Angelica picked through the mountain of detritus that was like sand beneath her feet, her grabber arm tossing aside the useless parts as her goggles scanned each individual item for scrap that was actually worth something. Each time there was a hit on something with a decent silicon, gold, or copper content her grabber arm would retrieve it and place it in the tank on her back, already a third full of bits and pieces of robotics and circuit boards. It was easy work, but boring.
The tank grew heavier on her back as the day went on and the sun fell away from the horizon. Lights went up in the nearby settlements, blue and artificial, muddying the night sky. The others around the scrapyard began heading back to the sorting facility, and she followed suit, the grabber arm still eagerly shifting and moving bits of rubbish as she went.
She hauled her tank onto the table in front of the conveyor, turning off the grabber arm from the small metal toggle switch on the tank’s side.
Device disconnected; a warning flashed up for a moment on her goggle’s screen but it was removed with a quick flick of her eyes.
Jamming the tank into the conveyor receptacle she watched as her haul slowly dropped out, controlled by the machinery, on to the belt. She walked alongside it, grabbing scrap that was particularly of interest and cramming it into her pockets before they passed under the scanner. A screen at the end of the belt flickered into life with a count that crawled up as more and more scrap was appraised. With stuffed pockets she waited patiently by the screen until the last of her haul had been processed. Twenty-three hundred credits.
“Find anything good today, ‘Gelica?”
She shook her head. The lady that ran the sorting store was nice, kept an eye on her when she went to work and came back. One time she didn’t settle-up with the other scrappers and the lady even came to find her out on the trash heap. She was just staring at a star that was inching across the night sky. Happened about a week ago and caught most of the town’s attention. But the scrap heap, away from the lights of the settlements, was the best place to see it. Didn’t happen often: planets falling out of orbit, but theirs was doomed to the same fate. No one knew why half the solar system had been dragged out away from the sun, no one really cared to know. Just that based on the last couple’s displacement they had about a century until their time was up.
Angelica didn’t pay it any attention. She’d be dead before it happened. Buried penniless like the rest of the town, probably on account of their barely functioning water purifier. Though it wasn’t like scrapping gave her any reason to want to cling on to her life, she’d die happily if her mum didn’t need her.
Another potential entry for a flash writing competition (500 word maximum) using the prompt '23'.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, so I can tidy it up and improve upon it as required.
A link to the competition if anyone else would like to try their hand at it: https://didcotwriters.wordpress.com/