Chapter Two – The Scrounger

Chapter Two – The Scrounger

“People used to mock preppers a lot. To be fair, the entire culture around the movement–if you can even call it a movement–was pretty strange. Paranoia that was being acted upon, lots of conspiracy theories and strange people with too much time on their hands.

Then the aliens actually showed up, and the entire thing changed. Now it’s less a fringe group, and more just… something everyone with a lick of common sense does.”

–Interview with Liz Maybirb, Director of the Ready Community group, 2029

***

“Hey boss!”

I jumped at the sound and turned to find a familiar face bouncing over to me. Raccoon looked healthy. Dirty, but healthy. She had overalls on, stained and covered in cuts and wrinkles. She was lugging around a backpack that looked like it would have been big on an adult man; it was huge on her, and entirely filled with a clanging assortment of metal trash.

“Hey Rac,” I said. I placed the metal ingot I had back onto the pile and reached down to rub the kid’s head.

She ducked under my hand and shot me a look that was soon replaced by a nearly feral grin. “You like my work so far?” she asked.

I glanced back at the stacks of metal. “So far you’ve been doing great,” I said. “Is this all you’ve been doing?”

“Pretty much, yeah. Started with the trash in this building, and I’ve been expanding out. The best thing about trash is that it’s a renewable resource. In a couple of days I can return to where I started, and there’ll be a whole new heap of it to dive through, you know?”

“Sounds… handy?” I tried. Dumpster diving didn’t sound like what I’d call a fun past-time. Or a safe one, for that matter. Then again, lately my newest hobby was making things trying to eat me explode, so I was going to keep my stone collection firmly inside my glass house. “I came over to see how you were doing, and to, ah, give you some news, I guess.”

“What sort?” Rac asked. She slid past me and to the large machine dominating the end of the room. With practised ease she opened the hopper at the back of it, slid her back pack off, then started filling the empty receptacle up with scrap. The machine hummed, and a large progress bar appeared on its main screen, with smaller bars beneath labelled with the names of metals.

“Well, first, we’re going to tear apart most of the top floor of this building. I’m going to buy a new one outright. It’ll be teleported in place. Should be pretty neat.”

“Whoa,” Rac said. “That does sound kind of awesome. Like just… zap-bang and there’s a new building?”

“Part of a building,” I said. “Just the topmost floors. I asked the building crew to move the matter reconfiguration machine over to the room where Longbow’s gun is stored. I… need to send him a text about that, actually. Anyway, it should be safe.”

“Am I gonna be out of work then?” Rac asked.

“For a few hours, maybe,” I said. “You have a place to sleep?”

“Usually just sleep there,” Rac said. She gestured to a corner of the room. I hadn’t really noticed the blankets in the corner. I’d kind of just assumed they were some random junk left behind. “I can find a place, don’t worry.”

“Right,” I said. “You’re welcome to stay here once everything’s in place. Ah, that’s the other thing. We’re going to start producing prosthetics. Like, cheap but functional ones. I still need to talk to someone about that, but we’ll probably start production tomorrow. It’ll likely use up a lot of the materials you’ve collected.”

The machine hissed, and the front opened to reveal a neat stack of bars next to some small, squarish tubes. Not all of them were metal. In fact, about half the ingots looked like they were plastic, and the tubes were clearly filled with some sort of liquid, or maybe gasses?

It kind of made sense, if the machine was breaking scrap down to basic elements, then it would have to deal with some elements being liquid or gaseous or whatever.

“I can always collect more,” Rac said. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Cool,” I said. “Besides, it’s for a good cause. You know, giving poor folk new limbs and shit?”

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Rac nodded. I couldn’t tell if she was happy about that or not, not while she was meticulously placing the ingots she got into neat stacks.

“One other thing, the world’s going to end in like, thirty-ish hours.”

Rac’s stack of plastic ingots crashed to the floor with a clatter. “It’s gonna what?” she asked.

“Turns out the aliens have been building a lot of hidden hives, and they’re all going to activate at about the same time. So we’ll be dealing with a massive surge of antithesis trying to attack… pretty much everyone everywhere, all at the same time.”

“That’s seriously fucked.”

“I know,” I agreed. “We’re going to stop it, of course, but it’s going to ruin a bunch of plans, I bet. It’s why I want to fortify this place before we get flooded with aliens.”

“Shit,” Rac said. “You need help with anything?”