XCav

They started hauling in the dead babies today. That's why I went to see the foreman.

"Joe!" I gasped. "What's all this?"

"All what?" he asked with the innocence of true ignorance.

"Babies!" I cried. "Dead babies! Great, big dump trucks full of dead babies! Look! Is that what we've been digging these big trenches for?"

Joe's eyebrows collapsed in on each other, showing worried. "Solid waste," he mumbled. "They said XCav was for solid waste disposal. I don't know nothin' about buryin' no babies."

He didn't. I could see. He was just like me, jumping on XCav for the thousands of promised jobs in a disastrous economy.

"You can see the PM," he suggested helpfully. "But you'll be off the clock!"

Ever the loyal minion. I went to see the Project Manager.

"I didn't sign on for this!" I screeched.

"What, you didn't apply for the job?" retorted the PM, unperturbed. "XCav promised jobs, and by God, we delivered!"

"Not this kind of job," I protested. "There are truckloads of dead babies out there!"

"Got to do something with them," replied the PM calmly. "You want to leave them lying around in the streets?"

It made a certain macabre sense.

"But why?" I pleaded. "What's going on?"

"Baby-squeezing," said the PM. "For baby juice."

"Wha-a-a-at?" I gasped.

"Oh, don't look so tragic," scoffed the PM. "You squeeze 'em like grapes, and for the same reason. Only takes a second."

"S-same reason?" I was starting to babble.

"Well, not exactly," admitted the PM. "It's mostly done via injection. Baby juice has amazing recuperative powers. Mostly for old people. Smoothes wrinkles and such."

"For old people?" I babbled on.

"Well, rich old people," the PM clarified. "I should have said. Not you, obviously. If you could afford a treatment, I'd lose my job for paying you too much!" He chuckled in a self-satisfied way.

"But, but ... you just kill them?"

He seemed to misunderstand my meaning. "Not just babies," he explained. "Older kids, too. For the lower-end clients ... sub-billionaires, say. But infants are primo. I guess you could say preemies are primo! Ha, ha!"

"Won't we run out of children?" I asked.

"Not for years," said the PM soothingly. "By then, the technology will have advanced enough to make squeezing adults profitable."

I staggered. I must gone completely white. Again, he misunderstood.

"Oh, you're safe enough," he reassured me. "No one your age will ever be worth shit."

"But I have children," I stammered.

"Oh, I didn't know that," said the PM, a look of concern crossing his face. "Just a minute."

He hammered away at his computer keyboard for a couple of minutes. Then he relaxed.

"Nothing to worry about!" he announced. "Your kids were picked up this morning. They'll be processed by evening."

"What are you saying?" I cried.

"Let's just say, that's two less mouths for you to feed!" he replied good-naturedly. "You do know you're off the clock now, don't you?"

"This is totally insane!" I screamed.

"So you don't want the job?" he asked.

Ah, I did. Hey, promise us some jobs, and we'll do anything.