A bot could have carried Eyas’ load easily, but some things needed to be moved by hand. Not that it made any difference to the things being carried. Bots could’ve got them to the same place, and probably faster, too. That wasn’t the point. The point was that some weights needed to be felt, and that hands convey a respect bots never could.
She pulled her wagon along, the canisters inside rattling slightly. The people she walked past recognised the sound, no question. Her cargo was unmistakable. Eyas sometimes wondered what it was like for merchants to carry boxes that passersby didn’t know the contents of. Perhaps it felt a bit like a birthday, like having a good secret wrapped away. Eyas’ canisters were no secret, but they were good all the same. They were undeniably good, even though some of the glances they received took a moment to sort themselves out.
‘Thank you, M,’ a woman said as she passed her. The woman was grey-haired, at least twice her age, and yet, still, ‘M.’ She had long grown used to that.
Eyas was tired, and not in the best of moods. She’d awoken with a headache and had skipped breakfast, which she’d regretted after a mere hour at work. She smiled and nodded at the woman anyway. That was part of her job, too. To smile. To be the opposite of fear.
She continued down the thruway, heading into the buzz of a neighbourhood market. The smells of crispy fish, warm starches, and fresh-cut veggies greeted her. Her stomach growled.
The environment shifted slightly as she moved through it, as it always did. She passed through the familiar blanket of long glances, murmured thanks, the occasional exhale. Someone appeared in her periphery – an older man, coming right toward her. ‘M Parata,’ the man said. He opened his arms wide.
Eyas didn’t remember the man when she went in for the hug, but an image surfaced as she was squeezed tight. A face at a ceremony two – no, three – tendays prior. ‘M Tucker,’ she said. ‘Please, call me Eyas.’ She pulled back, leaving a friendly hand on the man’s arm. ‘How are you?’ It was a difficult question, she knew, but simply saying I care was awkward.
‘Oh, well,’ M Tucker said. His face struggled. ‘You know.’
‘I do,’ Eyas said. She did.
M Tucker looked at the cart. He swallowed hard. ‘Is that Ari?’
Eyas raced through some math. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not for at least four tendays yet. If you’d like to come by then, I can prepare a canister for you myself.’
The man’s eyes watered. He squeezed Eyas’ upper arm. ‘Do you like bean cakes?’ he asked, gesturing back at his stall. ‘I’ve got both sweet and savoury, fresh out of the oven.’
Eyas wasn’t huge on bean cakes, but she had never, ever turned down a gift under these circumstances, and her stomach was willing to accept anything at this point. ‘I’d love a sweet one.’
M Tucker smiled and scurried back to his workspace. He lifted a fat bean cake off a teetering stack and wrapped one end of it in a thin piece of throw-cloth. ‘You have a good day now, M Eyas,’ he said, handing over the bundle.
Eyas thanked him and continued on. She received more handouts before she reached her destination – a pack of vegetable seeds, which she had no use for but would keep for trade, and a mug of strong tea, which she desperately needed. She paused in her walk, sat on a bench, and consumed her gifted meal. The bean cake was fine, as far as bean cakes went, and the tea soothed a tightness she hadn’t known was there. She found a nearby recycling station and put the mug and the throw-cloth in their respective bins, from which they would be collected, washed, and reused. She resumed her walk, dragging her own recycling along behind her.
Her destination was the oxygen garden, the central hub of any neighbourhood, a curved green assemblage of places to play and places to sit and plenty of room to think. She parked her wagon in its usual spot, put on her apron and gloves, and selected a canister. She stepped over a plex barrier into one of the planters, treading carefully around all that grew there. The grasses couldn’t be easily avoided, but she did her best to not trample the flowering shrubs and broad leaves. She crouched down near a bush and unlocked the canister lid. The heady smell of compost greeted her, a smell she spent so much time alongside it was a wonder she noticed it anymore. She spread the stuff around the roots with her gloved hands, laying down handful after handful of rich black nutrients. She wouldn’t have minded getting compost on her bare skin but, much like pulling the wagon, it was a matter of respect. Compost was too precious to be wasted by washing it from her hands. She was meticulous about brushing off her gloves before folding them back up, about doing the same with her apron, about shaking every last crumb out of the canister. Each bit had to make its way to where it had been promised it would go.
Eyas emptied every canister in turn, tending the recipient plants carefully. She made sure not to walk where she’d worked, and took care not to touch her face. She stuck a small green flag in each planter as she finished, letting others know the area had recently been fertilised. There was nothing about the compost that could harm a person, but it wasn’t the sort of thing most would be comfortable accidentally sticking their hand in. It didn’t matter that compost was just compost – nitrogen, carbon, various minerals. People got so hung up on what a thing had been, rather than what it was now. That was why publicly distributed compost was reserved for oxygen gardens and fibre farms, the only public places in the Fleet that used soil. You could use compost tea in aeroponics, sure, but the food farms got different fertiliser blends, ones that came from plant scraps, bug husks, fish meal. Some families did indeed use their personal compost canisters on food gardens at home; others recoiled from that practice. Eyas understood both sides. Clear divisions between right and wrong were rare in her work.
As she neared the end of her batch, she felt the shapeless tingle of someone’s gaze. Eyas turned to see a little boy – maybe five or so – watching her with intense focus. A young man was with him – a father or uncle, who could say – crouched down to the child’s height, explaining something quietly. Eyas didn’t have to guess what the topic was.
‘Hello,’ Eyas said with a friendly wave.
The man waved back. ‘Hi,’ he said. He turned to the boy. ‘Can you say hi?’
The boy presumably could, but did not.
Eyas smiled. ‘Would you like to come see?’ The boy shifted his weight from foot to foot, then nodded. Eyas waved him over. She spread some compost on her gloved palm. ‘Did M here tell you what this is?’
The boy rubbed his lips together before speaking. ‘People.’
‘Mmm, not anymore. It’s called compost. It used to be people, yes, but it’s changed into something else. See, what I’m doing here is putting this onto the plants, so they grow strong and healthy.’ She demonstrated. ‘The people that turned into compost now get to be part of these plants. The plants give us clean air to breathe and beautiful things to look at, which keeps us healthy. Eventually, these plants will die, and they’ll get composted, too. Then that compost gets used to grow food, and the food becomes part of us again. So, even when we lose people we love, they don’t leave us.’ She pressed her palm flat against her chest. ‘We’re made out of our ancestors. They’re what keep us alive.’
‘That’s pretty neat, huh?’ the man said, crouching down beside the boy.
The boy looked undecided. ‘Can I see in the tube?’ he asked.
Eyas made sure there wasn’t any compost on the outside of the cylinder before handing it over. ‘Careful not to spill,’ she said.
The boy took the cylinder with two hands and a studious frown. ‘It looks like dirt,’ he said.
‘It basically is dirt,’ Eyas said. ‘It’s dirt with superpowers.’
The boy rotated the cylinder, watching the compost tumble inside. ‘How many people are in this?’ he asked.
The man raised an eyebrow. Eyas threw him a reassuring glance. It was not the weirdest thing she’d ever been asked, by far. ‘That’s a good question, but I don’t know,’ Eyas said. ‘Once the compost reaches this stage, the . . . the stuff that makes it gets jumbled together.’
The boy absorbed that. He handed the canister back.
Eyas reached into her hip pouch and pulled out a flag. ‘Would you like to put this in the dirt? It lets people know I’ve been working here.’
The boy took the flag, still not smiling. Eyas understood. It was a lot to think about. ‘Where can I put it?’
‘Anywhere you like,’ Eyas said, gesturing to the dirt around them.
The boy considered, and chose a spot near a bush. He stuck the flag down. ‘Does it hurt?’ he asked.
‘Does what hurt?’
The boy tugged at the edge of his shirt. ‘When you get turned into dirt.’
‘Oh, no, buddy,’ the man said. He put a reassuring hand on the boy’s back and kissed the top of his head. ‘No, it doesn’t hurt at all.’