Ammit Waste Management

A Space Opera story by HC_Leung

Welcome to Ammit Waste Management, where trash throughout the galaxy comes to rest.

I'm Ray Gustavo, founder and CEO of this wonderful off-world company. You may call me Ray, Uncle Ray, or "Consume-not-conserve" Ray. Just don't call me Ray "Garbageman" Gustavo, as some of my staunchest critics do, because it degrades what I do.

The last time someone called me that, I hauled a million tonnes of trash halfway across the Perseus Arm and dumped it on his homeworld. I think he got the message, but the environmental damage was catastrophic. The Prime Minister, who was on my side, had to lobby on my behalf and convince the Solicitor General not to press charges. "Ray is the only individual," he explained using his silver tongue, "who can manage all of our trash. Who cares if he ruined a planet over some petty argument? Without him, our galaxy's economy falls flat."

What makes Ammit special, you ask? Well, we don't just collect trash. We collect ALL the trash. You see, humanity throughout the stars produces hundreds of billion tonnes of trash each year, I mean Earth year, and all of that comes here. Without my trashbots roaming the endless acreage of land, shoveling and piling up trash, things would be dire. Imagine bags full of your leftover fish stew and rotten fruits piled up outside your home, spreading an odor throughout your neighborhood. That wouldn't be nice, right?

This is why the Federation of Settled Stars needs me. Even though I'm not rich and famous, the Prime Minister always talks to me. I'd call him on the videophone whenever I have a legal problem, be it antitrust matters, environmental concerns, or tax evasion issues. He'd appear on the tiny screen, somehow always eating a saucy burger in his fancy Adelaide office, pretending to be listening, and then stamp some papers with his official seal to release me from my woes. The most powerful man in the federation has let me off the hook more than once. He knows I'm special. And essential.

Why the name Ammit, you wonder? Well, it's derived from the ancient Egyptian goddess known for devouring the dead. It's also the moniker we bestowed upon this planet after Ally and I discovered it ourselves. With twice the diameter of old Earth, Ammit is the largest celestial body in the Ma'at System and situated far from the Federation's power hub. With its rocky, barren terrain, there's simply no environment here for me to ruin. I know some people think of me as a symbol of capitalist excess, and what I do corrupts the human soul. Get this - I turn the saying "from dust to dust" into reality. I facilitate the circle of life.

By the way, are you hungry? You've traveled all the way from old Earth, I should have offered you something to eat. Here, try some green eggs. They're a little tainted with radiation since I salvaged them from the wreckage of a fusion warp drive, but don't let that deter you. They taste heavenly and pair well with sake.

After this, you and I will discuss business. That's why you're here, isn't it? To go over the terms and conditions for my trash collection service and then negotiate a price.

No? What do you mean? Are you thinking of buying my company instead? If so, I'm afraid you're wasting your time. Many have come before you with similar propositions, and I've given the same answer: Ammit is not for sale. I am Ammit, and Ammit is me. Without me, no good can be done.

You're not here for that either? Then what in the world do you want? Give me back my green eggs. Ally, kindly escort our guest out. Make sure she departs in her starship rather than wandering our junkyard, stealing who knows what.

Come again? You're a journalist from the Galaxy Times? Sorry, it doesn't matter which news outlet you're from. You reporters are all the same. Last year, we had someone from Die Zeit who claimed he was working on a documentary film but turned out he was more interested in sensational news that accused me of ruining this planet and exploiting child labor. His work went viral, of course, tarnishing my good reputation. People love a good villain, and somehow, I fit the description.

You promise to be impartial? Oh, I don't know. Can't trust your kind. I'll give you credit for being persistent, though. You look like an honest person, there is something in your eyes that tells me you want to make things right. Fine, maybe for once I will not judge a book by its cover. As long as you promise to be a good listener, I'll talk.

Here, have some green eggs. And sake too.

Ally, it's alright, you can put away that shotgun. It's an antique, and it might go off if you flaunt it like that. Could you also be a darling and shut down our trashbots from the terminal here? They're too noisy, and I prefer this interview to go smoothly. Please. Thank you.

So, Miss Reporter from the Galaxy Times, what do you want to know? Shall I start from the beginning?

Like all successful companies, Ammit Waste Management had modest beginnings. Thirty years ago, Ally and I were hauling trash between old Earth and her colonies. The work was mundane, but it paid well. After losing our families in the Great War, stability was crucial for us.

We were on a routine haul when our junkship, the Blue Nile, abruptly fell out from hyperspace and landed in the middle of a magnetic storm. It knocked out our sensors and forced us to take evasive action. Ally and I looked around - we were in uncharted space and desperately seeking refuge - until our radar scans detected a nearby planet. Without hesitation, I plotted a course for planetary descent, and in what seemed like mere minutes, our ship pierced through the thin atmosphere and plunged into alien earth.

Here we were, stranded in a new and curious world, that practically begged us to explore. But our main concern was fixing our ship, not sightseeing. You see, the Blue Nile was a sturdy vessel. It had started as a Lhasa-class troop transport during the war until we leased it for a bargain from a junkyard on Mars. You could throw anything at the old lady, and she could just shrug it off. That's why we were confident it was going to be just a short layover. The moment we got the navigation system and power generation back online, we could lift off and jump back into hyperspace.

Ally delved into the conduit with her toolbox, while I browsed the starmap in the hopes of determining our position. No luck. This planet had never been sighted by any of mankind's voyager probes and thus didn't even have a name.

I gazed out the window and was struck by the breathtaking view. It was vast, open, and devoid of life and vegetation. I checked our onboard analog sensors. The outside temperature hovered around -25 degrees Celsius, and cosmic radiation exceeded safety levels.

We took a short break to savor the majestic scenery beyond our cockpit. It was the most serene minute we had ever shared. Stranded on an unnamed planet, we had indeed stumbled upon valuable real estate outside Federal jurisdiction. Most people would consider this place a desolate wasteland, but Ally and I saw an opportunity. After we repaired the ship and returned back to civilization, we reached out to our friends and relatives to gather initial funding. We fittingly named the place Ammit, in honor of the goddess. One Earth year and two months later, Ammit Waste Management celebrated its grand opening.

Business was slow in the beginning, and Alley and I often questioned whether we had made the right decision in starting this company. The long days and nights, along with extreme temperature variations, made us doubt if setting here was the right choice. The economy was still recovering from the aftermath of the war, and there were times when our trashbots remained idle. The banks called every day, chasing our late payments.

We persevered, however. Ally was good with the books, which was as much a surprise to me as it was to anyone. Without her, Ammit Waste Management wouldn't have thrived. I still vividly remember the first time we met. Both of us had just lost our spouses to the war and ended up at the infamous refugee camp on Elders IV. We were frail, starving, and emotionally shattered. We became friends and supported each other, eventually falling in love.

To be honest, I'd be lost without her.

The fifth-year into our opening, the economy took off. Experts said it was something about the 17th Industrial Revolution that provided the spark. Anyways, factories all over the settled worlds ramped up production, and consumers began to spend freely. Prosperity had descended upon humanity, and with it, excess that translated into waste. The more society squandered, the more money I made from collecting trash. I showed off my bleached white in my advertisements and proudly declared, "Consume, not conserve!" Life is too short to be frugal.

It was unbelievable, the sight of colossal junkships ten times the size of the Blue Nile materializing in our skies to unload their waste. As soon as those smelly and filthy heaps were dumped onto our rocky hills, cash flooded into our bank accounts. Watching the digits rise on my online banking screen was pure bliss. It felt right and just. On most nights, I danced with Ally while the trashbots hauled and the compactors chugged. Our hard work had finally paid off. We had risen to the top.

As the economy continued to expand, trash began to take on different forms. People were discarding food, packaging, and electronics that had hardly been used. Such extravagance was unimaginable during the war. It wasn't my place to judge, but the rate you were discarding stuff defied the laws of physics. Was the economy that hot? Were you guys earning that much?

Some of the incoming trash items were so peculiar, they were borderline disturbing. You were throwing away mind-reality bodypods containing x-rated scenes. I get it, we live in a fast-paced society where people grapple with stress and need an outlet to act out their darkest fantasies. But the things I saw in those scenes, made me wonder who was the savage here, me or you? And if you were giving up such stuff, what did you replace them with?

I knew that trash served as a general barometer of our economy and society. The more trash there was, the more wealth we must have garnered, and by extension, the healthier we must be, both physically and mentally. However, as time passed, I began to harbor doubts. I started to feel that, in accumulating possessions, you were gradually losing a part of yourselves. The type of things you were discarding, either you never needed them in the first place or you were prematurely giving them up. It was as if you weren't happy after all, and nothing could fill that void.

Then, you started throwing away children. I'm serious! An autonomous starship once slipped into our sector, breached our airspace, and landed in one of our junkyards without permission. It happened in the blink of an eye - just like that, bam. It was really obnoxious. We conducted a remote scan and found out the unidentified ship had suffered a catastrophic failure. Its main reactor had solidified, and the electronics were irreparably fried. The ship was programmed to kill itself. Whoever had sent it took deliberate steps to ensure it was a one-way journey.

I was cursing, as you can imagine. Trash with untraceable origins couldn't be invoiced. It was undeniably bad for my finances, but I reasoned that we might as well make the most of the situation. We could dismantle the ship for its parts and sell them on the black market. Once the Autumn dust storm settled, Ally and I hopped onto our trashbots and approached the vessel. The moment we yanked open the hatch, our jaws dropped.

It was full of children! Hungry, thirsty, orphaned children. Unwanted and abandoned by parents more concerned with maintaining their promiscuous lifestyle in big cities. My theory was this: they surrendered babies to social services, which then passed them on to private orphanages. As those underfunded and unregulated places became overcrowded, some opportunistic wise guy decided to pack up the kids and dump them here. That way, everyone would wash their hands clean of the burden. The plan was perfect, at least on paper.

Just like that, Ammit Waste Management became a kids' haven.

I brought them into the house and offered them food and water. Watching them devour as if they had never tasted anything better, it broke our hearts. Ally teared up, while I seethed with anger. There were twenty kids in total, ranging from two to six years old. Some could barely count with their fingers.

The next morning, we lined them up and processed them. What does processing mean, you ask? It means we assigned them names and registered their new identities into our company's system. Timmy, Elijah, Albert, Jane, Liz, Leia, Zhang Chun, and Sanjit, just to name a few, all became a part of our payroll. They would earn an income, pay taxes, have access to health care, and contribute to a retirement account. Being part of Ammit Waste Management meant they were under a protective umbrella, shielded from harm.

Ally and I took on the role of caretaker. We never discussed it; we simply embraced it head-on. I knew we weren't intellectual or sophisticated people, but what we lacked in eloquence, we more than compensated for with life experiences. Over the next ten to fifteen years, we would teach them how to be independent. Not one of them disappointed.

So, when people criticize Ammit Waste Management, I simply shrug it off. They say I pollute the planet. Why do they care? Trash is real, it has to be stored somewhere. If not here, how about at theirs? They also accuse me of exploiting child labor. Well, yes, I do have youth employees. They're the twenty kids we adopted from that fateful night. As for exploiting them, well, that depends on your definition. If teaching them how to read, write, count, think, endure hardship, pilot a 50-tonne bipedal trashbot, strip a starship of its parts, and sort a thousand different types of trash based on their shape, size, color, and smell count as exploitation, then I am guilty as charged.

So, that's essentially my story. I've shared everything you need to know about our company and our family. You don't have to like me. You can go tell people how much you despise me after we finish this interview. But I ask you to, at the very least, be sympathetic. In the end, Ally and I are just ordinary folks trying to make sense of this chaotic world.

If I had a choice, I'd be the Prime Minister. Not that I like politics, but I sure enjoy making up rules and telling people what to do. I'd ask everyone to reduce waste and keep a leveled head. It's fine to have possessions, but you need to keep common sense.

What is it, Ally? Can't you see I'm in the middle of something? There's something you need to tell me? Can it wait? No? The news? What about it? Of course, I haven't seen it, I've been here being interviewed the whole time.

The Prime Minister had lost his seal? When did that happen? Last week? And no one reported it until now? Geez, this is a big deal. I guess I'm not that surprised that this happened. The guy had always been careless. Did you know whoever finds the seal gets to keep it and be the next Prime Minister? That's how the Federation works, power by possession of the seal. Don't ask me why, I didn't make the rules. Nothing makes sense in this new era. But still, Ally, why are you interrupting our interview?

He tossed it out with his burger wrapper?

Oh.

Okay, that's interesting.

This changes everything.

This is a lot to absorb. But hold on, let me unfold the chain of events. First, the seal was probably covered under his wrapper when he was eating like a hippopotamus. The guy's careless, right? His desk is, by default, a mess. Always. So, after he finished, he crumbled the wrapper and threw it out, accidentally picking up the seal as well. Both ended up in the trash can. The Prime Minister then carried on the rest of his day, none the wiser. At the end of the day, trash gets collected. They then get compacted in a local facility before being loaded onto the junkship bound for Ammit. So by that logic...

Oh. My. Gosh.

Ally, that junkship from Adelaide that was supposed to arrive today, where is it now? Landed in Sector G7 already? Are you sure? If you and I both know it's here, then the Prime Minister certainly knows as well. In that case, the federal police goons are likely en route to recover the seal already. Are you thinking what I'm thinking, honey?

It means we need to beat them to it.

Upload the coordinates to our trashbots and grab your stuff, honey. We're going on a treasure hunt.

Sorry, Miss Reporter, looks like our interview needs to wrap up early. Everything's fine; there's an urgent matter that requires my attention is all. Thanks for coming, really. You were a fantastic listener. Give me a heads-up the next time you're in town, and I'll have more green eggs for you. Take care, and please do share our story with the world. I wish you well.

Ally, gather the kids! I don't care if they're still sleeping, tell them there's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity knocking! If we find the seal, we'll get to live like kings! Everyone, hop on the trashbots and move out NOW! X marks the spot!