Bleak Desolation, strewn with waste. Litter from other lands falls here. Scraps of paper, plastic bags, and empty soda cups.
Meaningless objects are discarded, thrust upon Desolatians, symbolic of nothing.
Desolatians live in compounds, sheltered from the nights’ winds of rotting garbage. In the morning, they organize the wind strewn trash into piles.
She wears bits of napkin and foil.
Their work requires constant reconnaissance searching for far flung scraps.
They eat reheated canned foods delivered to them from the capitol Resigned. There’s no other food here.
Resigned is a cannery. Fresh foods from other lands are cooked, sorted, and stored in aluminum: corn, beans, tomatoes, peas, carrots depending on the time of the year.
Resigned runs on a factory schedule. The whistle blows at 5 am for the first shift. Noon for the second. Eight for the night shift.
“They call themselves industrious and devoted, but perhaps they have little choice,” says Miss Emeline. “I managed to adjust to the long routines, easily enough. However, it never becomes pleasant. I remember the worker across from me said, ‘Leave, while you still can.’ We were sorting ears of corn good from bad. The work didn’t seem so terrible. But I saw the look in my co-worker's eye and the corn all began to look unappetizingly plastic. I left the next day.”
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