A treasure of trash

The temperature that night was cold, not freezing, but pretty close. Cold was good, it kept the food from rotting. Hurbert did not know why people would throw away perfectly edible food, but he was glad nonetheless. After all, if they did not throw the food away, than he would not be able to eat. He knew to stay clear of uncooked meats that were tossed, his gut's memory from when he ate the raw, moldy thing of salmon still as fresh as ever, but the fruits, breads, and juices were amazing. Sometimes the fruit juice would give him a little buzz if it had turned the right way.

That night, some time in October, Hurbert no longer had his watch or anyway to tell time or the date, Hurbert was at his favorite dumpster. He called it corny, because it was bright yellow and it was always overflowing with new tossed foods from the all-you-can-eat buffet it was behind. Hurbert dug throw the recent food: strawbarries, rolls of bread, chuncks of steak and octopus, a bit of pasta sauce with meatballs. He collected his plastic bowl and spoon from the folds of his ragged coat and collected a bit of everything. Humming to the tune of radio station the buffet was playing, an old pop song, he pocketed a few more rolls before grabbing his cart and heading towards the end of the parking lot. He did that because he knew from experience that the guards would called if he stayed out there when one of the staff took the trash out. He had already had his share of prison and he did not want to spend another night on the cold cell floor.

"Hmm, that's the good stuff," he said after he took a bite of the bits of steak he had in his bowl. The well seasoned meat was still warm, the buttery rolls to. He had just finished his second roll when the car drove into the lot. It drove pasted a few full spots before passing the first open one. The car stopped and then backed up so that it could get back into the spot. Once it was in the parking spot, it backed up again and drove in again. Hurbert realized that the driver must have been adjusting it so that he was perfectly in the middle. It was a nice car, like one of those cool sportscars that Hurbert used to drive when he was a lawyer. It was a european, one of the newer models, and it had a nice shiny gray colour to it. It was still on, but the engine made hardly any noise, probably because it was part electric.

Hurbert peered at it while it sat there. Nobody got out, Hurbert guessed the driver was on the phone, or talking with a passenger. The windows were tinted, and while during the day it might have been possible to see through them, that was not the case this late at night. The car sat there, and Hurbert watched it as he finished his meal, licking the sauce off his hands and eating all four of the rolls that he got himself.

The look of the car brought back memories of when he was a big shot lawyer in a town on the other side of the vallley, it was a rich life, but it was busy. He kept up with the pace by using, mostly adderall. He used alcohol too, but he made sure to keep to just the weekends and when he needed it to help him sleep. He lost everything when he got caught making fake prescriptions, and then killed a girl when he was driving while intoxicated. He could still remember the girl's name now, even though it had been years. Alice. The name had been on his mind for so long. She would be an adult now, maybe she might have had her first grandchild in the last year or so. "Alice" he said to himself as he continued to stare at the car.

He was so focused on his thoughts that when the car beeped, and the doors opened, he fell backwards off the parking block he was sitting on. A loud group of adults had come out of the restaurant, and was heading towards the car, but it was not the sudden loudness of the exiting adults that made Hurbert fall backwards. It was also not the loud beeping of the car as it unlocked and the doors opened that caused Hurbert to falled backwards. It was because there was no one in the car. It was empty. It was one of those driverless cars that he had heard about. Not just that, but not only did the car doors did open, there were cars on either side of it, and the doors did not hit its neighbors as they opened.

Hurbert watched in amazement as the adults, all very clearly drunk, got in the car. The drunks then lowered the windows as they left the lot, odd due to the cold, but it allowed Hurbert to watch the car backout and leave without the person in the driver's seat doing anything. "That is the future," he said, his breath fogging from the cold. How his life would have been different if that car was around when he was younger. Alice would still be alive. If only.