086 - Garbage Sandcastles

Unnatural Phenomenon: Garbage Sandcastles

In an unremarkable small-town landfill - the final resting place of a detritomancer crushed by a collapsing mound of garbage as he discovered a major charge - is a graveyard which foretells the collapse of civilization. Refuse scattered here spontaneously forms models of the monuments of humanity slated for destruction. When they crumble to the elements, so do the originals.

It’s uncertain whether this effect is predictive or causal or a bit of both (so far only one person is really aware of the phenomenon and he’s not the type to consider it). The buildings depicted tend to be based on cultural, or at least public, recognition rather than financial value or size. If the Eiffel Tower were under threat, a forest of replicas made of tin foil and twisted TV dinner boxes would sprout and then be rent apart. Some gaudy, expensive and nameless skyscraper, not so much.

Georgie Huber is a 13 year-old kid. He hates school, is neglected by his family and loves dirt bikes and plinking at rats. He knows he’s not allowed at the dump but it’s unstaffed most of the time and gives him an escape from the yelling and throwing things when he’s in trouble for ditching class. Skulking around the mounds of rotting trash with his .22 one late-afternoon he came across a sea of collapsing cathedrals as Notre Dame burned. While he didn’t catch the significance it left quite an impression. Georgie has come back dozens of times since and watched the rise and fall of humanities’ hubris without really comprehending. Vaguely remembering fairy tales about elves cobbling shoes he considers the models to be the work of “junk fairies”. He’s ready for the next time they build something, he’s going to carefully pry it up and take it home in a box.

Whether the haphazard preservations of a teenager half a world away will do anything to protect the Louvre, the Great Mosque of Mecca or the White House when they are in peril remains to be seen.

Of course, digging around in the trash mounds with a shovel risks unearthing the lost adept who birthed the garden. If Georgie or some curious sanitation worker were to have the major charge grounded through them then it would end the effect but there’s no telling what else might happen. To say nothing of the priceless artifact clutched in the corpse’s right hand.