Page 6 of Garbage

Evan nodded at him, like he was telling him that things were alright.

Quincy’s pistons were cycling too fast again, but he’d learned to ignore the aberration. He knew that he wanted to do his very best.

He picked up the trashcan and tossed the squishy bags into the back of the truck with one clean movement. When he was done, he returned it to the sidewalk, exactly twenty centimeters from the curb, and replaced the lid on top. A candy wrapper fluttered past and he reached out a thin, metal claw arm automatically to pluck it from the air. It was small, so he could stuff it in the canister in his back.

There was a little circle of dampness on the pavement, what Mo always called garbage juice, and he gave it a quick blast with his steamer hose. Usually he wouldn’t unless there was a big mess—like an animal digging through a whole bag, or something that was obviously biological waste—but he wanted to show Evan that he was good at his job.

He looked up when he was done, to find Evan grinning encouragingly.

He moved to the next can, feeling… lighter? That didn’t make sense. All of his operations were running smoothly, but his body fluid circulated like it was dancing. The sun felt warmer on his skin, although he checked, and the temperature hadn’t changed. He went across the street to grab the cans over there, replaced them with equal care, and gave the truck the signal to move forward.

Evan moved forward too, waiting for him. Wow.

“You mentioned Mo a few times. Who’s Mo?”

Quincy was happy to talk about Mo. “She was my partner for eighteen years. She drove the truck.” She was nothing like Evan—a short woman with brown skin she called black, who talked loudly and wore a different colored headscarf each day under her uniform cap to protect her dreads. She’d talk to Quincy every chance she could get, telling him about her friends and neighbors. She called both her daughter and her grandson that ridiculous child and she always smiled when she said it.

She liked to ask Quincy what he thought about the stories she told, and she always laughed when he answered, even when he tried his hardest to get it right. But it was a kind laugh. He was her buddy.

“She was your friend,” Evan observed.

“Yes,” Quincy agreed.

“Did she ever tell you about sparks?”

Quincy searched his long-term data storage, but he came up empty. “I don’t remember.” Then he admitted, “I can’t remember much.”

Evan squinted, his forehead getting those wrinkles again. “Why not?”

“Fixed storage capacity. I have to choose.” And he’d used up an unreasonable amount of space remembering Mo’s laugh, and the way she’d slap his back sometimes. And questions that he had. He always had so many questions, and sometimes when he got answers, he stored those, too. He didn’t choose anything on purpose, most of the time, though. It just happened. Then Mo would laugh at him, sometimes, if he forgot the pigeon that just landed on their windshield.

He didn’t always know what was important to remember.

And he lost a lot of memories, because he couldn’t really control those, either.

“Of course,” Evan whispered. “Is that why you didn’t move for a while earlier?”

Quincy could feel himself freezing again. The bad men… No, he wasn’t going to think about them. Maybe he could delete the memory entirely, though forgetting on purpose was sometimes as hard as remembering on purpose. He zipped the video recording that had come on automatically at some point and put it in his archives, though that wouldn’t do anything about how he’d felt.

“Yes. Working memory overload.”

“Oh, Quincy.” Evan said it the way that Mo would say that ridiculous child. “I’ll get you more memory.”

“Really?” Quincy bounced on his feet, an unplanned movement. He couldn’t help it, though. It felt like every internal light on his dashboard was lighting up at once. He’d asked for more once at the station, but the dispatcher had just laughed.

“Really. I’ve got a friend who can come install it. Maybe you can come back to my apartment later. Will that get you in trouble?”

The lighting-up feeling was even bigger. “No. I won’t get in trouble.” He would get to see an apartment. “We need to bring the garbage to the dump and return the truck. And I need to be on time for work in the morning. But they don’t keep track of the individual CNS units during our charging and waiting cycles.” He considered further. “The depot is twelve-point-six miles away.” He could walk it, but it would take a long time.

“I can pick you up. When you’re done with your route, we’ll come back to my place and talk.”

“Okay, Evan! Will you tell me what a spark is now, though?” He hadn’t liked it when the bad men said it, but it seemed like it was important.

“Yes, of course. Sorry about that. A spark is a Self-aware, Percipient Android, Robot, or Knowledge. I think the knowledge part is supposed to catch anyone who isn’t in the first two categories, like a mainframe computer.”

Ah. It was an acronym. Not a spark, but a SPARK.

“But the point is,” Evan continued, “a spark is anyone who’s sentient. Someone with feelings. Someone who has a sense of being somebody.”