Contributor: BinaryAgent

The elevator doors opened into a dimly lit space. Kenna stood in the doorway and watched as a large bulldozer plowed through a pile of garbage. As the huge machine rumbled towards a compaction unit, several smaller robots flew towards the moving vehicle. They hovered close to the garbage it was pushing, scouring the mix with small scanners. By the time the trash reached the compactor, all of the machinery and electronics had been salvaged. The refuse was pushed into the mouth of the compaction unit and, after a few seconds, a compact cube emerged. Kenna turned her attention away from the load-lifters as they carried off the cube to the containment unit. She spotted Graffyr at a makeshift workbench behind a mountain of salvaged parts taller than he was.

“Kenna!” He exclaimed as she rounded the pile of recovered garbage. “You're not going to believe this!”

“What? That you collected all this in one day? Or the fact that you built robots to help you sort through the trash?” Kenna asked sarcastically.

“Oh, you like those? Let me tell you about them.” Graffyr said, launching into his narrative.

“I was down here in the trash collection unit repairing one of the compactors; something had lodged in the machine's tracks. I had the wheels half taken-apart before I found it – a large crushed-up piece of scrap metal was wedged in the worm drive. I put down my drill, knowing it wouldn't be too hard. I looked it up and down, then latched onto it with three of my arms and braced myself against the compactor. As I yanked on the machine, the sound of twisting metal squeaked and the chunk budged a few inches. So, I readjusted my grip and pulled again. The scrap began to tear and with a loud crunch the mangled metal came loose from the gears. I walked over to a pile of trash and dropped it in. I was going to go reassemble the tracks but I watched as the metal roll and slide down the gentle slope of refuse, and noticed several pieces of pretty interesting garbage. Naturally, I leaped down into the loose trash and began scavenging.”

Kenna shot Graffyr a look. “Hey, it's in my nature.” He said shrugging and continued his story.

“Before long, all four of my arms were loaded with motors, circuit boards, capacitors, and scrap metal. I cleared away a spot on the floor and placed my finds in a neat pile at my feet. It was then that I turned around and surveyed the immense mountains of interplanetary waste that the Holgar collects daily. I knew I was going to need a lot of help. There's way too much junk to go through it all manually. So I built those little guys to scan for certain serial codes and chemical signatures in the parts. Impressive, huh?”

“It's garbage. Excuse me for being underwhelmed.” Kenna sighed.

“Well, I didn't expect you to care about salvage – but you may be interested in this.” Graffyr held up a small red and blue circuit board.