Toxic Waste

Andrew Bingerton-Swift woke up, sort of, and despite the yellow crud gumming up his eyelids, managed to focus. Sort of. He couldn't really see the crud. It just felt yellow.

Dirty yellow like the pilot-couch’s life support cryo-bubble--a mechanical shroud mounted a few inches above his face. Its once clear plasti-cast was now a hazy cloud that smeared the life monitor lights urgently pulsing their red warnings at his feet. Still not fully conscious, Andrew Bingerton-Swift strained to see out. The usually crisp and stark features of the command salon belonging to the Federated Inter-planetary Prison Shuttle J. Edgar Hoover floated dream-like in random patches of light and dark behind the dome's amber blur.

Andrew sucked in his first breath. Somewhere in the dim, sleepily recesses of his mind, he flashed on the metaphor of being reborn, a naked child still wet from the womb and all that. Suddenly, yellow fumes clawed at his lungs, and searing pain snatched him awake.

Holding his breath, he fumbled for the remembered emergency release--found the handle and pushed. Nothing! He pushed again, twice more. Still nothing!

"Help me! Somebody get me the hell outta here!" His voice sounded distant and detached, as if he were shouting to himself from far away. But it had to be him, there was no one else alive. And now he too was going to die, naked and alone.

Andrew heaved up at the bubble that would shortly be his tomb. It held fast. His lungs screamed from vapor that shouldn't have been. Andrew struggled not to breathe, but the awakening reflex was too strong. Suddenly, his chest heaved, sucking in the acrid haze instead of oxy-enriched revival air. His chest burning, he punched the frozen release handle. It snapped, the broken stub tearing the side of his hand. The life support lights still blinked their alarm at his feet.

Bastards! Those no-good, double-crossing bastards!

Now frantic for breath, Andrew pounded and kicked at the clouded dome, stamping bloody circles on the unyielding plastic with his fist. Then, just as his small, red-amber-red world roared into black, just as the battering of his fists dimmed into far away, gray thumps, and the curses offered up in his partners' behalf faded from his lips, the deadly bowl above him cracked. And with a pop, it crumbled, showering his body with tiny kernels of shattered plastic.

Andrew sat up.

After several wheezing, coughing, but welcome breaths, he laughed. He laughed with relief and laughed from the giddiness that comes from being snatched from the brink of oblivion, and he laughed in delight with himself. He had pulled it off, the lid to his coffin now only a lapfull of plastic popcorn.

Andrew Bingerton-Swift had been delivered.

Swifty--he hated Andrew almost as much as he hated his hyphenated surname--rubbed his mucus encrusted lids, forcing his eyes to fully focus. The space-craft's command salon was empty, a little chilly, and but for the reassuring rush of the air handler, silent. No great surprise to Swifty. After all, he had wasted that stupid Pilot Warder--the only other person on board, that is if you don't count the four hundred and ninety-nine iced fish in the ejected pod. And so who's counting?

The usurping Pilot Warder stood and brushed bits of yellowed plastic from his body. Maybe the faulty release stud was just that, an accident, and Swifty had more important things to consider than the possible duplicity of his associates. His throbbing skull felt heavy as asteroid-iron as he wobbled on bare feet toward an important looking cluster of screens and read-outs. Legs stiff, his empty belly growling, he scanned the ship's status console while the inside of his mouth brought forth images of yesterday's road-kill exploding in the summer sun. Damn, how long has it been? he thought, picking at a fragment of plastic imbedded in his heel. Months? Years?

Swifty was trying to figure out how to turn up the heat when the ship suddenly shuddered, wrenching violently to one side. The last thing he remembered was flying across the salon and slamming into the bulkhead.

Swifty wasn't completely sure why he had been summoned, this time, again, to the audience hall.

"Mr. Bingerton-Swift, I believe it to be only fair that we resolve your situation--bring finality and all that," Counsel Abrums said from across the glossy milk-white of his empty desk with his usual nose-high attitude. Swifty checked out the other big-shot Counsel types standing to one side trying to look impressive in their big-deal, silver-trimmed, clean, white robes while Abrums continued. "We realize that we have been doing little more than to observe you in quarantine for these past weeks and have offered you very little in the way of explanation."

"Damn right!" Swifty had quickly grown tired of this place: all shiny and white and polite. "It's about time--"

"Please," Abrums cut him off with wave of his hand. "If you would only be patient a few moments longer, we shall make your situation clear to you."

Swifty feigned interest. Just sit quiet, Swifty, ol' boy and let this Abrums clown ramble on about cheap shit. My time will come.

". . . Mr. Bingerton-Swift, we were at first confused by your anti-social behavior--your strange need to accumulate possessions, keeping them for yourself and denying others their use. But after all, you had come from a culture quite foreign to us, and too, you were recovering from a very traumatic experience--one that surely could have effected your mind. So we felt the need for patience and forbearance." Abrums took a deep breath like he always did when he wanted to make some big-deal point. "But quite frankly, Mr. Bingerton-Swift, the violent aspects of your nature caused us such grave concern, we were prompted to accelerate our research into your history. And so, that is what has brought us here today."

"Hey, I just borrowed a few things." Swifty crossed his legs, ankle propped on knee. The open, casual approach was usually best at times like this. "I didn't know. Gimme me a break--And just call me Swifty."

"That really isn't the point, Mr. Bingerton-Swift . . . ."

And so on and so forth. Bitch and moan. Swifty slumped in his seat as Abrums griped about last month: about fights that weren't Swifty’s fault and the so-called temper tantrums. And not separating his trash into the proper disposal units. And like when he tried to borrow that stupid code-key.

And that Dr. Burton business.

"There was no need for you to do that, Andrew," Dr. Carlla Burton stated flatly with just a hint of sadness coloring her otherwise all-business voice. The lithe young woman had risen from her seat and was standing at Abrums' side--her bruises, ugly blue patches that spoiled the otherwise smooth, white skin of her face and thighs. "I was pleased when the bio-screens had finally rid your system of virus and other parasitic micro-organisms--many of which have only the vaguest references in the Memories. We had to specially design filters for your body’s flora and fauna." She re-adjusted the white cape about her shoulders, evening up the gap at her breasts, exposing a still-angry abrasion. "In fact, I was about to suggest that we share quarters for a cycle when you so violently attacked me."

Swifty turned away, her frank mention in front of these clowns of wanting,...that, was unnerving. And he was still not used to folks running around half naked. Gals like Carlla were definitely OK, of course. But some of the others! Even most of the guys wore only those stupid capes or those wimpy robes. He adjusted the belt of the technician coversuit they had given him. Well ol' Swifty's not going to run around like some faggot. And yeah, bitch, you decided you wanted a little bang after I showed you what it could be like with a real man, he thought, wisely keeping his opinion to himself. This kangaroo court may not understand certain realities, but they haven't got ol' Swifty whipped just yet.

"Yeah, well . . . . And just whose laws are you going to try me under?" Swifty knew he had them there. "The government that sent me out hasn't existed for centuries. And I'm told you don't even have jails."

"Point well taken, Mr. Bingerton-Swift, and therein is the root of the dilemma." Abrums leaned back in his chair and absent-mindedly fondled the code-key suspended from the cord about his fat neck. "And to further cloud the situation, your time's very concept of criminal justice was abolished a long time ago. We no longer have police, at least not as you know it, much less courts or prisons."

"So what's that got to do with me? Hey, I promise not to slap the broads around any more. Gimme a break--I just didn't understand the way things are now. Look, I'll even be careful to put the right trash in the right can." Looking down at his feet, Swifty put on his pitiful look, the one that always worked in a pinch. "Besides, you said that after the quarantine, I could have my own code-key and--"

"There is no use for further pretense, Mr. Bingerton-Swift. It took us some time and no small effort, but we were finally able to reclaim the memories from the J. Edgar Hoover and determine what you claimed to be a medical vessel, was in fact, a prison barge ferrying convicts in stasis for storage on the Jovian moon Io. And that you were not the pilot but one of the cargo.

"It was a noble experiment," he continued, "Freezing those your society considered to be incorrigible with the hopes that some day science would be able to correct their anti-social behavior. Unfortunately, like so many other things, your ship and its mission were forgotten after the Cleansing Hand." Abrums leaned forward, lowering his voice like always he did when he wanted to change the subject. "Murdering the Warder of the ship was no doubt simple enough for you, but tell us, how did you manage to escape from your stasis-bag in the holding-pod?"

Swifty felt it was not in his best interests to tell of the bribery and deals it took to replace the narco-juice in his IV with saline. And how his benefactors were probably more interested in commandeering a Federation space ship than saving his hide.

"Cleansing Hand?" Swifty asked innocently, successfully changing the subject. Doing his little-boy look came especially easy this time; he really hadn't heard this one before.

"Please excuse me. No, of course you wouldn't know. The Hand was in fact an asteroid. Although, many cultures considered it to be the direct Act of Deity. But, be that as it may--God or rock--it hit the earth, vaporizing the tip of the Ancient African Continent. The resultant seismic forces affected fault areas world wide. Great waves circled the globe washing over the lower land masses, and existing volcanoes erupted and new ones sprang up. Dust and ash remained in the air for decades; the ensuing perma-winter and atmospheric sulfur compounds destroyed over seventy percent of the earth's life forms."

"That's dumb, a coupla nukes could've taken it out."

"More than two, I'm afraid. Though true, it could have been done. But political tensions didn't allow Eurasia, New China, and the American Union to trust one other enough to permit such missiles to be launched, much less share resources for an organized response. By the time the political posturing and grandstanding was over, it was too late. The missiles finally sent in desperation were uncoordinated and at best only partially effective."

This wasn't making a whole lot of sense. "It's not exactly an ice-age out--"

"That was centuries ago, Mr. Bingerton-Swift. Except for an increase in temperature extremes caused by the minor change in the earth's tilt, the climate today is much the same as it was in your time."

Swifty only half listened as Abrums droned on about how civilization fell and rose again. Mankind's second chance, he called it: a controlled society where everyone had a place without hunger, and without the ancient pollutions.

A second chance for a smart guy like Swifty who knew that all was not as clean and white as these Council clowns made it out to be. Swifty had overheard the flunkies talking; he had ways to squeeze out information without the squeezee catching wise. No, not everybody gets off being squeaky clean and controlled like you may think, Abrums ol' fellow. Not everyone has the official trash fetish. There's placed around with different views of the way things should be. Swifty brushed his hair from his eyes. Yep, plenty of opportunity here.

". . . And when quite by accident we discovered the approach of your space craft and detected life on board, we were overjoyed." Abrums face was expressionless--a hard read, but Swifty could manage. ". . . Without the real Pilot-Warder to properly instruct the ship's memory after you ejected the holding-pod, the J. Edgar Hoover had gone into an eccentric orbit, only returning every few centuries. The thought of reviving an Ancient was quite thrilling to us."

Swifty had heard most of this crap before. How they had worked their little white plastic butts off to build a rescue shuttle and shoot it into a matching orbit before the Hoover whipped around the sun like a comet to begin another three-and-a-half century loop because his benefactors had screwed up the ship's nav computer program. They should have known he'd have to drop the pod. And big fat hairy deal, Abrums' bunch wasn't any better, they almost knocked his head off when they blew the docking link-up. But Swifty liked the way Carlla looked at him. He smiled at her and brushed his long hair back behind his shoulder. Yeah, for the chance of another good bang, she'd come around.

". . . And so, Mr. Bingerton-Swift, because you so cruelly murdered the Pilot-Warder and your fellow prisoners--"

"Hey, that was an accident." Swifty leapt to his feet, knocking over his chair.

"Please, Mr. Bingerton-Swift, the blood-flecked spanner was still beneath the pilot couch where you left it. Even if your blow had not been fatal, the Pilot-Warder would have died without proper cryogenic stasis when the ship's life support powered down for transit." Abrums leaned forward, and taking a deep breath, rested his folded hands before him on his desk. "No, your intent was obvious. Even to the jettisoning of your some five hundred fellow prisoners into Jupiter's atmosphere. The memories aboard your ancient space craft are crude, but nevertheless quite specific on these matters."

The door to Swifty's room opened without notice. Carlla stood framed in the vestibule wearing a spray-paint thin, travel coversuit and holding a red, Level-One code-key. She looked damn fine.

"Please come with me, Andrew." She said, offering him a matching garment.

Swifty was elated. Over nine hundred years old and the women still couldn't resist him. "Where are we going, baby?" he asked, letting his hand linger on hers for just the right amount of time before taking the suit. "And call me `Swifty.'"

"I have a sled to carry us away from here, . . . Swifty."

She watched him while he changed.

Swifty liked that.

Swifty's face still tingled from the rushing wind. It was exhilarating, sensual even, zipping along the countryside in the open sled; he almost didn't want to stop.

Yep, he had to admit the ride had been great. And the travel suit, despite being so thin that a fellow had to watch his attitude, did an excellent job keeping out the wind. Freed of the sterile complex where they had kept him, the scenery was incredible--lush and green, air crisp and pure. And no locks or fences. Swifty had always been a city boy, but a guy could get real used to spending time outdoors. Especially with a hot babe like Carlla.

The transporter sled came to rest at what appeared to be a large, wooden, double gate set into a vine and moss covered wall of natural stone, but the force-field shimmer suggested more. Carlla stepped to the ground and beckoned him to follow.

Swifty wandered near the gate while Carlla fiddled with the sled. He noticed a faint hum of power coming from the walls when she asked him to strip.

"Do what, baby?"

"Please remove your suit, Andrew." Carlla was punching away at her code-key.

Swifty couldn't believe his good fortune. The broad had finally come around. Big hassle swiping a sled to sneak us way out here--must be some sort of private hide-a-way. Yep, this fine bitch was his to control.

"Sure baby. I'll tell you what, I'll get naked first if that's what you want, but you gotta call me Swifty."

"Very well, Swifty. Please `get naked.'"

Great! After I bang this dumb broad, I'll waste her and grab the code-key. Swifty pulled open the seal and peeled down his coversuit. Her high-level key would give him access to the sled and anything else he wanted. With it he could go anywhere, into any building at any time he wanted, and even access the planetary shuttle tubes--once he figured them out. Plenty of stiffs around willing to pay for what he could provide. Just had to play it cool a bit longer.

He handed her his suit, making sure his hand lingered on hers for the right length of time. Always a good touch.

"The slippers as well, please."

"Sure, baby, sure." On the other hand, maybe he shouldn't waste her right away--if she cooperated. After all, there was still a lot he needed to know about this place. Or rather, this time.

Carlla was packing his clothing into a stowage well in the side of the sled when Swifty's skin was suddenly alive with energy. Something was wrong. Sparks snapped across his scalp as his body hair raised and crackled. Swifty suddenly realized the force-field had expanded and was now shimmering about him, separating him from Carlla.

"I don't wish to be presumptuous, Andrew, but I shall attempt to answer the obvious question." Carlla stood motionless beside the sled. "This place is a holding center for un-reclaimable materials, one of a dozen or so on the planet. As skilled in reclamation science as we have become since your time, there are still certain things that, unlike your coversuit and slippers, we simply cannot recycle. Some of the ancient thermo-nuclear residues and certain quasi-organic bio-toxins continue to defy our attempts to break them down into safer components." She hesitated then placed her thumb on the center of her key. "It requires an exorbitant amount of energy to maintain the multiple protective shields, but we have no other practical choice."

Swifty struggled to answer, but his voice was frozen along with his body as the force-field floated him toward the opening gate.

"We're truly sorry, Andrew, but this is all the Council could think to do with you. It is against the Code to incarcerate someone even if we had a place to keep you, but neither could we allow you to run free." Carlla mounted the sled and continued, her voice was tinged with disappointment. "Since your neuro-scans showed no real hope of you ever adjusting to society, the Council really had no other practical choice but to invoke provisions of the old Unredeemable-Refuse Statutes."

The gate swung silently closed as the tingling in his skin faded. Suddenly, the air slammed into him, tearing at his throat and piercing his eyes with needles of pain. Around him swam a barren landscape lined with rows upon stacked rows of leaky containers of various shapes and sizes that continued to a bleary horizon.

He squinted desperately as tears poured from his eyes and down his face. Unable to see more than a few feet ahead, he stumbled toward the gate, splashing through a cold, oily puddle that scalded his feet. His steps stirred up a cloud of stinging yellow fumes that swarmed up at him like a host of angry insects, violating every pore and eating into every intimacy of his body. As he managed the few, wobbly yards back to the gate, Swifty watched large patches of skin turn purple, then crack apart, then peel away.

His body was alive with thousands of tiny razors eating away the skin from his body. Panic swelled in his belly as he shouted her name: "Carlla!"

Swifty pounded on the huge gate with his fists, each thudding blow leaving red circles of flesh stuck to the smooth, white surface. Fighting nausea, he sagged down the doors to his knees.

Once more Swifty tried to call out to Carlla--she'd help, she'd come back for him! And open the gate. Oh please, open the gate! But only the choked sob of foaming blood came from his throat.

As control of his personal bodily functions failed him, Andrew Bingerton-Swift realized the truth: They no longer had police or courts. Or locked-up their criminals in prisons.

They didn't need to.

They still had dumps.

"My only other on-line scribing is the web site for my stage play. a bit of a stretch from sci fi The url is www.stc.net/~svarner. At the moment, I'm finalizing my great American novel--A fantasy/romance/adventure that answers the eternal question, can our heroine rescue her question boy-friend and her new found girl-friend, discover her roots, figure out who the bad guy really is, discover how to use her newly discovered, but prophesied, control over the power of the universe, extract revenge on those who murdered her family (twice), and seal up the rent in the fabric of creation before the world implodes."

E-mail: svarner@STC.Net

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