Warren Murphy: Waste Not, Want Not

One of the executive president's security men stepped up to whisper something to Curry-Hume. The security agents were always around. About a dozen of them had been brought into government with the current president, supplanting the normal presidential security force. The silent men had a habit of making everyone around them feel uncomfortable.

Frowning, Finance Minister Whitehall turned away.

"We're ready," George Jiminez was saying. "The first two trucks are here."

Nodding sharply, Carlos Whitehall went to inform the president. The call went down the line as men snapped into action. The gates were opened. Reporters who had been waiting impatiently outside swarmed onto the deck, all outfitted in slip-resistant boots.

Finance Minister Whitehall had seen some press when he arrived half an hour earlier. There were many more now.

Many were already there to cover the Globe Summit, the world environmental meeting which was being hosted by Mayana and was scheduled to begin later in the week. But they had no idea why they had been called out here to the hills above New Briton. Some wondered if it had something to do with the Mayana government's call for trash from around the world. Many suspected the call for trash was a PR trap set up by environmental groups to be sprung on the world leaders who would be flying in for the conference.

The president worked the crowd, answering questions in an impromptu news conference. As he watched with growing jealousy, Finance Minister Whitehall clenched his teeth until the enamel squeaked. Barely controlling his anger, he whipped out his phone to call up to the control booth.

"Yes, that is true," Executive President Curry-Hume was saying to a reporter from the Washington Times. "This demonstration is of global significance. Its reach is so great it is only fitting that it take place now, the week of the Globe Summit. Mayana is about to change the world for the better. I won't spoil the surprise that my people have worked so hard to get ready for you. I think we should stand back and let them show us what they've done for us all."

He was backing into his entourage, ready to permit the demonstration to commence, when a final question was shouted from the gaggle of reporters.

"Isn't this near the site where the Jamestown tragedy took place?" a reporter for the Boston Blade called.

On his cell phone, Carlos Whitehall froze.

This was the one question he had feared more than any other. The finance minister had yelled, bargained and begged not to build here. But the land was government owned and ideally located. Whitehall had been outvoted.

The finance minister held his breath, awaiting the president's response.

The executive president nodded soberly to the now silent crowd. "As you say, Jamestown was a terrible tragedy," Curry-Hume said, voice rich with sadness. "But we are not here to focus on the past. We are here to celebrate the future. A better, cleaner future for the entire planet." He turned his back on the reporters. "Gentlemen, if you please."

Carlos Whitehall released a secret sigh. "Begin," he barked into his cell phone. Turning expectantly, he handed the phone off to George Jiminez.

Immediately, a large set of double doors at the far end of the long pit yawned open. Like the smaller door through which the reporters had come, the double doors had been invisible when closed, blending in with the smooth wall.

All eyes turned. Cameras rolled.

Something big crawled up an unseen ramp. When it stopped, everyone there briefly wondered why they were looking at the back end of a dump truck. The truck was dwarfed by the vast black pit.

The truck was overflowing with garbage. Heaps of torn plastic bags spilled their contents. A few seagulls had flown up from the bay. They swooped lazily in the warm air around the truck.

Even the breeze was cooperating. The wind blew away from the press, toward the truck.

At a nod from Carlos Whitehall, George Jiminez spoke in hushed tones into the phone. An instant later, the nozzles lining the black pit glowed brighter. They went from orange to brilliant white.

Through their special boots, the gathered men and women felt a growing hum beneath their feet. Across the pit, the back of the dump truck slowly began to rise. The maw swung open and the truck's contents slid down into the black pit.

The trash never reached the bottom.

As it passed by the array of white-tipped nozzles, there came a series of sharp flashes from all around the pit. And like popping soap bubbles, the bags of trash began to vanish.

There was a shocked intake of air all around. Reporters ran to the chain-link fence that surrounded the pit.

"Not too close!" Finance Minister Whitehall called.

He nudged himself cautiously to the edge, careful to keep at least a foot away from the fence at all times.

The falling trash continued to vanish. The reporters blinked as if witnessing some sleight of hand in a sidewalk shell game.

Another door opened above the pit. A second truck was already in position. Bags and steel drums of solid waste were dumped into the deep hole. When they passed by the glowing nozzles, they began winking out, piece by piece.

The backs of both trucks tipped nearly vertical, loosing the last of their cargo. Not a single piece of trash made it to the bottom of the deep pit.

The final floating scraps of paper and plastic caught the dying breeze on their way into the pit. They went the way of the larger trash bundles-erased from the air by some invisible force as they passed the glowing nozzles.

The dump trucks drove away, the doors slid closed once more and the hum of energy faded to silence. As it diminished, so, too, went the nozzle lights. The brilliant white dulled to yellow, then orange.

Sensing their meal had gone, the circling seagulls swooped curiously once more high overhead before heading back down toward the harbor.

The reporters stood in shocked silence, staring down onto the empty black floor of the pit. A floor that should have been lined with trash.

"Where did it go?" one small voice finally asked. President Blythe Curry-Hume stepped forward. "It went where it can never harm the environment again. It went where no beaches are despoiled by medical waste and no neighborhood is poisoned by seeping toxic chemicals. It went where the air is clean and the water is pure.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the leader of Mayana called, "I give you the hope of a cleaner future for all the world. l present to the world its own salvation. The Vaporizer." His grimacing smile of triumph was a little too tight near his ears.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and he was Master of all he surveyed.

The thought came to him as he stood on a rocky bluff that jutted over the cold waters of the West Korea Bay.

Remo. Master of all he surveyed. Him. Remo Williams. Master Remo Williams. It was a strange feeling and, at the same time, so very, very right.

It had been a long time coming. Days spreading to decades. At times it seemed as if it would never happen. Now? The wink of an eye. Master of all he surveyed.

Remo looked out over his domain.

The tiny North Korean fishing village of Sinanju had been settled among craggy rock and sunken mud flats five thousand years before. It looked as if it hadn't seen a lick of paint or a single straight nail hammered since then.

The crummy little shanty homes of tumbledown wood and moldy thatch were clustered together against the elements. The dilapidated shacks looked like something out of The Grapes of Wrath without the cheery Steinbeck optimism.

With the melting winter snow came the annual rising tide of mud. Thick goop like brown oatmeal filled the crooked little streets and clogged the main town square.

The Mission San Juan Capistrano had the annual tradition of its returning swallows. Sinanju had a similar event, but with a non-avian twist. When the ground thawed, the sleeping snakes of Sinanju percolated to the surface. Remo had seen the first million serpents of spring slithering through the ugly brown weeds the previous week. There seemed to be a lot more with every passing year. The exhausted female snakes of Sinanju apparently spent the long winter months unsuccessfully fending off the amorous advances of hissing, horny paramours.