Sanitation Run

Chapter 3: Sanity

OFFICE, WATER TREATMENT PLANT, CITY OUTSKIRTS (EARLY MORNING)

A wall of flickering CRT screens illuminates the room: a cheap card table with coffee rings and cigarette burns in felt, stained laminate flooring, a mini fridge. A large muscular man in coveralls and cap sits in a too-small chair, drinking from a mug and staring at the screens.

BRUCE: Nobody chooses their name. Yet names color everything. Every appointment, every interaction. I never would have chosen Bruce. Comes with a lot of weight. Musicians. Action heroes. People expect things of you with a name like that.

Bruce repeatedly flicks a metal lighter.

BRUCE: If pa knew I’d end up in sanitation, he would have chosen a different name. Pat, maybe. Raul. Don’t matter now. A job is a job. A means to an end. Funny. At times I feel like the only one left. Like this job in particular is the means to many a man’s end.

STERILE HALLWAY, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (EARLY MORNING)

Bruce walks a wide white hall, wrench in hand. Shadowless.

BRUCE: Place used to be poppin. Specialists. Monthly potlucks. Public tours. Just me and Dave now. Turns out machines do the job better. Me? I’m here for show. Smack things around with a wrench when the automators misbehave. Dave’s the man on the day shift. Other side of the same coin.

AERATION BASIN, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (EARLY MORNING)

Concrete causeways and grated catwalks crisscross endless rectangular basins full to the brim with black water. Light pollution from BRILLIANT LEDs mars a murky sky.

Bruce, looking small, patrols the catwalks. Solitary bootsteps echo across the lot.

BRUCE: It’s completely possible to lose yourself here. But I’m not lost. Yet.

Crouching, Bruce works a bolt with his wrench and gives it a resounding SMACK. Diffusers deep in the water rumble; the surface starts to bubble.

BRUCE: I still remember where we came from. I still have the capacity to dread where we’re going.

BRUCE: I’m still humble.

BRUCE: God help us.

OFFICE, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (DAWN)

Overhead LEDs mute the light of the CRTs. Bruce is joined by Dave: gangling and jittery but capable. Shift change.

DAVE: Any problems?

BRUCE: C-10 needed some love.

DAVE: Diffusers?

BRUCE: (grunts)

DAVE: Any news on a replacement?

BRUCE: You joking?

DAVE: I don’t know how much longer I can do this, man. This place...

BRUCE: This place what?

DAVE: You know.

BRUCE: It’s work.

DAVE: There are no windows in here. And out there...

BRUCE: There’s no natural light inside the compound, he wants to say. The black waters--they do something to the sun. Obscure it. It’s less noticeable at night. Dave’s got the short end of the stick.

BRUCE: It’s work. (slapping Dave on the back) See you at eight. Get yourself a soup or something from the mess.

LOCKER ROOM, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (DAWN)

Only two of the two-dozen lockers are in use. Bruce’s locker is open, inside it: a change of clothes, a jacket, a shoulder bag, a photograph of a radiant young woman and child.

Bruce, arms of his coveralls tied around his waist, shaves at the sink.

He leaves hatless in street clothes.

PICKUP TRUCK, HIGHWAY, CITY OUTSKIRTS (DAWN)

Beneath an overcast gloom, traffic gravitates to the city like ants to a prismatic apple. Neon signage and scintillating lights threaten to overload human circuitry. It’s an oasis of dangerous convenience one needs blinders to navigate.

The radio plays classic rock. Bruce wears shades.

He fingers his lighter as he drives, just another ant on the vine, ticking down the seconds until he hits gridlock. There’s always a bottleneck on the offramp.

PICKUP TRUCK, OFFRAMP, CITY (DAWN)

Manicured grass flanks two lanes of road. A dirty vagrant in dreads and patched flannel saunters up alongside traffic, holding a sad cardboard sign like a shield. The designer leg prosthetic gives him away.

BRUCE: Panhandler. Heard stories of ‘em living large in two-bedroom flats, steaks on Fridays, the whole kit. What they can’t get through pity they’re prone to take.

Bruce knocks open the glovebox with a fist, withdraws and buries his hand in a burlap bag. Windows up, eyes forward.

Dare you to tap my window, you son of a roach.

Dreadlocks waddles on by. He didn’t get so far being thick-as-tar but should wear longer pants if he wants to eat off pity.

PICKUP TRUCK, CURBSIDE, DOWNTOWN (MORNING)

Driverless taxis flood the streets, denoted by their pearlescent black sheen, LCD roof screens, and ghost hands on the steering wheels.

Bruce, parked, cracks a fist of knuckles.

Cyborgs walk the sidewalks: students, businessmen, shoppers, and entrepreneurs on autopilot locked up in earphones and screens.

BRUCE: Glimpsing a genuine human is like spotting a rare bird. Usually it’s tradesmen. Still can’t outsource the unclogging of a toilet.

Today it’s someone else: a gal whose colors are wrong, outside her usual clothes and walking like it, shopping bag over her shoulder. Maybe she’s hurt. :.Physically.: Her eyes break away from her screen: paranoid, sharp. Like everyone’s a piranha. She enters a diner.

Funny.

That’s where Bruce is headed.