Garbage Man 2035
In a future where intimacy is disposable, one man hauls away the bodies nobody wants to admit they loved.
Bob pulled into the truck depot at 6:30 AM sharp for his next 12-hour shift. The putrid fumes of a hot and humid summer just starting to bake the musky stench off the sidewalks of the Southeast Metro. He punched at the keypad to start his shift and made his way to the decontamination locker, where his newly sterilized Cat 3 hazmat suit hung. He begrudgingly started the ordeal of putting it on.
The next 10 hours in this thing was gonna be a scorcher. Thank God the pay was in order. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to take this job. Bob, you see, was no simple trash man. He was a wrangler…a “rubber wrangler” to be specific. A less than endearing call sign for the city’s sex-doll disposal specialists.
Around 2035, the sex doll (SD) manufacturing sector hit mass adoption on the s-curve, and much like the flat screen televisions of 30 years earlier, what was a previously gatekept and considerably expensive commodity became as affordable and common as getting the latest iPhone every year. Not too long after that, it became as unceremonial as replacing a vacuum or a shower curtain. Hell, you could make the argument people kept them about as long as they would a disposable nicotine vape.
Entry-level sex dolls became as inexpensive as low grade laptops or tablets and became seasonally commercialized with the rest of the Western retail market. Anime themed sex dolls became big around Valentine’s Day, packed with a heart-shaped box of chocolates and red lingerie. On Easter, they would be displayed in big wicker baskets wrapped in plastic like children's easter gifts. Fourth of July, it was common to see buxom blondes in American flag bikinis next to the charcoal and Bud light. Christmas they were marketed as sexy elves or similar.
Election season was particularly interesting. Markets supplied fully anatomically 1:1 versions of whoever the next and hottest new congressional candidate was. Some candidates even promoted their sale as a means to bolster attention to their campaign. Hollywood became an obvious breakout market leader, being the first to market an industry grade 1:1 likeness sex doll for a film promotion. “Limited release” is what they said. It's what they (always) said, right before turning around and maximizing production of said “limited editions.”
*Historical Note: Male dolls were sold, but marketing data consistently affirmed that they made up less than 20% of all sales and less than 5% of all fully anatomical male sex dolls were purchased by women (The implications of these facts being self evident).
And that was just the big brand dolls. The custom market was even more lucrative for those with niche markets. The biggest plurality of the customs market catered to every taste imaginable, everything from modified celebs to carbon copy clones of crushes, ex-wives, girlfriends, lovers (yes, even ones no longer living), etc.
In the early days, lawsuits abounded the world over. The boom in sex dolls, coupled with AI integration, led to a long legal battle for the right to one's own self image and/or likeness. A Supreme Court majority ruled in 2032 that humans did not, in fact, have an exclusive right to their own likeness and/or image, on account of creative license and already established 1st Amendment precedents.
That and there was simply no way to legally enforce a ban on deepfake bots at a federal level. Anyone could now make a doll in the likeness of whoever they desired. A friend, a neighbor, a boss, or a coworker's wife with absolutely zero legal repercussions. For the right dollar amount, you could build an essential cyborg of your dream woman, whether she was based off a real person or not.
The market didn’t just cater to cosmetic customization. For $12 a month, a Neuralink subscription could alter the inputs, adjusting for mood, temperament and voice prompts indefinitely. Self-automatronic ones weren’t often discarded, but sometimes stolen and “ridden” so to speak, like a juvenile may joyride a stolen car. One of Bob's night shift traumas came from a high-end BDSM calibrated bot that went rogue running Mommydom OS and needed to be neutralized with his high voltage taser. Thankfully, it was in a bad area with little to no surveillance and no one around to witness.
Bob had seen good guys run off the force by the Sex-Bot Civil Rights lobby, citing a use of unjust force against what had come to be known as a “vehicle of commerce” (which in Newspeak came to encompass anything that even came close to mimicking consciousness that you had sex with), The idea, by the feminists that funded these lobbies, was that simulated violence or sexual assault against the dolls/robots would translate into higher rates of domestic violence against biological “vehicles of commerce,” and so performative violence, both in porn and commercial VOCs, was legally outlawed.
*(There were certain demographics that had a propensity to commit domestic violence against sex robots at a considerably higher rate than others) this was, of course, understood by WM senior management and the officers of the special reclamation unit (SRU), but due to PR concerns they were of course indirectly discouraged from discussing them.
Bob got on with the Waste Management SRU shortly after getting out of the service, after a career in material control. Due to the exceptionally disgusting nature of the job, it came with a decent hourly hazard pay, in addition to per diem for the occasional out of town assignment. All hazmat materials comped by WM.
Today wasn’t going to be as bad though. He was on his rotating shift this week which meant he was getting some respite from the horrors of night shift. You know, things like fighting a silicone cyborg trying to choke you screaming it wants to spit in your mouth. That sort of thing.
Sometimes on busy nights you got so in the zone picking and pulling bots and SDs you accidentally yanked the occasional homeless person out from a pile of newspapers by their ankles (Sometimes in the middle of the act attached to their own SD). It was enough to make a grown man shudder.
Night shift was the worst.
Production hit critical mass a couple years ago and the sex doll manufacturers started to incur lawsuits from the EPA and other environmental lobbies citing a pollution crisis. Sex dolls were set to outpace the world's used tire landfills if not curtailed by 2045. The artificial SD lobbies were ordered to pay restitution to the US government to the tune of $300 million dollars.
Sanctions were levied that production factories had commercial limits imposed and part of restitution that select factories allocate resources to recycling the discarded sex dolls. Due to the taboo and hygienic implications they could not be recycled into anything other than waste disposal materials such as tarps, painters plastic and trash bags. After all, no one wants a pair of shoes made from the spongy flesh of animatronic flesh lights, no matter how big of an environmentalist they purport to be.
He had one hour left to go. It was always so fatiguing at the end of his shift and so tiresome. The market had catered to every single careless lust. Skinny dolls, fat dolls, half a dozen models of the same Korean pop star, a prominent news anchor, an age accurate model of an actress past her prime. A couple skinny male dolls of whoever the latest twink is that they had got to play Spider Man that year.
There was always the recognizable ones. The “legacy” models, popular ones that hit the market en masse in the early days. Your Megan Foxes, Salma Hayeks, Sydney Sweeneys, Sofia Vegaras, 18-year-old Brittney Spears clones, etc. Countless actresses from ‘90s and early ‘00s movies, whose names he couldn’t remember.
The strangest thing about this job was how often the expensive and custom models were thrown out, Bob thought. The ones not based off of celebrities or fictional characters, but one-off Blade Runner-tier replicants of regular people. Someone else’s girlfriend, wife or lover they would never possess. Crafted to satisfy the eternal carnal itch. The one that never goes away.
He wondered how many people strayed too far into the sun. How many men lost themselves in the uncanny valley pining after a cheap simulacrum of flesh, programmed with their paltry and counterfeit expressions of endearment. Wouldn’t it eventually start to divorce a man from his own humanity? Reducing himself to something little more than an impulsive beast?
“Of course it would,” Bob internally responded to the question spurned by his own internal dialogue. It was, after all, not a new or novel concept that sexual impulsivity was commonly associated with low status or intelligence.
“I should’ve become a damn English professor,” he internally chastised himself.
Perhaps that’s why they threw them away. A last ditch Hail Mary grasping at the straws of self control. To reclaim any sense of self respect or what was left of their humanity. It was a strange phenomenon, but he did pity the idea of such a sad existence.
Bob pulled up to his driveway about 8:30 at night. A light flickered on in the doorway of his little ranch home in his quiet piece of the Georgia countryside. A feminine voice with a sweet Southern drawl called out from the porch, “Is that my big strong rubber wrangler?”
“Alive and accounted for, ma’am.”
“You pick up any decent fares on the road today?
“Oh, no big deal. Couple Hollywood starlets and a former Secretary of State, that and a very well known talk show host.”
“You big stud, you. Well, get you a shower and you can tell me if I’m a better cook than they are.”
“I’m pretty sure anyone is, though I did pick up Martha Stewart today, sooo.”
“Oh my word, you poor thing. You’re gonna need a strong drink.”
They shared a laugh and headed inside. “God I love this woman,” he thought to himself. She could be a real fucking nag like any other ball and chain, but she was a damn sight better than fucking a literal future trash bag.
This story was submitted anonymously, under the pseudonym “Boogie Shaman.”