You're Going to Mars!

by Rob Dircks

  And that’s just the teeniest tip of the iceberg. Those crafty Gitanos aren’t lying when they call Fill City One the “City of Gold.”

  Although let me be perfectly clear: Fill City One is not the city of gold in any positive, feel-good way, and no one living here will ever call it that. It is, rather, the largest, stinking trash heap in the world. That is not an exaggeration, or a figure of speech, either. It is literally the world’s largest garbage dump. By a mile.

  Ah, my wonderful home.

  Fill City One was once called “Staten Island,” one of the five boroughs of New York City, until the fifty-eight square miles of premium “waste-ready” land was auctioned off by the State of New York in 2025 to become the country’s very first privately owned city. Well, less of a city and more of a landfill. Actually, it’s nothing at all like a city and one hundred percent like a landfill.

  WasteWay Corporation won the bid, not because it made the most sense, but because generation upon generation of the Staten Island Gitano mob family – founders of the privately-held corporation – had perfected the arts of intimidation, graft, bribery and, of course, making people disappear. So they made some people disappear, stuffed the appropriate pockets with the appropriate amounts of cash, won the bid, and planted their flag on the highest hill in the land – which, of course, was already the borough’s massive garbage pile. Then they moved everyone out, built a thirty-foot wall around the whole island, knocked down all the bridges, and constructed a single drawbridge across the Arthur Kill into New Jersey.

  One way in, one way out.

  They say if you see it from the New Jersey Turnpike, it looks like a medieval castle, with a drawbridge and a moat, and gun turrets that resemble ancient battlements every quarter mile or so. How quaint. It must be nice to see it from the outside, passing by and then forgetting about it forever.

  Oh, yes. I said gun turrets. It would be fair to wonder why the Gitanos feel the need to be so protective. It’s just garbage, right?

  Wrong.

  While the new owners might have been mobsters, they weren’t the mook types from the old twentieth century movies. The Gitanos are shrewd bastards, hoarding trash and making coin off it over and over and over again. Hence “The City of Gold.”

  First, of course, they get paid for hauling the trash for the entire East Coast into the most gargantuan landfill on the planet. Cha-ching. Then they recycle just about everything – including this mint-condition French armoire with one leg missing, an unopened gallon of Benjamin Moore eggshell white, prescription drugs, cars, and more laptops than could ever be counted. The Hunters – a subset of the Fillers, the group to which my family belongs – sift and sort and prioritize. The armoire will go to the Fill City One Body Shop, then back to that Ethan Allen store in New Hampshire. Cha-ching. The paint will go back on the shelf in a hardware store in Virginia. Cha-ching. The same with the drugs, the car and computer parts. Cha-ching. Cha-ching. Cha-ching.

  Next are the plastics, papers, glass, and batteries. And after that, the compost. WasteWay Corporation is now the number one provider of fertilizer to the entire country. Every bit of organic matter and waste from Maine to Florida is corralled into The Pit – a godforsaken Circle of Hell I try to stay as far away from as humanly possible – and mixed with who-knows-what to stew for a while. The end result? According to WasteWay, “FertiFood: the finest growth medium on Earth.” According to me? The most putrid and lethal substance in the solar system, possibly the universe, able to maim – no, kill – with a single sniff. If you look up “foul” in the dictionary, you’ll see a picture of The Pit.

  Finally – and this is the real secret sauce of Fill City One, and all the other Fill Cities – is energy. The real reason for the walls and the gun turrets. The real “gold” that makes all the other work done here seem petty and irrelevant. During the decomposition process, evaporation, chemical reactions, and microbial action create gas, mostly methane and carbon dioxide. The chemists here supercharged the process and refined the end product, creating a top secret, patented, prized fuel called Fill City Turbo. And they created it just in time, too – just as the Great Gas Crisis of 2030 gripped the world, with global oil reserves drying up almost overnight. Pretty insanely perfect timing, I’ll give them credit. And yes, in case it wasn’t already obvious: the federal government is Turbo’s number one buyer. So the Feds pay for the trash to be taken away… and pay for it again when it comes back as desperately-needed fuel.

  Yes, the Gitanos are smart, extremely smart, but they can’t resist the lure of the less-elegant aspects of organized crime; it’s in their blood. So they continue to loan, pimp, deal, gamble and make people disappear. Of course, they need a place to put all the bodies… hmm… how about a hundred-foot-deep pile of trash everyone on Earth wants to avoid? Good idea, Sal! Not only does it turn out to be a convenient dumping spot, but it sends the right message to sellers and buyers and potential energy competitors that they all – very literally – should treat the Gitanos and WasteWay Corporation as if their lives depended on it. And how big is this dark side of the business? Well, officially, Fill City One has no cemetery – three hospitals, ten elementary schools, one orphanage, fifty-five streets, nine thousand dwellings, twenty-five thousand permanent residents who work the refinery and the fill, and a mortuary for the locals, but no cemetery. Unofficially? It probably has the biggest cemetery in the tri-state area.

  Let me put it another way: be careful where you dig.

  So sure, Fill City One is the model of waste management and energy production, operating the world’s largest landfill and the most massive network of refineries and pipelines the world has ever seen.

  But it’s hell.

  It’s dangerous.

  It’s corrupt.

  It smells.

  And us Fillers are never allowed to leave.

  My Nana signed a contract for a bare bones salary and a free home, like all the other original Fillers, back in 2028 or so. She absently scanned the fine print that declared she was no longer a citizen of the United States, but a “citizen,” in air quotes, of privately-held Fill City One, with no rights whatsoever, and no visa to leave. Even temporarily. The fine print also noted that the contract was to stay in effect for eight generations. Not years. Generations. Her children couldn’t leave. Her children’s children couldn’t leave. Her children’s children’s children. And when the eighth generation comes, it’s likely they’ll have no leverage, nothing to show for their indentured servitude, so they’ll have to renew the contract. Et cetera. The outside world forgot all this after just one generation. The mainlanders are mostly ignorant, retaining just a wisp of a memory about some strange and dirty beings named Fillers who make their trash disappear and magically supply their fuel. To hear the word “Filler” on TV is like hearing a curse. It makes me mad.

  But I don’t blame Nana. Life was hard already, and she thought this was a way to make it better.

  It just didn’t work out that way.

  “Paper! Paper!”

  I snap back to reality just in time to watch three Body Shop workers diving out of the way of our lift, and Duggie frantically reaching for the dashboard controls.

  “Exit autodrive! Exit autodrive!” Jamming the override levers hard right, I narrowly miss one of the giant stanchions holding the whole place up, and brake hard, sending us into a spin, missing another stanchion by millimeters. We jerk to a stop.

  “Whew. That was close. System glitched again.”

  But the momentum of our spin has already jettisoned the armoire like a bullet from beneath its straps. We watch helplessly as it skids down the drive, right into a concrete wall, smashing into splinters.

  Duggie asks, in all seriousness, “You think they can still repair it?”

  “I don’t know. Ask him.”

  The foreman, Tom Bradline, moves his toothpick to the other side of his mouth, scowls at us, and pulls out his tablet. “Well, well. That’s another one, idiots.”

  “H
ey! Don’t call Paper an idiot!”

  “Duggie, it’s okay. Mister Bradline, listen.” I point to the staticky speaker in the lift cabin, a zombie autodrive system that’s been resurrected too many times. It’s wheezing, pleading with us to let it die for good this time. “She’s dead. It wasn’t our fault.”

  “You know what I hear, idiots? Opportunity. You’ve got three hours to make up for that loss and hit our numbers, or you’re docked for the day. Now get the hell out of here.”

  Tom Bradline is a dick.

  5

  Pork Dumplings

  Three hours later, we finish up, after processing a few more loads, nowhere near breaking even on the damn armoire. I fix the system and the autodrive on the lift again – against its hoarse pleas to finally euthanize it – and we call it quits.

  “G’night Duggie. Sorry about getting docked again.”

  “No worries. Worth it to see another one of your rockets. G’night Paper. Say hello to Scissors, will you?”

  “You bet.”

  I walk the gravel path I’ve walked virtually every day of my life, the one I’ve trampled grooves into with my footsteps, in the dark, under the methane lamps, back to Nana’s. She has dinner on the stove: Nana’s Famous – Infamous, rather – Pork Dumplings, that I would testify in a court of law actually do stick to your ribs, but not in a good way. I guess they’re better than Prepper Pots, those freeze-dried food bags for the apocalypse I see on TV with the tagline, “Let’s Hope You Never Have To Eat It.” In any case, we’re lucky to even have food on the table, so I say a silent thanks.

  I sneak into the tiny corner of our bedroom, behind the New York Jets blanket, my little two-foot-by-three-foot sanctuary, the only space in the world I can truly call my own. I pull out the You’re Going to Mars! poster and tack it to the wall, next to the other three, above my pile of ratty old astronomy textbooks, laptop, and my telescope. Four Zach Larsons now point out at me. “Oh well. It was a good fantasy.” I sigh dramatically, it feels good to do that sometimes, and take out my box cutter, hesitating, reaching up to cut them all to pieces.

  “Paper! Dinner’s on! Get it before it gets cold!”

  I rush back to the dining room table, because the only thing worse than Nana’s Infamous Pork Dumplings are Nana’s Infamous Cold Pork Dumplings, and immediately notice the mistake.

  “Nana. You set a place for Rock again.”

  Nana gives me her sly look that only my ninety-seven year old grandmother can, and Rock peeks her head out from behind the refrigerator. “Surprise!”

  “Oh Rock! Rock! Rock! You’re home!” I run up and squeeze the life out of her.

  “Whoa! Whoa!” She pulls away and points to her growing belly. “Don’t crush the merchandise. Don’t you want to be an aunt?”

  “Sorry. I can’t help it. It’s just so good to see you.” It’s been six months since I’ve seen Rock, the oldest of the three Farris sisters by seven minutes. She found a mate, Dill, applied for the proper permits, and the WasteWay Corporation allowed their union, on the condition that Dill would continue to work the Refinery. The Refinery is on the very opposite end of the city, underground, and intra-city transport cabs are only approved at the stingy whim of the dispatchers. “Rock, how did you…?”

  “I told them Nana was on her deathbed.”

  The springs on the screen door squeak at that moment, announcing Dad’s arrival. “I heard that. Mom? These kids trying to kill you off again?” He waltzes over and hugs Rock. “Nice to see you, love. You know Nana’s immortal, right?” Tosses a half stick of butter to Nana. “It’s a special occasion.” Then he grins at Rock and points his chin at me. “Have you told Paper the real reason you’re here?”

  Rock shakes her head and a corner of her lip curls.

  Something’s up.

  I don’t like when something’s up.

  I give her my best penetrating stare, but she looks away and scratches her cheek. That’s her tell. Yes, something’s up. Then Scissors barges into the trailer behind Dad. “Hey Dad. Thanks for waiting for me. Oh, hey Rock! Wow, you got fat!”

  “It’s not fat, you idiot.” But Scissors is already putting her dirty hands all over Rock’s belly, whispering sweet nothings to the baby inside. Then she takes a whiff of the kitchen air. “Do I smell pork dumplings? Or is somebody burning a tire out back?”

  Dad’s not the firmest dad, actually the polar opposite, a pushover for his girls, but he states with all the authority he can muster, “Yes, it’s pork dumplings. And they smell as delicious as always, don’t they girls? Don’t they?”

  “Yes, Father.” Nana smiles at our singsong chorus, not because she believes us, I think she just likes to know we’re not spoiled, not that anyone in Fill City can afford to be spoiled, and that we’ll eat what’s put in front of us. Period. Except egg salad. But that’s a story for another time.

  We wash our hands and eat.

  “Dad, we were processing this armoire today, and it kind of broke, splintered into quite a few pieces actually…”

  “I’m shocked.”

  I smack his arm. “…and Bradline docked me for a full day. How unfair is that?”

  Dad raises an eyebrow. “You’re lucky. Back in my day, we’d get docked for a week if we broke something like that.”

  Nana harrumphs. “A week? That’s a luxury. Back in my day, we’d get docked a month, and the lifts only worked two days a week.”

  Rock grins and nods. The game is on. “You had lifts? We had to hump armoires uphill with our bare hands. In the snow.”

  My turn. “You had snow? I wish. Back in my day we had to walk across shards of glass barefoot, and we prayed for snow to heal our bloody feet.”

  Scissors squeals, “You had feet?”

  It goes on and on like this, my favorite Farris family game, “Back in My Day,” until eventually, every time, it gets to something like, “You had water? Back in my day, we had to suck the moisture out of each other's bad breath for a droplet of water. Still we considered ourselves lucky.” And the game always ends when we’re all howling with laughter, bent over from the pain in our guts, unable to think of anything worse.

  When we finally settle down, and Nana moseys back into the kitchen to get dessert, I notice she looks a little more frail. At ninety-seven, degrees of frailness become very fine, but still, something’s different. “Psst. Dad. Is Nana okay?”

  Those eyes twinkle for a second, Dad’s got a tell too, but he shuts them tight before I can confirm. “Work.”

  “Work? Nana doesn’t work anymore. She stopped when she turned eighty. That was like a million years ago.”

  “She had one last hunt. It was a doozy, too.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Let her tell you.”

  Nana shuffles back to the dinner table, with a candle and a little box. She lights the candle – and strangely on cue Dad dims the rest of the lights – and we sit, hushed. Other than the sea shell wind chime in the yard, absolute silence.

  “Nana. Are we having a seance or something? Are we trying to talk to PopPop again?”

  She pretends not to hear me, looks around at the three other people at the table, nods to them, and begins.

  “Paper Farris.”

  I decide to go along with this, for the moment, for Nana’s sake, I don’t want to disrespect her if she’s finally succumbing to dementia. But my senses are telling me this is another in a long history of jokes, and if so, the whole bunch of them will be woefully sorry. “Yes. That is my name.”

  “And you have studied astronomy and physics since you were a wee little girl.”

  “Yes. I have. Is there a portable black hole in the box?”

  “I don’t know what that means. And when you were that little girl, did you not pretend to be from Mars, and even wear a homemade shirt that said, ‘My Real Home is Mars’?”

  I roll my eyes. “God. You remember everything.”

  “I’m only ninety-seven, of course I remember everything
. And is it true that you are the first Filler ever to build a rocket from computer parts, develop your own methane-based propellant, and launch and land said rocket successfully?”

  “The first two parts are true. The landings…”

  “No matter. And have you said, Paper, on many an occasion, that space exploration is the only dream worth pursuing?”

  Scissors snickers. “Objection. Nana, you’re leading the witness.”

  Dad raps his glass of bourbon twice on the table as a gavel. “Overruled. Answer the question, Paper Farris. The jury is waiting.”

  “Yes. It is my dream. Just a dream. To leave Fill City One in my dust, and reach for the stars. Or it was a dream anyway. Until today. Are we done?”

  But Nana’s just getting started. With a flourish, she wiggles her flabby arms across the little box, as if performing a spectacular illusion, though her glasses fall off in the middle of the maneuver, sending Rock and Scissors into a fit of giggles. Then she pushes the box towards me. “Open.”

  All eyes are on me and the little box. I have no idea what’s inside, but it must be important because my fingers begin trembling as I slowly lifted the lid.

  And there it is.

  The Red Scarab.

  6

  The Red Scarab

  As I lift the large beetle-shaped oval out of the box, I admire the craftsmanship. Not that it’s handmade, of course. The producers made fifty million of these buggers, the official lottery devices for Zach Larson’s You’re Going to Mars! Sweepstakes, so no, they’re by necessity cheap molded plastic knickknacks, barely worth more than the air they’re displacing. But still, whoever carved the original mold took great care to make it look like an ancient Egyptian artifact, with fine grooves for the wing covers, and perfectly fitting hinges. The paint job is excellent too, for such a mass produced item: a metallic reddish gold, almost iridescent, darker inside the grooves and shiny on the smooth parts. It hangs from a budget-friendly leatherette necklace.