Cogs

“Get a good last look, kid.”

The director’s remark would have been cruel if the surface were a pleasure to look at. Desolate, irradiated land did not spark joy within Bastille. The only things they would miss were the sun and the stars.

Puppeted by a gun muzzle, Bas clutched their spare clothes to their chest as they made their arduous decent into the facility. The deeper they went, the closer Hell felt, and the persistent grinding that emanated from it drowned out the echo of boots on concrete. They reached the door unknown to God. The guard threw Bastille in, locked the door, and left wordlessly.

Crane was their mentor, wizened by time and scorched by the roaring furnace that solely illuminated their chamber. A hulking man, he glistened like polished leather stretched over a hefty frame. He said to them with a blackened grin, “Workin’ ‘ere, you’ll get guns like these, too.” By the fourth day, Bas knew he was right— their gaunt biceps, earned from years in stasis, grew noticeably in that short time.

Crane kept their ears full over the blurring hours between work and rest. Loads came from the surface hourly. Together, they separated destroyed bots from the rubble, plucked out their electronic hearts, motors, and wires, dropping the parts into chutes and throwing the metal carcasses on the churning belt into the furnace. Where either the chutes or the belt led was beyond them. “To other cogs in the machine,” Crane said. All they needed be concerned with was separating the chips. Everything else was secondary.

“Don’t forget,” he said, after receiving their fifth load of the day, “You see any untouched bots, let me take care of them.”

Bas pulled a crushed collection of nested stock pots and lobbed it onto the belt. It was quickly swallowed by the hot, gaping maw of the furnace and vanished from sight. Crane typically handled the large pieces, including certain bits of rubble Bas would have never guessed had rebar inside, so they used a rake to haul the fodder and select the juiciest morsels. Amongst the wreckage they found satellite dishes, vent grates, tv remotes, lamp fixtures: scrap turned to slop for a vacuous, unseen beast below.

“These things… They came from a house?”

Crane grunted dejectedly, “Must’a been diggin’ some old neighborhood. S’all garbage now so better not let it go to waste.”

Bastille sieved through the wreckage, catching a glimpse of something robotic. It was small and round, disc-like with a brushed metal exterior and devoid of markings besides a boot-shaped dent. It was dead, but still in once piece. They carefully picked up the thing, which unhitched a flap on its underbelly, dumping the debris housed inside onto their knee. One solid object fell out as well. It glimmered dully in the dirt: A heart-shaped pendant on a chain. Wiping away the dust revealed a lustrous finish of yellow gold that shone like a lost star in the warm firelight. The Byzantine chain flowed like fresh water through their fingers. This weightless treasure that fell into their lap was the most beautiful thing they had seen since the world ended.

“Bas, whatcha got there?”

Startled, they let it fall into the dirt.

“Oh, this? A bot of some kind.” They tossed it to Crane, who caught it with ease.

“I told you to give me any bots you found…” He said, inspecting it thoroughly before ripping off its dented panel and removing the small motherboard. “Ain’t gonna find nothin’ in these. Literal dust-collectors.”

As he deposited the chip, Bastille pocketed the pendant. They would have to inspect it later.

“Little ones like that add up, but… here, come see this.”

They approached Crane, who dragged a hook suspended from the ceiling and attached it to something deep within the pile. The motor above buzzed to life as he touched the control panel on the wall next to the main chute, pulling the chain taut and unearthing a robotic husk. It was embedded with rusted rivets and the withered hues of battle paint.

“Now ‘ere’s a chip,” Crane said, kicking off the loose panel on the back. “They loaded these bastards with as much tech as physically possible— like a goddamn beehive of sweet, sweet honey.”

“You’ve seen these before? What are they?”

“Drones, but the deadly kind. Not somethin’ you’d wanna run into. As you can see, these things had state-of-the-art hardware, some even better than what we had,” he said distastefully, gutting a rack of fried circuitry loaded with cards and fans from the beast.

“I see what you mean.” Bastille said solemnly, “It’s sad to see the things that caused so much harm.”

“Heh, maybe for you.” He cracked a rare smile as he folded the board under his boot with a splintering crack. It too went down the chute. “Alright, help me get this thing outta ‘ere.”

They guided the empty remains to the belt as Crane controlled the motor. He lowered it and Bas quickly jumped up, removed the chain, and jumped back down before being swallowed themself. Finishing the load, they swept the rubble back into the chute, pulled the release, and watched everything continue its journey into the earth to the next stage of processing. There was time until the next load, so they retreated to their bunker, away from the heat.

Attached to the furnace room was their living space— a fluorescent-lit cubby with a fridge, sink, table, chairs, and cots. There was next to no room for personal space, which bothered Bastille at first, but they got used to the company and their brief moments alone in the closet-sized bathroom. Being underground meant everything had to be built as small as possible. At least, that was Crane’s justification. It was details such as these which made Bastille wonder how much their mentor truly knew about this place. Their mind always wandered from the monotonous work, from Crane as he rambled on about his years in the military, from the oily coffee and bland synthetic meat they ate every day. Every scrap thrown down the chutes, their mind would follow, and it always led to a wretched assimilation.

“You say you like this job,” they finally asked a few minutes into their meal, “I was wondering how you ended up here.”

“Funny thing about life is you never really know where you’re gonna end up. Life kinda just takes you where it wants, and you can either fight it or go along with it. I spent years fighting, so when it was all over, I said, ‘Hey, just go with the flow’.”

“So, life sent you here? Or they did?”

“Yeah, guess they did. Mind you, not right away. Wasn’t always the king of this god-forsaken castle.”

“You worked elsewhere? Was it here in the facility?”

“Look who’s the chatterbox today! Looking for a transfer already?”

He was joking, but Bas saw the contempt in his averted gaze.

“No, I just— I wanted to know more about this place. What’s all this for?”

“We process trash, kid. I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

The lightheartedness had dissipated. They didn’t think they would strike such a chord in him. They should have known not to pry, but it was killing them. Stuck in a room for just a few days, questions burned within their mind. Where Crane had been there for years, it seemed impossible for him to know nothing of what was deeper inside.

He went on, “This place didn’t exist right after the war. All we could do when it was over was count our dead and… well, we gave up countin’. For ‘bout six months I recovered bodies from bots, the ones that swallowed up entire towns of people. We sorted ‘em out to identify who we could.”

He paused, downed his coffee, and leaned back in his chair.

“I can’t imagine that being easy.”

“I didn’t mind it. Only reason I left was cause of a fight.”

“A fight,” their head cocked, “over what?”

“Well, we went through a lotta bodies. Some of ‘em had stuff on them. Usually earrings, fancy watches, the occasional necklace; all confiscated normally. This one bitch had a huge fuckin’ rock on her finger. I saw it first, but my buddy…” he scoffed to himself, “prick thought he could swipe it right in front of me. Turns out they don’t like us colludin’ types; ‘s what landed me here. That woulda been my ticket to the good life. Shit like that’ll get you anywhere nowadays. I’ve seen it happen. You run off, find some trillionaire in a bunker, and you’re golden. Bottled water ‘stead a’ sewage, real meat ‘stead a’ this Syn-Tack shit… You don’t even have to live underground! The world might’ve gone to the bots but money still gets you whatever you want. We don’t find shit like that here. It’s been 13 years— world’s been picked over. Ain’t nothing coming down that chute but rocks and empty bots.”

Bastille felt the locket in their clammy palm, still stuffed in their pocket. It was like a lone bullet, begging to be chambered.

“So, we’d just need to find something valuable enough. Then we could leave?”

Crane’s detracted demeanour turned indignant. “You found somethin’, didn’t you?”

Just like that, Crane had plucked the gun out of their hand and turned it on them.

“No. I just…”

“Your hand’s been on somethin’. What is it?”

Bastille couldn’t breathe. How did he notice such a thing? Their mind raced for an escape, but there was no turning back, no playing it off. They produced the locket and dangled it close by.

“This? It was my mother’s. Worthless, but it’s like she’s still with me.”

Crane inspected it from across the table. “They really let you keep that?”

Bastille nodded and dropped it back in their pocket intrepidly. They felt as if that shot had whizzed by and they barely dodged it. Breath returned to them, but they were still sitting in a room with a loaded gun in the hands of a bloodthirsty madman.

“I have a hard time believing that, Bas. That pretty thing’s really worthless?”

They nodded.

“Then you wouldn’t mind tossin’ it down the chute.”

“Why on earth would I do that?” they asked.

“It’s trash, and we’re in the business.” He got up and went to the door, flooding the room with hellfire. “Come.”

Bastille finished their coffee and went with him. A tightness in their chest, the cold trickle of dread, the warm flow of adrenaline, it moved their legs for them as they followed Crane to the chute next to the furnace. Crane put his hand on their shoulder.

“Your mother get a proper funeral?” he asked. Bas shook their head. “Billions didn’t. We all had family die somehow. We’re lucky just to be here. Don’t you think it’s a bit selfish to hold onto such things?”

Bastille was in no position to argue. Time and reason and courage had abandoned them as they befell to a robotic state. They operated like they had a gun to their back. Their bullet was to be forfeit. They pulled it out.

“You got a picture of mommy in that? Take a good last look, kid.”

Without a word, they dropped the dirty golden heart down the chip chute. It clanged and shattered its way down the gaping throat of the machine, and their mind clung to it. Darkness was all it was met with, the ethereal black of a moonless night and the empty loneliness that accompanied it. It was a pit where nothing could ever return. Metal mixed with metal that could never reform to what it once was. The chutes only consumed, and nothing changed except the seal of Bastille’s fate.

“There. On to another cog it goes,” Crane gave them a hearty slap on the back. “Now, I hear the next load coming. Let’s get back to the grind, eh?”