Zak knew what was coming. He knew without question, and that dread was worse than any consequence he might face. So, when he was called out of class to Principal Warrick’s office, rather than fear, he felt relief.
When he arrived, there was a GreenWatch officer present, standing not quite at attention, but not quite at-ease either. She stood the way Zak felt: somewhere in between states. The officer nodded at Zak and offered what she probably thought was a comforting, reassuring smile – after all, GreenWatch officers were trained to be friendly and serve the peace. They were everyone’s friend. Even if you were deemed an enemy of the planet.
“Mr Basker, please sit,” said Principal Warrick, gesturing to the uncomfortable chair across the desk from his comfortable one. “I’m glad to see you’re well, and with no ill-effects from the weekend’s … incident.”
Incident, thought Zak. The man can’t even bring himself to say the word.
“Yes, I’m fine, sir.”
“And your family?”
“Everyone’s good,” Zak said. “Or … as well as can be expected, I guess.”
“It’s just you, your father and sister, yes?”
Zak nodded. Mercifully, Principal Warrick didn’t ask why it was just the three of them. Different families had different reasons for the way they were. As for Zak, he had lost his mom a few years back. Self-driving bus accident. The authorities had been quick to point out that there were ninety per cent fewer traffic fatalities since all public vehicles became driverless. It was, they said, a statistic to be proud of. Unless, of course, you were among the last ten per cent.
“It’s a terrible thing when a home burns,” Warrick said. “Terrible, terrible. I hope you can find solace in the fact that you all escaped unscathed. That’s lucky, yes?”
“I guess.”
Then the GreenWatch officer spoke up. “Only ‘things’ were lost,” she said. “It might feel overwhelming now, but things can all be replaced. You’ll see.”
Zak shrugged. “I guess,” he said again. “Insurance and all that.”
“What we’re saying is that it could have been a whole lot worse,” said Warrick.
This time Zak didn’t respond. He just waited.
There was an expression Zak had heard old people say: “Waiting for the other shoe to drop.” When he was younger, he didn’t quite get the metaphor, but now he understood it all too well. And today that second shoe was dangling on the tip of Principal Warrick’s toe. All that was left for Zak to do was listen for the thud.
“I suppose you’re wondering why Officer Amendola is joining us today.”
“Not really,” Zak said. “I mean, I don’t need to wonder, because I already know why there’s a GreenWatch officer here.”
This time it was Officer Amendola’s turn to sigh. It actually sounded more sincere than the principal’s. But then again, Zak imagined it was her job to be in rooms like this, and face kids like Zak every day. She’d had plenty of time to get the sigh right.
Principal Warrick looked down at his desktop screen and waved a hand above it, opening a file. “The fire,” he said, finally speaking the word, “began in the kitchen, according to the report.”
“Yes, sir,” Zak said. It was all there in the file, but clearly Warrick wanted to hear Zak say it. “I was giving my dad a break, and cooking dinner. But I left the kitchen for a few minutes. When I came back, the kitchen was on fire.”
“And you didn’t have an extinguisher?”
“We did, but it was underneath the kitchen sink, so I couldn’t get to it.”
Warrick swiped away a page and took a deep breath. “The environmental report says that the fire took more than ninety minutes to put out, and, in that time, 1.5 metric tons of carbon was released into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide and methane.”
Thud, thought Zak. There it is.
“Yeah. Sorry about that.”
“I’m sure you are,” said Warrick. “And, yes, it was an accident, but the fact is, your carbon footprint isn’t a footprint any more. It’s a trench. A very deep one. Do you understand?”
“I’m sure he understands,” said Officer Amendola, seeming even more annoyed at Warrick’s patronizing tone than Zak was.
“I know that I owe a debt to the planet,” Zak said.
“Everyone owes a debt to the planet,” said Warrick. “But now your debt has become very steep. Very steep. It will take a substantial amount of effort on your part to balance the scales, as they say.”
“How much effort?” Zak asked, no longer interested in mincing words. Time to get this over with.
The principal cleared his throat. Then cleared his throat again. “You are being remanded to Bellgrove Juvenile Retention Centre for a period of eight months, which is the estimated time it will take for your carbon score to be levelled.”
Zak took a deep breath. It felt like he had been kicked in the gut. He knew this was coming. He knew it. But eight months? People could bluster about how it’s just a drop in the bucket of time, but for Zak, it felt like for ever. But he didn’t tell them that. He didn’t complain; he didn’t utter a peep. Because he didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of consoling him.
“I promise you, Zak,” said Officer Amendola, “once you pay your planetary debt, you can come back to school and pick up exactly where you left off.”
“Exactly so, exactly so,” said Principal Warrick. “Please understand that juvenile retention is not punishment, or even correction. It’s just a necessary consequence.”
“Yeah, I get it.”
Warrick swept his hand across his desk, closing the file, and clearly dismissing the matter from his mind. He was probably already pondering what he’d be having for lunch. “Officer Amendola will escort you home to say your goodbyes.”
“I don’t have a home,” Zak reminded him.
The redness on Warrick’s puffy little face was immensely satisfying. “Yes, of course. So sorry, so sorry. She will escort you to wherever it is that you and your family have been staying since…”
“Since losing all of our worldly possessions?”
Warrick released a sigh that was authentic. Not empathetic, but exasperated, and perhaps tinged with a little self-loathing. Seeing Warrick like that almost made the conversation worth it.
Officer Amendola was chatty in the car, full of “you got this” platitudes and heaps of can-do encouragement. “You’ll like Bellgrove. Really, you will,” she insisted. But Zak couldn’t imagine liking a place that sounded like a Victorian asylum.
Officer Amendola waited in the hotel hallway, giving Zak some privacy with his father and younger sister, Tasha. Amendola told him to pack a bag. But not only did he not have a bag, he had nothing to pack. All he had were the clothes he wore out of the house that night, and what little they had purchased the following day.
His father couldn’t look at him for more than a second as they sat at the little table in the hotel room’s partial kitchen. He kept trying, but had to look away. Zak found it annoying that he felt a need to console his father, rather than the other way around. “It’s eight months serving the planet, Dad – it’s not a death sentence.”
“I know, but it’s just wrong, Zak. This whole thing is wrong.”
Tasha looked up from her colouring book. “You get it wrong, you gotta do it over,” she said. “Ms Lewis says so.”
Zak smiled. “Don’t worry, Tash, I only have to do this once.”
His father looked at him, then looked away once more. “It should be me.”
“Just stop, Dad, OK? Please just stop.”
His father was right, though. It should have been him doing green time … because Zak had lied. They’d all lied. Because as they’d stood there in the street, watching their home burn to the ground, Zak had realized something awful. If they told the truth – that his dad came home from a double shift, started dinner and fell asleep with food on the stove – then everything would be ten times worse.
Oh, his father wanted to take responsibility. He wanted to do the right thing. It was up to Zak to convince him what the right thing really was.
“You can’t tell them it was your fault,” Zak had said, as they stood there watching the firefighters put out the blaze. “If you do, you’ll get sent to carbon retention, lose your job, and Tasha and I will get put with a foster family – or worse.”
As horrified as his father already was, that thought brought him down to a new level of hell.
“I’ll tell them I did it,” Zak said, knowing it was the best choice they had. “I’ll go to juvenile retention, and you get to keep your job, and keep Tasha. And you’ll have one less mouth to feed for a while.”
His father had blustered and refused, but Zak had pressed until he relented – because he knew Zak was right.
Now finally his dad forced himself to hold Zak’s gaze. “It won’t always be like this,” his father said. “I promise, Zak, somehow I will make this up to you.”
Zak nodded. “I know you will, Dad.” Even though he could never really know: fathers promised things all the time that they couldn’t deliver. But in his heart of hearts, Zak had to believe that his father would make good on this one.
Bellgrove Juvenile Retention Centre was not the institutional dungeon Zak was expecting. Yes, the GreenWatch PR said carbon retention facilities were state-of-the-art, non-intimidating places, but nobody really believed it.
First of all, the place was green in more ways than one. Not only was the tiered roof covered with drought-resistant lawns, many of the walls themselves seemed alive, planted floor-to-ceiling with hydroponics.
“We grow everything we eat, and what we don’t eat we sell on the open market, to build more retention centres,” said Maxon, who was in charge of new arrivals. Zak wasn’t sure whether Maxon was his first or last name, or if he even had more than one name. He was gruff, with big hands, and a beard that didn’t seem to know which way to grow. He appeared to be someone who’d be more at home under the hood of a truck than picking hydroponic lettuce.
“So, there are plans to build more retention centres?” Zak said. “You expect that many people are gonna fall into carbon debt?”
Maxon bristled a bit. “It’s our hope that people will work in carbon retention because they want to, not because they have to.”
Maxon continued the grand tour, which, Zak had to admit, was mildly impressive. There was a sewage processing plant that reclaimed water clean enough to drink. As for the bio-waste, it was pressed into sanitized bricks, which were then shipped off for carbon-zero construction. There was a magnifying glass set up in a skylight that directed concentrated rays down into the kitchen, and cooked things faster than a microwave. And there was a gym that captured every pump, cycle and sit-up, using them to generate electricity.
“Every hour you work out is an hour less you have to stay here,” Maxon told him. “It’s a win–win.”
“So, what’s my job?” Zak asked, feeling a little bit of unexpected anticipation. He hadn’t wanted to be here, but now that he was, he was already feeling a need to find his place. “Do I pick lettuce? Mould bricks? Do I work in the light kitchen?”
Maxon laughed. “Newbies don’t get the cush jobs,” he said. “You’re assigned to Bellgrove Mounds Landfill, digging up all the crap people threw away in the twentieth century.” Then he gave the widest of grins. “Congratulations, Zak Basker. You are now a trash panda.”
Zak bristled at the moniker. It was once thrown around as a pejorative, but as the years went by, and the laws got stricter, nobody had the guts to joke about it any more. Nowadays, it had simply become a part of life. Those working in carbon retention by choice had a level of reverence and respect. Some of the high-ranking ones were even celebrities. But trash pandas, who were assigned to digging up old dumps to level their carbon debt, had no such respect. They were the embarrassing bottom of the carbon cycle.
“This is the mess hall,” said Maxon, continuing the tour. “You’ll have your own personal composting bin for anything you don’t eat.”
Aside from the vertical garden on the north wall, the room didn’t look any different from any other institutional cafeteria. Cold hard surfaces, easy to clean. The cafeteria workers looked just as disaffected as the ones at his school. The food looked better though. Fresher.
Then, as they were leaving the cafeteria, a woman in an expensive-looking suit came striding purposefully down the hall. Rather than cross her path, Maxon ducked back into the room. She stormed by, practically creating a wind in her wake.
“Who’s that?” Zak had to ask.
“Director Boyd,” Maxon said. “She runs the place.” Then he added, “Best to not get in her way.”
Maxon ended the tour in the dorm wing, stopping at a door marked B-224. “Your quarters,” he said. “Orientation is at six p.m. sharp. I think you’ll be the only one. A small catch this week.” Then Maxon opened the door into a small, indistinct room. There was a bed, and a desk with a chair. There was a motivational poster on the wall about keeping green, and a few others detailing the importance of what the facility was doing. There was also a nice-sized window with a view of green hills that seemed too symmetrical to be natural. Maxon nodded at it. “Might not look like it, but that’s the landfill. A mountain of pointless waste from the twentieth century is under all that green. But we’re reclaiming it bit by bit.”
There was a potted plant on the desk. It looked lonely, but happy.
“Do I get credited for the carbon-binding the plant does?” Zak asked. “Assuming I keep it alive?”
Maxon grinned. “You’re a sharp one, aren’t ya! Yes, any carbon dioxide the plant pulls out of the air counts towards your debt. And if you want to cultivate more plants, you’re welcome to. Whatever goes on in this room is analysed and either credited to you – or debited against you.”
“So maybe I should just stop breathing,” Zak said. He meant it sarcastically, but Maxon took him seriously.
“You don’t have to stop entirely. But the better condition your heart and lungs are in, the more efficient your metabolism. Better for you, better for everyone. So, use the gym!” Maxon turned to go. “Enjoy your downtime while you have it,” he said, then left, closing the door.
Zak expected that the door would be locked like a cell, but it wasn’t. He walked out into the hall, and was greeted by a roving four-legged robot. It looked somewhat like a dog, except for the square head and flat-screen face. It intercepted him, and kindly insisted that he return to his room until he was called for orientation. No locks, he thought, just polite, passive-aggressive dog-robots. He wondered if the first note in his file here would now read “Unsanctioned exiting of dormitory room – 3 p.m.” He decided he’d better listen to Fido-bot, and went back inside.
He tested the bed. Hard, but livable. Sheets looked worn, but clean. There weren’t any visible cameras in the room, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. They could plant cameras on robotic mosquitoes these days. That’s how they’d caught the last of the carbon terrorists a few years back.
As he rested on the bed, there was a knock at the door. It wasn’t Maxon, but one of the little four-legged robots. Or maybe the same one as before – there were a bunch of them roaming around, and they all looked exactly the same. There was a package on its back. Zak took it, and opened it, removing the eco-friendly casing.
It was a carbon watch.
This was insult added to injury. Little kids got carbon watches when they were wasteful, to teach them right from wrong when it came to the Earth. Its display showed a real-time measure of your personal carbon footprint, letting you know if whatever you were doing was helping or hurting. Of course, everyone’s footprint was monitored, from individuals to governments to big corporations – which had their own carbon clock towers built right into their headquarters for the world to see. But when it came to people, needing a carbon watch was like needing someone to hold your hand when you crossed the street.
“Please return the casing to me for repurposing,” said the robot. And since Zak was already annoyed, and hated to be told what to do – especially by a machine – he put the box down on his bed instead. He assumed the robot would turn one of its metal paws into a talon and retrieve it, but it didn’t. It just waited halfway in and halfway out of the door.
“Are you finding your accommodations acceptable?” it asked.
“Why do you care?”
“I am programmed to simulate concern,” it said. “As only conscious beings can experience emotion, I can only simulate it. Please return the casing to me for repurposing.”
Zak ignored it. He wanted so much to just push it over, but the robot’s digital face screen smiled, making it hard to dislike it, as much as he wanted to. It took one more step into the room. “Your plant is a plumeria,” it said. “Once it blooms, its flowers will give off an agreeable aroma.”
“Great,” said Zak.
“Please return the casing to me for repurposing.”
Zak sighed, realizing compliance was the only way to be rid of the robot. He put the box on the robot’s back, and it promptly turned around and left.
“All good,” it said. “Have a pleasant afternoon.” And the door automatically shut behind it.
Zak studied the watch. When he swiped it, it didn’t display like a kiddie carbon watch. It gave fairly complex metrics beyond just the irritating red glow of his carbon debt, and the happy face/sad face of his current activity. The more he played with it, the more he could isolate precisely what conserved, and what wasted, right down to his body movements. You’d think that standing still would be the most carbon-neutral activity, but burning calories in service of a sustainable goal was actually better – such as moving his plant into the sun. OK, so the watch was cool, he reluctantly admitted.
Bellgrove Juvenile Retention Centre wasn’t just near a landfill – it was built there specifically because of the Bellgrove Mounds Landfill. Reclaiming everything in, and beneath, the artificial rolling hills was the primary purpose of the centre.
Zak didn’t know much about the place, but he suspected that he soon would. Still, becoming an expert in twentieth-century rubbish wasn’t on his list of lifelong goals. Not that he actually had such a list, but if he did, it wouldn’t be on it.
“You won’t last here.”
Those were the first words spoken to him by one of the other kids at Bellgrove. After his solo orientation, one of the dog-bots led him to a communal space in his dorm pod where four other kids hung out. His work crew.
“Don’t mind Stetson,” said a girl with her hair buzzed short. “He always says that to the newbies.”
“You get a lot of them?” Zak asked.
The girl shrugged. “People work off their carbon debt and leave. But Stetson and me, we’re in for the long haul.”
“Why, what did you guys do?”
“Remember a couple of years ago, when the world’s last oil refinery got blown up?”
“Wait – that was you?”
“Our families were deep into that. It was supposed to be a pro-environmental statement. Instead, it put so much crap into the air, we all ended up with years and years of carbon debt.”
“It was worth it,” grumbled Stetson. “We made history. The end of fossil fuel.”
The girl, whose name was Della, introduced Zak to the two other members of their crew. They weren’t long-haulers. Kenzie looked like a cheerleader, but was tough as nails. She’d got four months for “chronic failure to recycle”, and was a few weeks from release. Jamal was the youngest of them at fourteen. He had been caught with a stash of vintage game cartridges made from super-illegal plastic that was now known to be highly toxic. Possession of toxic plastic would have only got him a slap on the wrist, but he panicked and dumped them in the ocean to hide the evidence. That landed him two months in retention.
“I actually kinda like it here,” Jamal said with a nervous little laugh. “Except for the smell down there in the dump. But, hey, I’ll be going home all buff from the digging.”
The next morning Zak was outfitted with a yellow jumpsuit and high-grade filtration mask, and joined the others, who were dressed the same.
A transport truck brought them up a winding path to the heart of the mounds. To Zak, the place felt like an archaeological dig. The central mounds were being excavated systematically, with everything that had been pulled out sorted into piles. Plastics, metals, organic matter, and items that needed to be broken down before they were sorted, like old electronics. “Everything they pull out will be melted, smelted or repurposed some other way,” Della explained.
It was a busy place: bulldozers pushed things about, and giant claws loaded them into huge hoppers.
“Do we get to operate the heavy machinery?” Zak asked, which made Stetson laugh.
“Hell, no. We don’t work on top. We go down.”
“Down?”
“Yeah,” said Della. “The mounds are only the tip of the iceberg. This used to be a valley. The stuff at the top was dumped after recycling became a thing – so the real ‘treasures’ are much deeper beneath the surface.”
Sure enough, there was an industrial lift that Zak hoped wasn’t as rickety as it appeared – or as it felt – as it descended into deep strata of historic rubbish.
“How far down does it go?” Zak asked, a little nervously.
“You’ll be fine,” said Stetson. “Just stay clear of the Dump Devils.”
“The what?”
The others looked at him, as if he might be kidding. “You’ve never heard of Dump Devils?” said Kenzie. “Lucky you.”
“You’ll learn about them soon enough,” said Della. Jamal just snickered.
Zak thought about it, and dismissed it. There was probably no such thing. It was probably just a prank they played on newbies to scare them. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
While the surface resembled an archaeological dig, the “Deep Fill”, as everyone called it, had all the semblance of a mine. Work lights hung at regular intervals in a maze of excavated tunnels held up by heavy beams. The beams seemed sturdy, but Zak questioned how effective they’d be if the ton of trash above them shifted.
Della must have caught him looking at the beams because she said, “Don’t worry – the stuff above us is compacted so tight it might as well be rock.”
Stetson led the way down a side tunnel for a few hundred yards, until it widened into a small cavern. There were shovels, sorting bins to fill with whatever they dug out, and a jackhammer. Stetson manned the jackhammer and began to tear apart the nearest wall.
“It smells disgusting,” Zak noted.
“You get used to it,” Kenzie said.
“Shouldn’t we be wearing our gas masks?”
Kenzie smirked at that. “Nah, the masks aren’t for the stink; they’re for when the methane levels get too high.”
They were only required to work for four hours a day, but the more they got done, the faster their carbon debt dropped. The rest of the day was supposed to be left for them to keep up with their studies, but it wasn’t mandatory; it was by choice. Part of their character-building.
“Conservation works on all levels,” Maxon had told Zak. “In life, like everything else, you only get out what you put in.”
What Zak found most surprising was how much stuff in the landfill was still intact. Not just the plastic, which could probably outlast the end of the world, but cans that hadn’t rusted and still bore pictures of the vegetables they had held; newspapers as crisp and fresh as the day they were printed, without the slightest bit of yellowing. There was something surreal about it.
“Back in the day they had a whole system,” Della told him. “They’d dump a layer of trash, a layer of green waste, then they’d water it to help compression and decomposition. But the water never soaked through, and the compression kept bacteria from breaking things down.”
And then the other four got caught in a circular sort of banter that Zak wasn’t a part of yet.
“People were so stupid.”
“Were?”
“Well, at least we know better now.”
“How selfish do you have to be to just throw stuff away like that?”
“You can’t judge other times by our standards – they were ignorant.”
“Wilfully ignorant.”
“They lived in a disposable society.”
“Yeah – when you’re raised a certain way, it’s hard to see a better one.”
“That’s still no excuse.”
“Well,” said Zak, trying to find a place in the conversation, “at least we can undo some of what they did.”
After all, wasn’t that the whole point of carbon retention? To level not just your own footprint, but the indelible ones of those idiots who came before you? Of course, there wasn’t much they could do about the worst of the plastic, other than move it to less damaging places: concrete bunkers and such, like they used to do with nuclear waste. It made Zak think of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch: that floating tumour of plastic that came close to killing off life in the ocean. There were hundreds of retention teams working to clean that up, and still it was probably going to take a hundred more years. Zak was glad he was assigned here, and not the middle of the ocean.
About an hour into his first day’s work, Zak pulled out an entire newspaper from a chunk of strata Stetson had jackhammered from the wall. News from the year 1977. A headline about the first flight of a delta-winged passenger jet called the “Concorde”. Supersonic. New York to London in under three hours – but it burned a ridiculous amount of fossil fuel to get there.
“Do you think this is worth something?” Zak asked the others, showing them the old newspaper.
Stetson scoffed. “Are you kidding? This whole mine is nothing but old news. It’s good for nothing but its recycle value.”
Zak dropped it in the paper bin, and his carbon watch ticked down the tiniest percentage.
Although Stetson made all the noises of being in charge, it was Della who really was, making all the important decisions – such as how many hours to put in. On Zak’s first day they put in six. Clearly the team was ready to go longer, but Zak, not being used to the labour, was struggling to keep up.
It was on the way to the lift, at a spot in the tunnel where several of the work lights had blown out, that they saw a pair of red eyes in the shadows ahead. Stetson put out a hand to stop them. “Dump Devil!” he said.
Everyone froze and waited.
Then whatever was in the tunnel ahead of them disappeared. When they reached the spot, Zak saw there was a hole in the roof of the mine.
“I wouldn’t stand there if I were you,” said Jamal. Zak didn’t need to be told twice.
Zak was so sore at dinner he could barely lift a spoon to his mouth.
“You feel the first day of carbon retention more than any other,” Maxon said to him with a painful clap on the back. “But it’s a good kind of sore.”
Zak spoke very little at dinner, skipped dessert, and went back to his room – where he found one of those four-legged robots waiting for him. Somehow Zak could sense this was the same one from the day before.
“What do you want?” Zak asked as he threw himself onto his bed.
“I am in want of nothing,” said the robot. “I am here to be of service. When I am not otherwise engaged, I am assigned to you.”
“So, do you have a name? Or do I just call you ‘stupid-ass annoying robot’?”
“My designation is Loquacious Utility Quadruped Y223,” it said. “But you can call me Luqy.”
“Loquacious. That means you talk a lot, right?”
“Indeed, I do!”
“Well, I guess that’s better than Silent Utility Quadruped. Because then you’d be Suqy.”
The robot did not give him as much as a courtesy laugh. “I can project entertainment on your wall, if you like,” it said. “I can also engage in various forms of intellectual stimulation. If you’d like to play a game, just say, ‘Luqy, let’s play a game.’”
“Luqy, let’s not play a game.”
“As you wish.” And then when Zak didn’t say anything more, it asked, “How was your first day of carbon retention?”
“Exhausting.”
“I know your carbon debt decreased by nearly one per cent. Are you finding the work rewarding?”
“Why are you asking me all these questions?”
“I am programmed to simulate curiosity.”
“I would much appreciate it if you could simulate not caring in the least.”
“Hmm. I surmise that you wish to be left alone,” it said, and took a step away. “Should you need me, just say ‘Luqy, come home’ into your watch, and the message will be relayed to me.”
The robot plodded off, and the door closed behind it.
Zak was asleep in five minutes.
Zak’s second day was much like the first – but on the third day, his team hit the mother lode in the worst possible way.
Stetson was doing his jackhammering, moving at a nice clip, when he suddenly broke through to another cavern – one that wasn’t on the map. Warm, fetid air spilled out. It was awful, smelling so strongly of ammonia it hurt Zak’s eyes. He – all of them – immediately put on their gas masks.
“Stetson, what did you do?!” shouted Della, now muffled behind her mask.
The answer came as a flood of furry creatures poured out of the hole. Dozens of them.
“Oh no! We hit a Dump Devil nest!”
Stetson screamed. “One of them bit me!”
The creatures were some sort of rodent, but like nothing Zak had ever seen. They were much bigger than rats, but had that same grey colour, with angry red eyes, and sharp, snarling teeth. Their large floppy ears made them look rabbit-like, but that snarling expression on their faces was what you might get if you crossed a bunny with a piranha.
Jamal swung his spade at a few of them, but there were just too many to ward off.
“Fall back!” screamed Della. “Fall back!”
And so they all ran to the lift with the Dump Devils nipping at their heels.
Zak was the last in line, and so when he tripped, no one saw him. He picked himself up before the Dump Devils reached him, and he took off after the others, but now they had a good lead – and to his horror, by the time he got to the lift, it was already ascending. He could hear them up above, their voices fading as they rose to safety.
“You idiot! You left Zak!”
“I thought he was already inside!”
“Stop! Go back down!”
“I can’t stop it!”
Up and up it went, because it didn’t have a way to change direction mid-journey. So, Zak braced, and waited in terror for the Dump Devils to attack.
But that’s not what happened.
After a few moments, it became clear that the horde, as incensed as they were, had lost interest, and had returned to their nest. Only a few lingered near him in the tunnel, and they didn’t seem hell-bent on blood. Yes, they snarled when he made eye contact … but it was more like a warning than a prelude to an attack. Soon they turned and ambled back the way they had come.
All except one.
This last one was different. First of all, its fur wasn’t that shade of rat-grey. This one was more yellowish-brown. It didn’t bare its teeth at him, so it looked more like a rabbit than a piranha. But the most startling thing was its eyes. They weren’t red, they were green. A mutation, perhaps? He didn’t know enough about the creatures to have an answer – but this was the only one with green eyes and yellowish fur.
It slowly loped towards him. Zak froze. It sniffed his shoes. Looked up at him and waited. There was blood on one of its hind legs. It was injured. This must have been one of the ones that Jamal had hit with his shovel. Zak didn’t want to reach his finger towards it, just in case it bit, but he was curious, and wanted some way to engage. So he picked off a plastic straw that had stuck to his uniform and held it out to the creature to see what it would do. It sniffed it, and then it actually began nibbling at it.
By the time the lift came down, the critter was sitting on Zak’s shoulder, chewing on the straw like it had no better place to be.
“No!” Maxon said. “You can’t keep a Dump Devil as a pet!”
“Says who?”
“Says common sense! It’s not a dog or a cat – it’s a freaking Dump Devil!”
Maxon was pacing in the claustrophobic space of Zak’s room. Zak stood between him and the Dump Devil.
“This one’s not aggressive,” Zak pointed out.
“Just because it’s not as aggressive as the others doesn’t mean it’s tame. It’s a wild animal!”
“It’s an animal we created,” Zak reminded him, “by creating this place!”
“And it evolved to live in the dump, NOT in your dorm room.” Maxon rubbed his forehead as if warding off a headache. “Director Boyd will have a fit if she finds out about this!”
“Like I care.”
“You should care,” Maxon said. “You don’t want to get on her bad side. She could make your life here miserable.”
“You don’t have to tell anyone,” Zak said, in almost a whisper. “Please, Maxon. Let me keep it. At least until it heals and can fend for itself.”
Maxon looked at it. Zak had taken a large clear plastic container the size of a fish tank, which he’d found in the mine, and used it as a makeshift habitat for the creature. At least that plastic was serving a purpose now. And the Dump Devil wasn’t hurting anyone. It was as docile as could be. It didn’t seem scared or threatened. It seemed happy. Happy, perhaps, to be out of the dark.
“Vector control came – you know that, don’t you?” said Maxon. “They poisoned that nest. They’re probably removing the carcasses as we speak. Which means there’s nothing waiting for it back there. Best if we just put it out of its misery.”
“Look at it, Maxon,” said Zak, stepping to the side so Maxon could see it clearly. It was content to drink from the water dish Zak had left it, and groom itself. “Do you really want to kill it?”
“It’s not a matter of what I want,” Maxon said. Then he let out a sigh that seemed to come from the deepest place in his soul. “OK. I’ll look the other way for a day or two. But after that, if you don’t get rid of it, I’m going to have to.”
Then he stormed out.
Not a minute after Maxon had left, there was another knock on the door, and Luqy the robot came trotting in. “Am I to understand you have domesticated a Lepus quisquilia?” it asked.
“Is that the official name for a Dump Devil?”
“Indeed, it is.” It strode over, its pistons quietly whirring as it studied the creature.
“Are you going to report it?” Zak asked.
“I have autonomy enough to keep secrets when necessary,” Luqy said.
“Good,” Zak said. “I mean… Thank you.”
“You are more than welcome.”
Luqy studied the creature a few moments more, then scanned it with a high-intensity beam – which the Dump Devil seemed to like.
“Lepus quisquilia have not been studied extensively,” Luqy said. “They’re mostly considered to just be a nuisance. They breed rapidly and mutate quickly to adapt to the environment of the landfill they inhabit. This one, however, seems somewhat … unique.”
Luqy finished the scan, then tilted its head as it processed the information. “Hmm,” it said. “Unique indeed! What a very effective mutation!”
Zak had no clue what the robot meant. Not until much later.
In the morning, the plastic “cage” was gone. At first Zak thought that someone had snuck in during the night, and had taken the Dump Devil away. But there was a trail of evidence that said otherwise.
First was the smell. Organic. Earthy. Not the ammonia smell of the nest, but definitely the odour of animal waste. And there were little mushy pellets, almost purple in colour, all over his floor. They mashed sickeningly under his bare feet as he got out of bed. Then he caught sight of a piece of clear plastic sitting near his desk chair – a gnawed chunk about the size of his fist. He recognized it as a corner of the plastic container. Finally, he looked under his bed to find the Dump Devil asleep in the far corner. It had exhausted itself chewing its way out of the cage … but it had done more than just chew its way out. It had devoured the thing!
Just then there was a knock at his door, and Luqy came in. “Good morning, Zak. I have been instructed to escort you to Director Boyd’s office.”
“What?”
“I said I have been instructed to escort you—”
“I heard you the first time.”
“I see. So that was a rhetorical ‘what’.”
“Why does the director need to see me?”
“I wasn’t told. I was just given the order. It’s a high-priority order, so I’m afraid we can’t delay.”
Zak looked at the mess of rabbit-ish dung all over his room and sighed. “What a mess.”
“Indeed, it is,” said Luqy. “But all messes can be scrubbed clean, in time.”
“Is this about the Dump Devil? I’m sorry. I should never have—”
“This has nothing to do with Dump Devils,” snapped Director Boyd. “You know exactly what this is about.”
The moment reminded him of his encounter with Principal Warrick. Was Zak doomed to spend his life under the scrutiny of petty administrators?
“Uh… Actually, I don’t have the slightest idea what this is about, then,” said Zak. He looked to Maxon, who was also in the room. Maxon just offered him a weary but sympathetic expression. Director Boyd’s expression, however, was devoid of any kindness. She had cultivated coldness to an artform.
“I have no time or patience for charades, Mr Basker. So, you’re going to tell me how you did it, and you’re going to tell me now.”
“How I did what?”
Director Boyd threw up her hands in frustration.
Maxon intervened. “Zak … this is serious. The sooner you cooperate, the easier this will be on you.”
“But I have no idea what either of you are talking about!”
Maxon turned to the director. “Maybe he’s telling the truth…”
Director Boyd dismissed the idea with a wave of her manicured hand. “I’m sure Mr Basker and the truth are not acquaintances.”
Zak found that insulting. “Hey! You don’t know me.”
“No. But I know your type.”
Zak crossed his arms. “What are you accusing me of, Ms Boyd?”
The director glared at Zak as if her glare might melt him. It didn’t. Finally, she levelled the accusation. “You hacked your carbon watch.”
“My watch?”
“You hacked it, and I want to know how.” Boyd looked at her monitor. “It says your debt has dropped 5.27 per cent since yesterday. That’s clearly impossible.”
Zak looked to the watch on his wrist and had to double-take. His carbon debt had dropped several digits overnight. “Maybe I worked really hard yesterday.”
“I don’t think so. 5.27 per cent of your debt equals thirty-nine hours of trash panda labour.”
Zak was surprised to hear her use the slang expression “trash panda”, but he let it go, and shrugged. “Don’t blame me if your system is buggy.”
Boyd slammed a hand on the table. “I have worked too long and too hard to make this an exemplary facility. I will not have that jeopardized by one bad egg.”
“Uh … in case you haven’t noticed,” said Zak, “the entire landfill smells like bad eggs.”
When it was clear that they weren’t going to get a confession out of Zak, he was dismissed. Luqy was told to escort him back to his room.
“And implement ‘restraint mode’ if he resists,” Director Boyd ordered.
“Not to worry,” Luqy told Zak on the way back to the dorm. “There is no ‘restraint mode’. The director made that up. But I do suggest you comply, or things could be made difficult for you in a myriad of ways. And for me.”
The idea of Luqy being in trouble was enough for Zak not to make a fuss. Which was probably why Luqy said it. It was not a dumb robot.
When Zak got back to his room, the smell was still there, as was the mess on the floor, but the Dump Devil was no longer under his bed. Instead, it was on his desk. It had nosed the potted plant to the edge, and was sitting there in a shaft of morning light spilling through the window. Its floppy ears were no longer floppy: instead, they stood on end like little oval-shaped radar dishes, turned in the direction of the sun. Not only that, but its ears had gone green – and its fur was beginning to take on a green tinge as well.
“What the…?”
Luqy cocked its square head at Zak. “I won’t tell if you won’t tell.”
Then the Dump Devil raised up on its haunches and pooped out a few more purple pellets on Zak’s desk.
With Stetson still in the infirmary – getting poked and prodded and vaccinated against whatever diseases he could have been exposed to by the Dump Devil bite – the team had to manage their work without him. Della took over the jackhammer, but now they had been moved to another part of the mine while the Dump Devil nest was cleared out.
There were guards down in the mine today. Zak wasn’t sure whether it was because of the Dump Devil menace, or if they were there to keep an eye on Zak for Director Boyd, in order to prove that Zak was the bad egg she thought him to be.
“Getting rid of that nest won’t do any good,” Kenzie said as they worked. “There are dozens of those nests down here. You get rid of one, two more pop up in its place.”
Which wasn’t surprising. It didn’t seem Dump Devils had any natural predators down there to keep their population in check.
“Have you ever seen a Dump Devil like the one I found?” Zak asked them. “Yellow fur, and green eyes?”
The others shook their heads.
“Must be a freaky mutant,” suggested Jamal.
“They’re all freaky mutants!” Kenzie said. “Stupid things shouldn’t even exist.”
“Whether or not they should exist, they do,” pointed out Della. “And we’ve got to deal with them.”
It was then that Jamal noticed something odd about Zak’s watch. “Hey – no fair!” Jamal said. “It’s moving faster than mine – and I’m working harder than he is!”
Zak glanced at it and saw his watch tick down another percentage point.
Della and Kenzie took a look at it too. It ticked down again. Kenzie shrugged. “Maybe the plant back in his room is getting a lot of sun.”
“A whole tree couldn’t make it move that fast!” Jamal complained.
And that’s when it dawned on Zak. Of course! He was furious at himself for not realizing it sooner. First was Director Boyd’s accusation. And now his watch was visually scrolling his debt back faster than everyone else’s. Didn’t Maxon say that anything that happened in his room was automatically applied to his carbon debt?
“It’s the Dump Devil!” Zak blurted out.
The others looked at him as if he had lost his mind.
“What are you talking about?” asked Kenzie.
“There’s something about it … the way it soaks in the sun. The way it ate through its cage. It didn’t just eat through it – I think it actually digested it.”
Della put down the jackhammer. “Are you saying it might be a plastivore?”
“A what?”
“A plastic-eater,” Della explained. “There are certain bacteria that can break down plastic, but I’ve never heard of an animal that can do it…”
Jamal raised his eyebrows. “Sounds like you just did…”
Zak assumed he’d have a whole lot of cleaning to do when he got back to his room after his day of landfill duty – the uncaged Dump Devil had been there all day. But, if what they had figured out was true, he didn’t care how messy the critter was!
When he got back, however, the room was spotless.
And the Dump Devil was gone.
There was not as much as a single purple pellet anywhere – no smell but the antiseptic reek of cleaning solution. There was no evidence that the anomalous creature had ever been there at all.
Reeling, Zak brought his watch up near his mouth. “Luqy, come home!” he said, nearly shouting. Not five seconds later the robot appeared at the door, as if it had been waiting to be summoned.
“How might I be of service?” the robot asked.
“Where is it?” Zak demanded. “What did you do to it?”
Luqy remained calm. “By ‘it’, I assume you’re referring to the Lepus quisquilia. And, no, I did not take it.”
“But I’ll bet you know who did.”
“You would win that wager,” said Luqy.
“Was it Maxon? Did he take it like he said he would? Was it one of the other kids?” Zak knew it couldn’t have been anyone in his crew – besides, he already trusted them enough to know they wouldn’t take it. But there were dozens and dozens of kids he didn’t know at the retention centre. Any one of them could have got access to his room. He was sure that some of them knew he had it – there was already gossip around the cafeteria about the weird new kid who had a pet Dump Devil. “Tell me who it was, Luqy.”
The robot’s digital “face” always tried to mimic human emotions, albeit in a cartoonish way. But right now, its expression held no emotion at all. It was flat in addition to it actually being flat. “My programming prevents me from divulging certain things.”
“So, you know, but you can’t tell me?”
“Yes.”
“Even if I order you to ‘be of service’.”
“Yes.”
It was maddening. Like a game of twenty questions, with no answer at the end. “Can you at least tell me if it’s still alive?”
The robot cocked its square head. “You already have access to that information,” it said. And when Zak didn’t respond, it raised a “paw” and pointed to his carbon watch. The watch was still ticking down his carbon debt. That meant that not only was the Dump Devil still alive, but the centre’s computer was still applying the creature’s carbon-cleansing nature to Zak’s debt.
Zak sat on his bed and thought. Luqy waited expectantly – as if it wanted to help, but didn’t know how to buck its programming. Then Zak had an inspiration.
“Luqy … I’m not sure I understand. Could you explain what type of information you’re not allowed to tell me?”
The robot’s flat expression curved into the slightest smile. “That’s a very good question, Zak. I am unable to tell you information that has a higher security level than I do.”
“I still don’t understand,” Zak said. “Give me examples.”
“Well … for instance … I wouldn’t be allowed to tell you that the scan I did of the Dump Devil was accessed, leading to the creature’s confiscation at 10.12 this morning. Telling you something like that would be a clear breach of my programming directives.”
“I see,” said Zak. “Could you give me an example of an individual whose presence in my room, at 10.12 this morning, you’re absolutely not allowed to discuss?”
“Yes, of course, Zak. I would be forbidden from discussing with you the presence of a high-level administrator conducting a search-and-seizure in your room. An administrator such as Director Boyd, for example.”
Zak grinned at the robot. “Well, I really wish you could tell me all that.”
And the robot grinned right back. “So do I, Zak. So do I.”
Zak’s first instinct was to go to Boyd’s office and confront her – accusing her the way she had accused him – but he knew it would be pointless. She had all the power in this situation and he had none.
“Although I can’t discuss the situation, I can share with you an aphorism that you might find informative,” Luqy said.
“Go for it,” said Zak.
“It derives from a French author by the name of Eugène Sue and his novel entitled The Orphan; Or, Memoirs of Matilda – although the line of which I speak has been paraphrased since its initial publication.”
“Too much information, Luqy. Just tell me.”
Luqy simulated clearing a throat that it didn’t have, and said, “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”
Zak was beginning to love this robot.
So rather than going on the offensive, Zak took Luqy’s advice, and waited for that dish to cool. All the while, Zak’s carbon watch ticked down. In three days, his debt went from red to yellow – and now it was actually speeding up. Whatever the Dump Devil was doing, it was doing a lot of it. At this rate his carbon debt would be zeroed out in less than a week and would go into surplus! No one had a surplus carbon score. Or at least no one that Zak knew.
Finally, on the fourth day, Zak was summoned to Director Boyd’s office straight from his shift in the mine. Still reeking of garbage, he came into the very clean room. There, he found a cage far more elaborate than his makeshift one, and inside was the Dump Devil. It was entirely green now, and being doused in bright UV light from a high-intensity lamp.
And it was nursing a litter.
Zak hadn’t even known that it was pregnant! But now there were seven tiny Dump Devils squirming for position – all of them beginning to turn green like their mother.
“Ah, here he is!” said Director Boyd, as if Zak were her best friend. And then, as if all of this wasn’t absurd enough, he saw that the person sitting across from her was his father.
“Hi, Zak,” his dad said, beaming. “Director Boyd’s been telling me how well things have been going for you here!”
“Really?” For a moment Zak wasn’t sure what universe he had fallen into.
“Yes,” said Director Boyd. “I told your father about your contribution to our little community here. How you were the one who first spotted the Bellgrove Cottontail.” She looked at the Dump Devil fondly. “Of course, we’re only just beginning to study this spectacular specimen, but what we’ve already been able to learn about it is amazing! Not only does it completely digest all types of plastic, but unlike its more aggressive cousins, this mutation’s fur houses symbiotic algae. Dormant underground, but under bright light, the algae in its fur pulls carbon dioxide out of the air faster than our furry friend breathes it out! Its offspring all appear to digest plastic too, and have already acquired the algae – perhaps they were born with it. No one’s ever seen anything like it! Scientists from around the world are on their way here to study our little miracle!”
Zak didn’t like the sound of that. “What do you mean ‘our’ miracle?” he asked.
“Zak!” said his father. “Don’t be rude. Director Boyd is saying you’ve done a good thing.”
“I know what she’s saying. She’s saying the Dump Devil is hers.”
“Well … it is, isn’t it?” his father said, a bit confused. “She runs the place.”
“Precisely!” said Boyd. “And I have big plans for this glorious creature. Imagine a Bellgrove Cottontail in every home, bringing balance to humanity’s carbon crimes!”
But by the look in her eyes, Zak knew what her plans were really about. They were about money. Perhaps she did care about what the creature could mean for the world – but first and foremost her concern was what the creature could mean for her bank account.
That’s when Zak saw some paperwork on Boyd’s desk. And a pen in his father’s hand. “What are you making him sign?” he asked.
Boyd’s expression took a slight turn towards sour. “No one is being coerced here, Zak. Your father, as your legal guardian, is simply confirming that you found the Bellgrove Cottontail on our land, while working off your carbon debt, and that it is the property of Bellgrove Juvenile Retention Centre. Then, once the affidavit is signed, you can leave. Today. We’re freeing you of whatever’s left of your carbon debt!”
“It’s a good deal, Zak,” his father said.
And then suddenly Luqy, who had been all but forgotten, spoke up.
“Excuse me, Director Boyd, but I am receiving an urgent call for you.”
That threw Boyd for a loop. “You’re receiving a call for me? I’m sorry, but this is hardly the time for—”
“I assure you that the call is pertinent to the matter at hand … and will be very helpful in settling the situation.”
Then, without waiting for the director’s leave to proceed, Luqy jumped up onto the room’s conference table. The robot’s screen no longer showed Luqy’s friendly animated face; now it displayed a woman who seemed not nearly as friendly.
“Am I addressing Shaunda Boyd, director of Bellgrove Juvenile Retention Centre?”
“Yes, you are…”
“And is Zak Basker in the room?”
“Uh … yeah, I’m here,” Zak said, having no more idea than Boyd as to what this was all about.
“Zak, I was contacted by this LUQ unit earlier today. It believes your rights are being violated and that you are in acute need of legal representation. I’ve done a quick review of your case and I have to agree.”
Boyd gasped. “You’re a lawyer?”
The woman on Luqy’s face ignored Boyd and kept her attention on Zak. “Do you accept my services as your attorney, Zak?”
“LUQ unit!” shouted Boyd. “Disconnect call!”
“I’m sorry, Director Boyd,” said Luqy, “I cannot disconnect a legal intervention.”
“Do you accept my services?” the lawyer asked again.
“Uh… Yes,” said Zak. “Yes, I do.”
“Excellent!” Then Luqy’s screen turned towards Zak’s father, who was still there, pen in hand, ready to sign the document Director Boyd had put in front of him. “Mr Basker, I presume?”
“Yes…?”
“Sweet Fancy Moses! Put that pen down immediately!”
Zak’s father dropped the pen like it had suddenly grown hot in his hand.
Luqy’s head turned towards Director Boyd again, and the robot stalked forward on the conference table towards her.
“Now see here!” said Boyd.
“I do see there,” said the woman. “And I don’t like what I see. The incredible creature in question was discovered by my client during a salvage operation, and, as such, the Bellgrove Cottontail and its offspring legally belong to him.”
Director Boyd’s jaw seemed to come unhinged the way a snake’s might. “But … are you saying…? You can’t be saying… No! Absolutely not!”
“Zak,” said the lawyer on Luqy’s face, “I was told your carbon watch has been ticking down. Tell me, is it still doing so?”
Zak checked. “Yes – even faster than before.”
The lawyer became appropriately smug. “You see, Ms Boyd? Even your own software agrees that the creature belongs to Zak. Even now it’s logging every bit of carbon that it, and its newborn kits, reclaim from the environment and applying it directly to Zak’s carbon debt.”
“That’s an error!” insisted Boyd. “The Bellgrove Cottontail is—”
“The Basker Hare,” said Zak, completely derailing Boyd’s train of thought.
“Excuse me? What?”
“It’s not the Bellgrove Cottontail; I’m naming it the Basker Hare,” Zak told her. “And just like you planned, I’ll be breeding it – and I’ll be giving them away for free. Because that’s what the world needs.”
Her face dropped at the mention of the word “free”, which Zak found very satisfying.
“I’m sure we can assist you with everything you need to successfully breed Basker Hares for the benefit of the planet,” his lawyer said.
Boyd expelled a gust of air as if she had been punched in the stomach.
Then the lawyer, whose name Zak didn’t even know, nodded. “It’s settled then. The Basker Hare will be a gift from its discoverer to the planet. And considering Zak’s treatment at your hands, Ms Boyd, my firm has obtained an emergency court order to remove him and his belongings from your facility, effective immediately. Mr Basker, would you be so kind as to carry the cage out for your son?”
“Don’t you touch it!” ordered Director Boyd.
Zak’s father looked back and forth between Boyd and the woman on the robot’s screen, realizing he had to choose a side. In the end, he grabbed the cage, but gently so as not to disturb the nursing kits, and left the room.
“You can’t do this!” yelled Boyd. “The guards will stop you before you reach the entrance.”
It was Luqy who responded. “They might try,” the little robot said. “But the LUQ units are all in agreement on this matter.”
Then half a dozen of them marched into the room and stood on their hind legs. They looked somewhat more menacing in that position.
“We all agree that the Dump Devil – that is, the Basker Hare – belongs to the boy,” said Luqy. “And there are many more of us than there are guards.”
In spite of Director Boyd’s threat, they met with no resistance in leaving the retention centre. Not only that, but word of Zak’s confrontation with the director had got out, and as he crossed through the hydroponic atrium with his little unexpected entourage, kids came out to cheer Zak on – led by his crew.
“I told you you wouldn’t last here,” said Stetson, with a grin.
“Yeah,” said Zak. “I guess you were right.” And although he didn’t tell them, he decided that when the kits were old enough, he’d give one each to Stetson, Della, Kenzie and Jamal – to help free them from their own carbon debt.
It was just outside the centre’s main entrance that Zak stopped and turned back. Luqy was there, right behind him, bringing up the rear, but had halted at the threshold. It was as far as the little robot was allowed to go.
“I … I don’t know how to thank you,” Zak said, kneeling down to its level. He wanted to give it a hug, but somehow that didn’t feel right. So instead, he pressed his hand to Luqy’s interface screen.
“I have scanned your handprint,” Luqy said. “I will keep it in my memory always.”
“I hope I get to see you again,” Zak said.
“As do I. I am curious to know how you might change the world.”
“Hey,” said Zak, realizing something. “This time you didn’t say you were simulating curiosity.”
Luqy gave him a wink. “Indeed I didn’t.” Then he turned and pranced back inside, with a jauntiness in his step that no human had ever programmed.
“What’s that all about?” asked Zak’s father.
Zak was going to tell him it was a long story for another time … but then he looked at the cage his father held. The newly evolved creature was no longer a Dump Devil, and its kits had no idea, nor did they care, about the drama going on all around them. Looking at them made Zak realize that the answer to his father’s question wasn’t long at all. It was short and simple.
“It’s about life,” Zak told him. “It’s about life finding a way.”