The Sifters

Sixteen wakes up with the kind of hangover that makes her long for removable organs. The ability to take her brain out and submerge it in an ice bath. Remove her aching lungs from their cage and wring out the grime.

One corner of her privacy tarp has come untethered. The iron hook that keeps it secure whips against her station's concrete shell in the wind. Her head throbs with every bang.

“Sixteen—you awake?” Twenty-six's voice croaks from somewhere behind the unruly tarp. A moment later, her pockmarked face peers around the doorway. Her ashen skin looks especially cadaverous this morning.

Twenty-six surveys Sixteen’s disheveled state. “We’ve gotta be at the Heap in 20, or they'll cart our asses outta here with the cobalt bins."

Sixteen groans and pulls the ratty blanket tightly around her shoulders. Twenty-six shrugs. “Up to you. I heard the chans are hiring a new crop of Mods.”

The only thought worse than getting up and going to work is getting canned. She can't go back to content moderation. Better to deal with physical garbage than with digital refuse and the sick fucks who create it. A few images from her last stint at 104chan flash through her mind.

The memory of a particularly disturbing kiddie PVRNO motivates Sixteen to hoist herself upright in her cot. Her head pulsates in protest. She grabs the crumpled hazmat suit off the floor, holding her breath as she fumbles with the zipper. A laundry drone comes by once a week, but Sixteen has missed the past three pick-ups. In this line of work, you’d think smells would eventually cease to register, but you never really acclimate to the olfactory assault. “No wonder sifters drink themselves into sensory oblivion each night,” she grumbles.

She tightens her goggle straps—damn things are on the fritz again—and ventures outside, securing the tarp on her way out. Once a billboard for a local jeweler, the ad features a woman gazing at a bejeweled bracelet in a small, rectangular box. One hand is clasped to her chest in delighted surprise.

Jewelry stores, like their wares, are a relic of the past. All the precious metals were melted down decades ago.

It’s been four weeks since Sixteen last saw the sun, although that’s not a phenomenon unique to Wasteland. Climate change was supposed to wreak all kinds of havoc, but most of the time it just means smoggy, monochromatic days. Sometimes if you squint, you can imagine the landscape is a misty hillside instead of a noxious Hellscape.

Sixteen arrives at the Heap just as the massive RCEV is laboring its way up the embankment. She sweats hooch-scented bullets inside her hazmat suit. Her goggles tell her it's a balmy 92 outside.

She scans the crowd assembled in sector 203, this week’s drop zone. Last night’s Incineration got rowdy, so it’s a small crew today. As usual, Eighty-one is ready to pounce on the haul. Thirty-two is playing Cat’s Cradle with a length of grimy shoelace.

Sixteen sidles up to Twenty-six, resting her head on her friend's bony shoulder. “Never drinking again,” she mutters.

Well. “At least for the rest of the work week."

“It’s Thursday,” Twenty-six says with a chuckle.

The RCEV groans to a halt in front of the sifters. Its giant maw upchucks the precious cargo. Broken gadgets and clothing loved to shreds. Plastic bags that will outlive every biological creature on the planet. Apple cores and beer bottles and half-empty cans of Spam. Whenever there’s a food waste drop, Sixteen is grateful that the last species of edible fish died out last year.

Recruiters bill sifting as “human-machine collaboration.” The next frontier of mineral mining. The AI sorting center catches most of the good stuff. But its algorithms sometimes misclassify critical materials. There’s cobalt hidden in old refrigerator magnets, for instance. The graphite from 1990s-era pencils is as good as gold.

Of course, gold itself is a Tier-1 Priority find, as is any rare earth metal that might find its way into an EV battery or a new iPhone 73.

Eighty-one is 100 meters away, rummaging through a pile of garbage with gusto. He shoves several tattered garments into his salvage sack. Each sifter has two such bags—one for personal items and one for valuables, which must be reported to Wasteland Management. Failure to do so is a fireable offense. In many cases, it’s a crime.

More than a few hoarders are drawn to the job for obvious reasons. All items in Wasteland are technically company property, but goggles don't burn data reporting irrelevant trifles like textiles or trinkets. Eighty-one's station was once featured in a story on upcycled decor for Zero-Waste Living—ironically, one of the few physical magazines left in print.

The privacy screen is Sixteen's sole possession, except for the essentials issued by WM: one cot and blanket, one pillow, one desk, one chair, one "clean" towel, two changes of clothing, and one bin in which to store this bounty. The suit and goggles come with the gig, too.

An alert dances across Sixteen’s screen and pulls her back from the brink of daydream. Cobalt detected, close range. A staticky outline comes in and out of focus.

She scans the area and spies a chipped bowl stuck underneath a bent bicycle wheel. Bingo. She mutes her goggles' spazzy notifications. "Log—ceramic pottery. Suspected cobalt glaze," she reports to the glitching device. She maneuvers the bowl sideways through the spokes and chucks it in her sack.

“How do you always find the good stuff? That's worth serious Ether,” Twenty-six whines, elbow-deep in a pile of e-waste.

"Dumb luck," Sixteen replies. “No thanks to these fucking goggles."

“I haven’t had a cobalt score in a week,” Twenty-six sighs, extricating her arm from a tangle of frayed cords. She shuffles her empty bags from one shoulder to the other.

Around 14:00, the rubbish-scape miraculously lightens. The sifters stop in their tracks and turn their goggled gazes to the elusive sunlight. Sixteen’s screen reads 96 degrees. Or is that 98? She slips the goggles off her face, squinting at the ground to shield her exposed face from the caustic air.

Cleaning the screen with two gloved thumbs, Sixteen sees a glint of light on the ground several meters away. She scans for its source. Casually so as not to draw attention, she steps toward the flickering object.

There, as if on display, lies a heart-shaped locket. It gleams atop a bed of banana peels.

Sixteen surveys the other sifters. They're still staring skyward, enjoying the rare sunbath. She plucks the pendant from its pungent resting place.

With the smog closing back in, the trance is broken. The sifters resume their hunt. Sixteen thrusts the necklace into her pocket.

“Wowee that sunshine," Thirty-two says, ambling up to Sixteen. "Sure feels good," he grins. "Say, how was Incineration yesterday? Looks like you had fun." The mere mention of last night makes Sixteen taste bile.

“Yep. Taking it easy tonight."

“I, too, aim to embody a healthy lifestyle,” says Thirty-two. He grins again and lowers his mask to take a massive bite of Twinkie. "It was wrapped,” he attests, mouth full. Sixteen raises her eyebrows in reply. She fingers the treasure in her pocket.

She glances at the clocktower—two hours till evening siren. "Have fun tonight," she tells Thirty-two. "Steer clear of Eighty-one's Pruno."

“I’m calling it," she shouts to Twenty-six, whose skinny legs flail in the air as she digs for something inside a top-load washing machine. She thrusts a crowbar in the air to wave goodbye without surfacing.

Back in her station, Sixteen draws the tarp taut and flips on the fluorescent overhead. It flickers several times before bathing the room in a lurid glow. She surveys the station. Not many hiding places, probably by design. She stuffs her goggles in the desk drawer. Can they detect the felony unfolding a mere meter away?

Sixteen examines her treasure. It's about six centimeters in diameter. Heavy. No engravings. It looks well cared for—surprisingly untarnished. She caresses the smooth surface. Subtle wear spots suggest this is not an unfamiliar gesture.

Other than the billboard bracelet, Sixteen has never seen jewelry before. She examines the pendant for any imperfections and finds a delicate crack along the edge of the two halves of the heart. She wedges both fingernails into the crevice. The amulet opens with a faint pop.

There's a faded photograph on the righthand side—a man in some kind of uniform. Military, perhaps, back when there was such a thing. Sticky residue suggests there was once a complementary image on the left. Sixteen snaps the locket shut and slips the chain over her head.

She looks around the station, wishing for a mirror. Oh well. Such a delicate ornament surely looks ridiculous against her gaudy suit.

Sixteen imagines what the former owner—the missing photograph, maybe?—must have felt when receiving such a remarkable gift. She brings her hand to her chest and widens her eyes like the woman in the ad. "For me?" she bats the air as if to say, You shouldn't have.

An item this special should be reported immediately. But who can be expected to make such an important claim with such a raging headache? Her useless goggles' logbook probably isn't syncing anyway.

A short nap to clear my head, she decides, admiring the locket around her neck. Then I'll log it. Just an hour. She lies down with the pleasant weight of the necklace on her chest. She imagines herself as a fine lady of some bygone era. An aristocrat nodding off at noon, exhausted from a morning of tea and social niceties. Her suit isn't impermeable plastic but fine fabric. Her hair's not a nest of tangles and detritus, but an intricate up-do. A deep, dreamless sleep envelopes her.

A sharp whap wakes her a short time later. The migraine has dulled to a mild throb. The smog outside is a murkier shade of gray. Sixteen teeters in the limbo between sleep and wakefulness until a nagging realization pulls her sharply to consciousness—the weight of the necklace is gone.

Sixteen bolts upright. She shakes out her blanket. Flips the cot on its side—nothing underneath except a stray sock and a Twinkie wrapper. She freezes at the familiar thwap of metal hitting concrete: The privacy tarp is flailing again.

She walks next door and knocks on Twenty-six's makeshift door. No answer. The sheet of corrugated tin shrieks as she pushes it open. The room smells like a stale refrigerator. No signs of life.

At the end of the corridor, she can see the warm glow of Incineration. The party's in full swing. She heads toward the commotion.

Geysers in Hell have nothing on the incinerator. It is an astonishing sight if you can stomach the smoke. A sizable group is gathered around the monolithic furnace, swapping stories and boasting about their scores. She spies Thirty-two and Eighty-one sitting in the shadows, watching the flames spew and sputter. They're taking turns swigging from a glass bottle. She heads in their direction. "Where's Twenty-six?" she asks.

"Thought you weren't gonna make it tonight," says Thirty-two, a knowing smile playing on his lips.

"Have you seen her?"

"Huge score. Quit on the spot," he says. "Pure gold, rumor has it."

Sixteen slumps against the furnace room wall. She hears herself say, "Gold, huh?" from somewhere far away. The incinerator shudders and shoots a flaming pillar into the air.

Thirty-two tilts the hooch her way. "Cheers to her, eh? May we all be so blessed."

Sixteen accepts the bottle and takes a long, slow drag.