Zombieland : Scene 1 - Revenant Fictions

(originally published in the dead of Winter 2011 on my now defunct old blog)


I've had two new computers since I've moving to the UK.  — That's one a year!   Now, I use computers hard, like a post-rider carrying the mail horseback through hostile territory. But, it strikes me that one a year is much worse than should be. I may go back to building my own computers from trusted suppliers of trusted parts.

Anyway, my experience has left me wondering if others here have had similar experience.  And, with tight regulation on the disposal of electronics in the UK and Europe — much, much tighter than regulations in the USA (that's a very good thing) — I've been wondering what people do with their old computers, clock-radios, TVs, etc.  It is easy enough to recycle a mobile phone for cash, even if it is a bit disheartening to think that I only got £50 for the mobile phone that could do everything when I bought it shortly after it came to market three years ago at a cost of £450.  But, the rest!?

I eventually donated my old bits to a local charity.  A happy lad — son of Frankenstein — recycles them, piecing the good parts from several old computers into one, even using electricity to bring them back to life.  Imagine that!  Some of the reanimated are sold on to the local poor for little more than the cost of the young man's time.  The bulk are sent off, at no cost, to village schools in sub-Saharan Africa and south-east Asia.

With the recent cold snap, I think that I've discovered what my neighbours do to manage the regulations.  Evenings bring — shortly after the masses return from City-jobs — the distinctive scent of melting plastics and burning wires.  It is a strong scent, too.  Some streets, where the air is particularly still, become dead-zones.  You'ld expect to see a litter of pedestrians and cyclists dead on the pavement, like so many fish killed off by red-tide, were these streets any more open to passage.  It is easy to imagine Husband-X calling out to Wife-Y, "I'm cold. Throw another clock-radio on the fire, will ya."  The whole neighbourhood smells of burning electrics.

I'll ask you to believe me.  Imaging that the particular scent is fed on old transistors and motherboards is more restful than thinking a house-fire is in progress.  With our neat little row-upon-row of conjoined homes revenant of the Industrial Revolution, one house-fire could bring the entire neighbourhood to life.