster up and over for the waiting hopper in the back. The rig’s internal mechanisms loudly compensated for the changing weight distribution.

A prehistoric grumble echoed from inside the rising bin, catching the gang bangers’ attention. The lid flailed off to one side as the dumpster angled to disgorge its booty. A sickening wail echoed off the alley brick as a man dropped out onto the roof of the automated cab with a painful plop. The back-loader simply continued lifting the dumpster up and over while the man, wearing only underwear, rolled down the for-show windshield. The vestige of times when systems designers built in costly backups while maintaining old-fashioned aesthetics before quantum password crackers broke every system hooked to the internet, these fully automated machines never needed a human operator, hand-delivered updates, or even much scrubbing.

The ruddily complected man hit the hood with another thud and spun off onto the ground beside the front wheel. His face shadowed with whiskers half-hidden under a mask of thick brown hair.

“If whoever dropped the corpo in there didn’t kill him, an’ a few nights in that metal box didn’t, then that drop should finish him.” Marta shook her head in sympathy at the rough world they lived in.

“Corpo trash,” Razzi spat, then stepped a little closer.

Marta strutted over to the prone man and nudged him with her work boot toe. He hardly flinched, expiring a feral sigh.

“Danger. Stay clear of the operating vehicle.” The truck’s external speakers barked, synthetic, flat, and unapologetic.

“Get up, corpo trash,” Marta wobbled as she touched her toe to his ribs from another angle. “I told you to get up!” She tried again, keeping her distance as if he were a sick animal.

He bent a bit at the side where she kicked him, eyes shut, hair shrouding his furry face, which along with the oily smears would leave him unrecognizable to even his closest acquaintance, if he had any. He was no stranger to the company gym.

“What nice white panties,” Razzi came alongside and kicked him below the ribs on the other side, just above his underpant’s waistline. “Pretty and white.”

“Danger. Stay clear of the operating vehicle.” The truck remodulated. “Interfering with Chicago Sanitation is punishable by up to five years in a data-center prison.”

“Speak English?” Marta yelled at the near-motionless man as the cascade of garbage spilled into the truck’s gaping hopper. The irritating whine of the rig’s packer blade started into motion, drowning the alley in trashy reverberations.

“Danger. Stay clear of operating vehicles.” The truck warned again as a small drone zipped off from a roof compartment on the cab. “The Robot Police will be notified you’re interfering with Chicago Sanitation.”

Razzi covered her face with one hand and grabbed Marta’s work shirt sleeve with the other. “C’mon girl. They’re gathering evidence and the robot cops are coming.” Razzi tugged harder as she and Marta backpedaled away from the back-loader’s intended course.

The truck set the dumpster back down in a contraption cacophony of clunking, sliding, and metal-on-metal readjusting. The forks retracted and the truck backed up a little, turned its front wheels aiming to drive right over the poor suitless pile and changed gears to finally put him out of his corporate misery.