Ask Me in Ten Years

Past the tracks the street gives out into a slope of dead electronics: monitors face up, server cases on their sides, phones in drifts. Mesquite and prickly pear have come up between them. The sun is low behind you and lies on the monitors in squares. Someone has cut paths across the slope, one body wide, and one of them runs north along the tracks.

On the nearest path stands a row of plastic tubs, and a young woman in rubber gloves is stirring them with a paint stick. She tells you before you ask: bacteria, eating the gold out of old circuit boards. Very slowly.

Is it working? you say.

Ask me in ten years, she says, and goes on stirring.

From the middle of the slope comes a low steady hum. Across Springdale Road a long building has every light on.