What with the encircling memories crowding in, Engineer Ozob completely forgot to recalibrate the composter. The consequences, cataclysmal, are well-documented in the journals recently unearthed, an appropriate descriptor, given the tons of earth mixed with meteor fragments that had entombed the Obmil Annals. 110 year-books, carbon-dated 5630 AD to 5740 AD, then silence.
The previous evening, prior to Ozob’s dream, Deputy Toidi had reported, “Composter one’s out again.” with that smug look that said “You must have it done it wrong again.”
“I’m onto it. Good timing; a new rubbish cloud is orbiting.”
Then another dream of Aziza had intervened. She had been “the one.” Different, even in the naming for her azure eyes; long lost, long ago but persistent in her re-appearances. The Cannibal Craft, his first posting, was the most awarded of the Space Recycling Canon. She was the Sub lieutenant in charge of composting. Without an ongoing supply of nutrients to sustain it and its human crew, the ship’s life-force would have flickered – at first sporadically, then repeatedly, before finally extinguishing. Boosters incapacitated, eternally entrapped in the limbo of Farfarout, it would become another piece of harvestable orbital debris indistinguishable from the spectrum of junk they now scavenged – space litter from meteoroid dust to massive boulders, paint flakes to the solidified coolants of nuclear powered satellites, remains of rocket stages to dropped tools, screws, cables and cameras.
Private Log
Remembering Aziza
Our eyes met over the grey-white smoke wafting from the Incinerators, strangely similar we had joked to the acrid odour only produced by burning human flesh. Our relationship was cemented in the packing shed over the nutrient plate rollers as they disgorged their pressed piles of pulp for boxing and return to the earth atmosphere. Circling in decreasing ellipses, the rocket boosters once fired would return them to Earth’s receiving portals.
Unauthorised relationships are taboo. An anonymous informer had put Aziza’s name on the AOB agenda… under Neutralisation Contenders. One day she just did not arrive for our packing shed assignation. Nor the next day, nor the next. I asked around. The Relax Bar. most favoured rumpus room for off-duty crew, was the obvious starting point. Toidi’s eyes moistened uncharacteristically at my enquiry. Perhaps just the artificial light refracting off the prize trophies displayed on walls, ceilings and floor. Perhaps something more sinister.
“The Incinerators have over the last three days been belching disproportionately to batch input.” he noted .
They’ll never hear the last if, if…….
IQs less than 350 was the rationale for the palindromic names assigned to the crew members; also why they had been vanquished from Earth and rendered as “volunteers” to The Space Recycling Programme.
It was also how the Human Race, or rather its members assessed by the Supreme Council as “intellectually deficient” had survived The Paradigm Shift.
All composters de-activated. All debris in Farfarout space recalibrated on a full-destruction collision course to Earth.
Engineer Ozob signing out .
