What a Load of Rubbish (4 page)

Thursday in Suburbiaville was payday. After work all the builders, all the maintenance workers, all the factory hands, the warehouse-men and checkout-girls from the local supermarkets and other public-service workers, would meet up in “The Artisan’s Arms” – a local alehouse on the outskirts of the town – to celebrate payday and the oncoming weekend.

Late on a Thursday afternoon was always a noisy affair and sometimes, the celebrations – much to the delight of the landlord and his wife – would often carry on into the early evening. The till would not stop ringing, the fruit machines would not stop swallowing
coins and coughing-up the
occasional
jackpot –
very
occasional. Alcohol and meals were served, jokes were told with peals of exaggerated laughter and naughty songs were sung, with bags of enthusiasm but, sadly, not much talent.

After work, Malcolm would pop in for a couple of pints; he liked the feel of the place, the buzz of the workers. Here, he felt, was somewhere that anyone could come to and have a laugh. But on this occasion, he noticed a different atmosphere. The juke-box still played, the fruit machine was still occasionally paying-out and songs were still being sung, things just felt different somehow. It was as though
something
had happened, or was about to happen. And nobody would tell him about it.

“’Allo Geordie!” He saw his mate Geordie at the bar. A giant of a man from Newcastle, one of the drivers from the council works depot. “Where’ve you been, mate? I ’aven’t seen yer fer a good few weeks.”

But he seemed different too. “Oh ’ullo Malcy, ol’ son – ’ow are ye, mucker? Ah’ve been away, in ’Umberside on a course, like?” his loud, sing-song accent cut through the din in the bar.

“Oh aye,” Malcolm asked conversationally, “What course is that then?”

At this Geordie stuck a finger in his ear and waggled it around. “What’s that? Ah
canna hear ye in all this racket, mon – we’ll talk later. We’ve gotta new wagon, like – cor, is that the time like?” He glanced at the clock above the bar. “Ah – look mucker. Gorra dash like! See ye later, mon.” And he pushed through the crowd in the pub and did not say another word.

That’s funny, thought Malcolm, scratching his head, I didn’t know Geordie was hard of hearing. He was quite disappointed at his mate’s quick get-away. Maybe he’s got problems at home, because I know he’s got a couple of kids – an’ you know what an ’andful
they
can be.

It was time to go home, to clean and maintain his equipment. Oh aye, an’ I’ll have to pop in to that cycle shop and get some more lubricant – oh yeah, an’ some more o’ them Sherbet Lemons for the kids…

When he turned up at the depot on Friday – his barrow freshly lubricated, the galvanised bins buffed up and shining like a shilling – Gordon Bartholemew, who would usually greet him with a cheery wave and a patronising, “Good morning, Malcolm,” then vanish into his office for the rest of the day, on this particular morning announced that he could not stop, nor would he meet Malcolm’s eyes. Pointing at his watch and muttering something about a meeting he had to
attend five minutes ago, he disappeared.

Nobody, it seemed, had any time to stop and chat. Those workers who used the staff canteen, the people who would gather in the yard outside after breakfast – the people who’d stop and chat with Malcolm, before starting work – for some reason or other, had to be somewhere else.

“Sorry Malcolm, can’t stop, I’m in the middle of an oil-change,” a garage mechanic excused himself and hurried away.

“Mornin’ Malc. Got a text from Eckerslike upstairs.” The Fire Safety Officer raised his eyes. “Would you believe it, all the fire-alarms on the first floor are down.” The man was in an awful flap – and he was normally so calm. “Better go and see what’s up!”

“Can I ’elp?” asked Malcolm brightly. “I’m I dab ’and with that sort of thing!”

“No – no, it’s alright Malcy, better check them out myself, regulations you know – see you later.” And he was gone.

Responses like this had Malcolm scratching his head; blimey, I was only offering to ’old his ladder! he thought. Then he went into the main building. Everybody was hard work, typing letters or arranging work schedules, budgets and what have you and so had no time to talk. Some people – and it was quite a small office – pretend they hadn’t
seen him.

So he went to check the notice-board but found that somebody had taken time to clear it of rotas, memos and other such notes which may have given him some kind of clue. At the end of the corridor were the steps that led up to the first-floor of the management offices and he half thought about climbing them, hammering on the door, demanding: “What the heck have I done? Why won’t anybody speak to me – I thought I was well-liked round here!” But he thought better of it. A little disappointed, Malcolm just shrugged his shoulders, none the wiser as to what was amiss and went back on his rounds, thinking: I dunno – sometimes nobody tells yer nothin’… But somehow something was different, he could feel it in the breeze, could smell it in the air.

What our Malcolm did not know was that that fateful Monday morning was looming near. In three days it was going to happen. Only the weekend to go and then it would be here – and everyone but he knew about it. And even if he did, there wasn’t anything he could do to stop it. That was
progress
…

Eight-thirty on Monday morning: a full
hour
before most council workers used to turn up. It was a beautiful spring day in April, birds were singing in the trees, a milk-float laden with cow-juice and rich-in-vitamin-C fruit drinks whirred along, the milkman whistling cheerfully as he delivered. “Whistling cheerfully” was a condition written in to the milkman’s “terms of employment” contract, when he delivered to homes in Willowy Lane. It added, Suburbiaville Newtown council felt, to the lane’s blissful nature.

Malcolm had pushed his barrow up the hill to Suburbiaville British Rail station, cleaning in front of every garden gate as he passed. Chatting with any residents he
met. Distributing the odd sherbet lemon to any lucky children he met, provided that they had been good – maybe they had eaten all their vegetables the evening before, or had got ten out of ten in a spelling test at school.

Having cleared the waiting-room and platform of paper cups, newspapers, tissues and other travellers’ trash he was about to push his unwieldy barrow down the other side of the hill.

It was good to be alive on mornings like these, Malcolm decided, not too cold, not too hot with just the right amount of breeze. He would go out for a stroll with Gisele, that girl from the depot office tonight; they had become friends only recently when they discovered they shared an interest in astronomy. There was a full moon tonight. They would watch it together and, perhaps, have a quick drink. When, hang on, what’s that?

… A high-pitched whine – a sort of cross between a distant aeroplane, a herd of angry elephants and a trumpet being blown by an untrained trumpeter – reached his ears. It was as though a hundred, no, maybe
five
hundred household vacuum cleaners had been switched on all at once. With eyes closed tight, he tried to work out using only his ears what the cause of the noise could be. When he opened them again a huge vehicle rolled out of a side-turning, coming to a halt on
the side of Willowy Lane, opposite to where he had cleaned, a long way down the street from him.

“What on earth is that?” he wondered aloud. “Crikey – it’s gonna take off in a mo…” From where Malcolm stood – about half a mile away – it seemed as though this beast had sprouted wings. But we know different, don’t we? Seeming to appear from beneath these wings, four of what looked like wheelie bins on caterpillar tracks trundled out onto the road, two on either side. It looked like four
ugly chicks
had just hatched and were nestling beneath the wings of their
even uglier
mother. Malcolm pushed his barrow nearer to the “All-in-One-Der” to get a better look. As he approached, the “Rubbish Robots” – bursting with nanotechnology – buzzed into life. Breaking formation, escaping from under the wings, these “chicks” became individuals with minds of their own. The droid-bins dived into front gardens, back gardens, driveways, dustbin areas.

Guzzling garden waste. Destroying everyday dirt. Removing rubbish. Purging poo, paint and oil stains from pavements. Breaking down boxes and slurping up semi-solid or gooey stuff directly into their
guts
. Crumpling cardboard and sorting a variety of recyclable materials into categories then storing it out in front of the house to be picked up by
the recycling van later. Seeking out any matter that could be described as foreign with their flashing red sensor and, promptly, deporting it, whilst at the same time scrubbing the concrete paths clean with the brushes beneath each robot’s tracks, until Willowy Lane looked like an advert in an estate agent’s manual. These
droids
seemed to possess an energy that had Malcolm gulping and wondering how, or even if, he would be able to compete with these machines.

Racing around as they scrubbed oil and paint from affected areas, ducking and diving, weaving intricate patterns. These
dust-devils
reminded Malcolm of “The Red Arrows” display team, he had seen on television a couple of times. He watched, his mouth opening and closing in time with the “Jaws” of the “Crusher”, as every time a “Rubbish Robot” filled itself up it would belch, and return to be hoisted and emptied into that ever-hungry hopper.

Then the finale: buzzing, bleeping, whizzing and whirling the “Rubbish Robots” returned to the “All-in-One-Der”, lining up like hungry schoolchildren in the dinner-queue to be emptied into that ravenous hopper one last time – accompanied by that characteristic, cute “burping” sound. In reality, this final belch was an electrical message to the control-box that this was the final load
to be crushed. It would then send orders to “The Crusher” to “continue crushing” and to munch the rubbish into material small enough for the hopper to digest.

The droid wheelie-bins then re-grouped under the outstretched, wing-like, cantilever doors. Maybe, thought Malcolm, whatever these things were were getting their breath back after all that racing around. Then they simply paired off, turned inwards and, from where Malcolm was standing at the other end of Willowy Lane, seemed to disappear into the side of the vehicle under the doors.

The icing was put on the cake when the vast vehicle started forward, the large rolling brush going round and round, constantly turning. It was then dealt with by “The Dirt Disperser”, a
new
improvement added by a
whiz-kid
mechanic in the “Motor Transport” (MT) department, at the depot. This device looked like an enlarged industrial vacuum-cleaner head which was connected to a large suction-pipe and lay, like a basking python, over the roof of the vehicle, and sucked any gritty or sandy waste that the Rubbish Robots may have missed directly into the hopper.

Malcolm struggled to get a grip on what he had just seen. It was unbelievable. It was remarkable. Maybe it was remarkably unbelievable or unbelievably
remarkable. Who knows – it could have been a bit of both. Cardboard had been crushed. Paper had been shredded. Rubbish removed and the entire area “blitzed”. The whole operation had taken minutes. Malcolm was fast
and
efficient, but by the time he had stopped and chatted to everyone, given sherbet lemons to well-behaved children and helped elderly people do whatever they had to do, one street would take a full morning. And that was if he did not spend time polishing the door-numbers on houses; he liked to make sure each number was clean and stood out clearly. That way the postman would be able to read each door-number clearly and deliver the right mail to the right house, another reason Malcolm saw his job as essential. He could not bear the thought that because he did not do his job properly, some poor home-owner may receive mail addressed to somewhere else; the confusion it would cause, the sheer panic.

He pushed his barrow across the street to this great vehicle – what a weird wagon; it’s like something out of Doctor Who. Only it’s more like Doctor What – Malcolm’s mind was working overtime. What are these strange robots? What the heck was going on? The “All-in-One-Der” was ticking over quietly, menacingly.

The sun reflecting on the windows made it impossible see who the driver was, so he rapped on the window sharply. An electrical whirring, the window wound down – PUWEEZZZZ – the whirring stopped.

It was his “mate”, Geordie the driver. “Oh ’allo, Malky ol’ son – what are ye doin’ ’ere, mon? What’s up, mucker?” All sweetness and surprise, mixed with a degree of pride and smugness at his new job, as if he was saying, “
I’ve
been promoted but I’ll still talk to you.” Clearly, he was not expecting to see Malcolm.

“W-what’s goin’ on?” stammered Malcolm, confused by this new situation, awestruck by this enormous machine.

“’Aven’t yer ’eard mon – we’ve gan all ’igh-tech,” Geordie went on to explain, “Ah’ve been away on a course learnin’ how to drive this beggar. They’re phasing yer oot, mon. Malcy ol’ son – ah’m afraid yer obsolete, mon!”

Malcolm looked down the street. He had to take his hat off to those droids. They had done a fantastic job, in a fraction of the time. Willowy Lane looked immaculate, clear of rubbish, garden gates closed, gutters swept and vacuumed. Pavements hosed and scrubbed. So quickly, so easily, so efficiently, so effortlessly. But it was all so impersonal, it lacked the human touch. Malcolm just did not know what to say.

“I – I don’t know what to say.”

“Say what ye like, mon – this is the future,” said Geordie matter-of-factly. He grimaced and hunched his shoulders. “Yerra thing o’ the past noo!” He leaned out the cab window, covering his mouth with his hand so that only Malcolm could hear. “If Ah was you, Malcy ol’ son, Ah wuild wait till Monday, like. An’ gan an’ see that feller, Eckerslike, like. He’ll be able tea tell yer what’s ’appenin’, like!”

Malcolm could not believe it. After all the years of dedication. After all his hard work and professionalism. The council wanted simply to oust him and in his place put mindless machines. And nobody had said anything to him about it.

So that was why no-one had any time to stop and chat on Friday…

This made Malcolm angry – very angry indeed. But he didn’t lose his temper; in his practised country drawl he said, “Oh-arr, we’ll just ’ave to see about that – won’t we?” He pointed Belinda, his barrow, in the direction of the council depot, and set off at a brisk pace. But when he got there he found them locked up and empty, the administration staff, i.e. Mister Bartholemew, was at some kind of administrative meeting in London and had taken his secretary Gisele with him to take the minutes. Mr Eckerslike was on the golf-course, meeting
important people
at the nineteenth hole, buying huge rounds of drinks and recruiting sponsors for his nomination for the position of Lord Mayor of Suburbiaville in the Mayoral Elections taking place during the following summer. He would claim the money he spent buying those drinks back from expenses. Our Willy would never be short of a few quid. All the other workers, who would hang around the yard, all had business elsewhere and were “too busy to stop and chat” so Malcolm was none the wiser for his visit to the depot.

In the end, his head buzzing with questions, he returned home to his flat on the other side of town and quelled his frustrations alone in his garden shed, polishing his dustbins, cleaning and lubricating his barrow. Then, after selecting a fresh shirt and tie for the coming Monday, he went to bed early with an uneasy feeling
– what was going on?