"Brand new parts just came in! We got 3 mech leg centaurs, a mech leg titan", which was followed by a few cheers from the assembled crowd. He waited for it to die down and continued. "Plenty of electroshields A and B, as well as a few D class. Of course we got some more chassis cubes, and aero rods." Just about everything you could think of had been given a nickname in this hunk of metal many people called their workplace, and home.
"Oh, yippee, who cares? Unless we get a haul this good every month, we'll be out of business in weeks!" This drew murmurs of agreement from the crowd, and a few insults hurled from the mouths of disgruntled garage workers, but the manager could not tell who it came from. Either way he knew it was true. Until a few months ago, They had gotten shipments every week or so, but recently the shipments had not only dropped in quality, but frequency as well. It was rare they received anything worthy of a death match bot, much less a bot for the pit. Deathmatches focused upon teamplay and coordination, and the last team standing won, whereas the pit put bots up against each other in a free for all in which to the victor go the spoils. Although often there was almost nothing left.
And Max was through with it.
Every week he received the same letter to his office. He had called it an office again. This isn't an office. No one here has an office. They have a trash pile with a table and chair. You can't even make grilled cheese in this place without burning it. It's like I can smell it. Eugh. Wait, I can smell it! A thin smoke trail led out of his small desktop computer. Damn computer! This is the third time this week I've had to fix this goddamned machine. The smell of burnt circuits laced the air. It'll probably need a new motherboard, again. He decided to put that off for a bit. He still had plenty of paperwork. Including the letter from the DOWD, or Department of Waste Disposal. It was DOWD policy that and thing capable of recycling, was recycled. Earth's resources had depleted ages ago, and the DOWD was not letting it happen again in our new home. If you can call this burning ball of sand a home. They had colonized a planet just outside the solar system that, miraculously, had avoided detection for decades due to a strong magnetic field that distorted the space around it to appear that it was not there. And until the sonar sweeps of the expeditionary crew found the invisible Mars-like planet, they had no inkling salvation lay just outside our home. The heat radiated from a massive core nearly the size of Earth. And every week, the letter wound up in his office, that every week stated:
To whom it may concern,
We apologize for the lack of recycled parts. We would like you to know that the success of your business is, invariably, our top priority. Due to unforeseen events, some parts have been lost over the course of this week. We hope to get a full shipment to you next week.
Sincerely,
DOWD
In other words, bullshit. They don't give a fuck about us. Otherwise, we would have parts. Plenty of them.
