This Place is Not My Home

He’d searched for meaning in all the right places, but everything had seemingly failed. He thought that trying to find himself through art, meditation, exercise or connection would lead somewhere better than where he’d started. Maybe it was time to start over.

Sam woke up before the sun rose and sat down to write in his little black book by his sun lamp. On cold, dark mornings, that lamp was the only thing that could convince him to get out of bed. His apartment was cramped, dirty, and paint peeled off the walls. It was all he could afford.

He ate breakfast and checked his notifications. Texts from friends, his mom, but none from his girl. Merely seeing her name made his heart beat faster and his breaths shaky, thoughts of curly blonde hair and light blue eyes and a scent of kung pao chicken. What a waste. His phone dinged and a text from his boss told him to get to work an hour early. Great.

John was already sitting in the parking lot when he pulled in. John had a newer car than Sam. John made more money than Sam. It was all John cared about. John was a cock.

Sam stretched out of the car, his long frame squeezing out of his small car, grabbed his water bottle, and began to walk towards the plant, hoping to avoid John.

“Morning, neighbor!” John shouted. Fuck.

Sam stopped and turned to watch John step down from his truck. The truck was black and breathed power into the air. It spoke of men who had crushed and dominated and breathed in the sweat of others so they could sit high on a mobile throne. Sam tried to prefer his shitty car to John’s menace.

The two men slapped each other on the back. John didn’t take his hand off Sam’s shoulder.

“Got a whole new load of trash shipped in this morning for you to sort through, Sammy! Think we bought it all from… Shit, I dunno where. One of the neighboring planets, I think. Took a hell-of-a-long time to get here.”

“Oh shit. Might find something cool in there then.”

“Well, whatever you find, it belongs to the company. Remember that now. All your work belongs to us, or the dogs might come and getcha.”

“How nice of you to remind me.”

They scanned their badges at the entrance and walked through the complex’s gates. The corporation they worked for specialized in the international and interplanetary garbage trade. Huge steam stacks towered over the men, pumping out steam from the process of sorting out precious metals and other materials from garbage, to be reused and resold on the open market. Corporations like these had replaced mining industries long ago; it had become less expensive to just reuse materials than it was to mine for fresh ones.

Trucks moving trash trundled through the facility as the men walked to their respective stations. Doors buzzed and alarms blared. Sam swiped into his building, grey, blocky steel, and absurdly tall, and reported to the foot of a trash pile. A robotic cart followed him around in order to carry any valuable pieces that he might find. He began to sort through the pile of industrial trash, occasionally dropping wires or pieces of unpainted scrap metal into the roving receptacle. He’d walk to different spots and the cart would whir behind him. The sound was a constant comfort. His mind was numb when he worked; occasionally, thoughts of hunger, thirst, or her entered his mind, but they left as quickly as they came. Mostly. The thoughts of her sometimes stuck around.

They’d started dating when they were young and had been on and off ever since. It was hard to avoid an old lover in a small town. Not that he tried very hard to avoid her. He actually didn’t try at all. But it had begun to seem like she did. She was authentic. She didn’t care that he worked a low-level job. Mostly, whenever they split up, it was because he wanted to be free. Because he didn’t value what he'd had. And she knew that. He always went back.

He reached his arm past plastics and painted metals and felt something hard, small, and heavy. Felt like something that could be of some value. He leaned in further and grasped it before pushing himself out of the pile. He tried to make it out in the low light. He held it up to see better; it was a small box, with a cross inlaid around its entirety. His arm shook trying to hold it up; it must’ve been an alien metal to be this dense. A small latch sat in the middle of the box, keeping closed a line that went around the perimeter. It was dark grey. He shook it and heard metal rattle inside. Happy to let it go, he dropped it into his helper and walked towards another section of the pile. He took a step back. He was missing his familiar whir.

Sam turned around and saw the cart, stuck. Its engine spun harder and harder to no avail. It couldn’t move with the weight of the box. He reached down and spun it around in his hands. It hurt to move so much weight. He was curious now; this was new for him. He pressed the latch and stared into the box. His eyes widened. A stack of credits stared back at him. More than he’d ever seen. He latched the heavy box and slipped it into his pocket. The robot couldn’t carry it anyway.

Sam went to the mess hall at lunch and sat down to eat his bag lunch. He ate his sandwich slowly, thoughtfully, thinking about the box and what he could do with that many credits.

A firm backslap interrupted his daydream. He looked up to find John’s face smiling, beratingly, down.

“Mind if I eat with you?” John sat down before he could answer and started to talk about the paper pushing he’d been doing all day. Sam couldn’t have cared less about the innerworkings of the corporation. And it didn’t matter now, anyway. With this many credits, a promotion was the last of his worries. John pulled his little black book out of his pocket and slapped it onto the table. “You still have yours?” he asked.

Sam nodded. He didn’t have the energy to engage. The company had given out the books earlier in the year in order to promote “mental health” after one of his coworkers had “become disengaged.” Whatever that meant. Something about the day in, day out at the plant had made him snap and “become disengaged.” So HR handed out the little black books and told everyone to journal in them as an exercise of excise. Excising negative thoughts and feelings through journaling. Repetition to alleviate the pains of repetition. Not that Sam had had any problem with the repetition in the first place. He liked the mindlessness of the day in, day out. But he didn’t like the ownership. That his work and his mind belonged to someone else. To something else.

“Well, I dunno what you write in it. But mine? I try to write about little interactions I have with people. Nothing too intimate or weird, just those little reactions with strangers that you always forget. I want to remember those.”

“Okay.” His pockets sagged at the table. He couldn’t get the box out of his mind.

“Well, here’s one from yesterday. This blonde girl I saw at a Chinese restaurant I was picking up from last night. Delivering food to make a few bucks on the side.” He opened the book and began to read. “I saw her while I was standing in line. I got to the front and said “kung pao chicken for John.” I felt her smile. The worker went to the back, and I turned towards her. “That’s my favorite,” she laughed.” John looked up. “Pretty good, right?”

Sam stared down at his sandwich, his mouth dry.

“I mean, I know it’s silly. Thinking that someone talking about kung pao chicken is a big deal. But it’s just cool how people feel the need to share such a small detail of their lives.”

“It’s just kung pao chicken.” Sam pushed himself up from the table and walked to the bathroom. He felt John’s eyes on his back. The men’s room was empty save for the stalls and the sinks and the cameras. Sam looked into his eyes and didn’t see anything that he wanted to see. He saw a man’s routine set by someone else. He saw years swirling around the toilet bowl in order to avoid… avoid what? The day in, day out that he’d come to love—or not love, but happily tolerate—had stolen from him. And now, it was his time to steal back.

Sam walked out of the bathroom and told John he was going back to work. He walked out of the mess hall and past the trucks. He walked past the trucks and through the gates, the box heavy in his pocket. He dropped his badge in the parking lot and got into his shitty car. And he drove. He drove out of the lot, the steam stacks fading into the distance. He drove past the Chinese restaurant without noticing it. He drove past his cramped, dirty, peeling apartment. He drove past the house that he grew up in, and the school where he met her. He drove until his foot cramped and he ran out of fuel, and he drove some more. The barren landscape absorbed him. He drove through it and over it and around it and on. The credits weighed heavily against his leg. And he drove. He drove until the decision became his own. Until it was no longer a reaction against whatever had come before that moment. And while he drove and felt free and realized that this is what he’d been missing (not love, or expression, but decision; his lack of decision was why he’d been driven to dependency on her and on a search for escape) he checked his rear-view mirror and saw the trucks and the dogs bleeding into the reflected landscape. And for the first time in years, he smiled.

***

John stared at himself in the mirror at home. The company had found Sam’s little black book shortly after he’d left, trying to figure what had happened. He hadn’t disengaged; he’d simply left. The little black book was filled with nothing more than empty notes and scribbles of dreams from a man who’d never seemed to be capable of anything more. John didn’t envy him, but something about it nagged at him. Was it his fault that he’d left? Or was there something more to Sam that he’d never known; something that had never made it into either of their little black books. John didn’t know, and he didn’t let the thought haunt him. Honestly, he was comforted. Although he didn’t agree with whatever Sam chose, at least he chose something. It had seemed like he never could. John smiled, turned off the light, and went to bed. He dreamt nothing dreams, woke up to a nothing world, and wrote everything, with a smile, in his little black book.