The Garbage Belt

Looking for humans? Just look for the garbage. From bones to plastic to dead electronics, people rarely manage to clean up after themselves. Humanity takes a long time to learn how to manage limited resources, too. The rare and precious get lost with the useless and plentiful. Meet Gayle Simmons, pilot of the Treasure Hunt. Rare and precious, in her sights. An excerpt from The Garbage Belt: “That gap shouldn’t exist,” Simmons said under her breath. A scatter of glittering junk caught in the scouter’s lights, heading away from the tumbling container Simmons suspected was 127. Then the junk…curved. She couldn’t see any rhyme or reason for it, but the clump of sparkling bits gradually shifted direction and thinned out. Just as Simmons thought the change reminded her of soap bubbles swirling down a drain, the debris curved even further. Toward the blank space. The junk disappeared. Simmons stared, vaguely aware her mouth was hanging open but unable to do anything useful about it. The blank space in the garbage field had simply eaten something. Taking it right out of reality as far as she could tell. Rog’s overly loud voice jarred her back into motion. “What the hell just happened?”