Oak Teeth
Tom’s life in the shadows of Detroit’s early hours had always been one of quiet industry. Removing the previous day’s discard with the kind of purpose which had kept him steadily employed for over thirty years. It was a job which allowed his mind to wander. And in those wanderings Tom found himself traveling the world. As the biting ache of the Michigan winters froze his eyelids open, he warmed himself with Turkish sunsets and glowing embrace of the fire’s dying embers as he rested after a day’s hike in the Australian outback. In all the years he’d been employed by the city’s sanitation department, he’d never made friends, was never married, and had rented the same small single room at the top of an old townhouse slowly being claimed by the widening jaws of gentrification. He never spoke to anyone, and no-one ever spoke to him. A few had gotten close over the years, especially the curious kids who would knock on his door in the hopes of catching what was going on all night in his apartment.
Tom spent his meager earnings on the same things each week. Three cans of tomato soup, which he would drink cold. A pint of milk. A small can of coffee. Six potatoes. The grocery store near his home knew him well, and he’d seen generations pass through. Children fastened to mothers were now shopping with children of their own. It often appeared like Tom was the still point of the turning world. Everyone knew him without ever befriending him. His only constant were the hours he would spend alone in the nearby church. When work was done he would arrive early, and stay late at the morning mass, and had begun to wear out his regular pew. In the moments of quiet prayer, he would often be found sobbing, but he never resolved his pain through confession. The priests, who also came and went over the years, would try to get through to Tom, but without success. The young man they’d first known had over the years become a husk. Hollowed out by the city’s labor, and emptied of life. Tom had passed the world by, lost in an impenetrable inner life fortressed from the outside.
Over time, Tom’s hands became less and less useful. His muscles grew weak as the winters grew more extreme. Over time people seemed to have more garbage than ever. Garbage which had become heavier with age. So when it came time for Tom to retire, a decision made for him by the suits back at city hall, he found himself freed of work, but shackled by the immediacy of all the free hours in the day. It was a burden to have the routine which had shaped his life so violently stripped away. His job had merged with his life, and without purpose, he found himself unable to wrestle the muscle memory which had defined him for so long. When the time finally came that the building he’d called home was to be torn down to make way for a luxury condos, he was forced to take the bribes from the foreign investment bank, and move out.
Early one morning, he took all of he meager possessions, and placed them neatly in the garbage. One final act of disposal where he would take care of his own refuse. He’d never accumulated much in life, so the finality of the task only took him an hour before the room he’d called home was empty. Now all he had were the clothes he stood up in. A small suitcase with a few personal items. A notebook. And the money he’d received as settlement for eviction from Red Star Capital. In one final act of removal, he would dispose of himself in the warm waters of Santa Monica. He’d read of retreats on the west coast which would take those disaffected by modern life and help them exit the world with grace and dignity. Kindly faces advertised the embrace of euthanasia programs which would provide the kinds of release thousands like Tom were increasingly seeking. Salvation from a world which had always left them behind. And Nimbus airlines would take you there.
Tom knew the schedules of the Nimbus aircraft flying out of Detroit’s metropolitan airport by heart. He’d only ever traveled in his dreams, but still knew exactly what to do when it came to checking in. Passing through security, Tom could taste the fresh orange juice which awaited him in California. As he watched the snow being cleared from the runways outside, he felt the warmth of the beach on his face. And when the time came to be called to board, Tom was ready for his final journey west.
But Tom would never make it to the Santa Monica he had dreamed of. He’d been identified by Nimbus aircraft’s new generative passenger system AeroAdvise as a human corner to be cut. The kind of input which only makes sense on the spreadsheet after the money has been collected. Tom’s check had cashed, and he now served no future purpose for Nimbus, flagged in the company’s artificial intelligence system as a passenger with no propensity to fly with them again. A scoring system which would take a passenger’s economic and social history and map it to a model gauging likelihood to fly again, separating frequent flyers and the power users of the skies from those simply getting from here to there. The internal team responsible for economic growth called them one and dones. The system had seen Nimbus Airline’s profits exponentially escalate, and their CEO become the darling of the investment community. If Red Star would extract their passengers from the detritus of the old neighborhoods, then Nimbus would dispose of them. AeroAdvise called it the pipeline. Those who spoke out called it murder. It was a partnership designed to favor only those who could afford it, sweeping clean the inner cities with the promise of a better life out west, with only one way to get there.
As the engines roared to life, Tom and the other passengers braced themselves for takeoff. For the first time in his life he felt joy. Real happiness. It would be one of his last emotions, as by the time they had climbed to ten thousand feet and he was seeing life above the clouds for the first time, the cabin’s oxygen levels had already begun to fall. He felt faint, weak, but then he’d never flown before. Maybe it was always like this when people flew. His light-headedness was coming from the euphoria of escape. As the seatbelt safety signs stay on, he felt tired, and decided to close his eyes for a few minutes, as many of those around him had already done. His euphoria had swiftly turned into the kind of relaxation of his muscles he had prayed for. He was finally at peace, high above an earth which had forgotten him. It would be the last time he closed his eyes.
By the time Nimbus flight 429 from Detroit to Los Angeles arrived, the only thing left to do was dispose of the bodies. Tom was one of the easy ones. Barely fifty pounds, he was picked up by the airline’s bots, carried out, and would be processed in the treatment plants next to the new Nimbus terminal. But while his utility as a passenger had ended, his usefulness in death had only just begun. Nimbus had begun to fuel their planes with a cocktail of the traditional diesel, but had found that a blend of petroleum and human viscera would allow them to make the operational overhead of one of the costlier inventory items for their new fleet of planes even more cost effective. Tom’s guts would be blended together with his fellow passengers into a human soup which then produced a more potent catalyst with mixed with diesel. He never knew just how useful he had been to the airline, and as his remains continued to travel all over the world under the roar of the new Nimbus jet engines, those in first class looked down on the cities below with appetite for more.
