Green Rust
High above the acid-stained streets, a cable runner takes a fall and lands in a secret that shouldn't exist.
EXT. MEGASTRUCTURE - NIGHT
The roar of WIND and SULFUROUS RAIN.
Three hundred stories up the slick, grimy face of a corporate monolith. HELLAN (30s-40s), worn down and pragmatic, dangles from a service cable.
A sharp CRACK like a gunshot. The cable snaps.
Hellan plummets. No scream. His mag-gloves SCREECH against the siding, showering sparks into the grey mist below. A desperate scramble in freefall.
He twists, slams a reinforced hand into a protruding COOLING VENT. Metal GROANS. The impact jolts him, but the grip holds.
For a second.
The rusted vent SHEARS OFF. He falls again, tumbling through a fifty-foot tall HOLOGRAPHIC AD—a smiling woman’s face. He punches right through her pixelated teeth.
WHAM! He hits a metal grate. It bends, throwing him sideways onto a narrow, recessed service platform, hidden behind a colossal exhaust intake.
Hellan rolls, landing in a heap. He gasps for air, the taste of copper and burnt plastic in his mouth. He lies there, staring up at the city's underbelly, waiting for security drones. The rain drums on his blast-jacket.
He pushes himself up, joints popping. He checks the readout on his wrist. Shattered. He wipes grime from his face.
Then he smells it. Not rot. Not chemicals.
Damp earth. Something alive.
He freezes. He’s not alone.
Six feet away, sitting on an overturned crate, is MERO (20s). Grimy, wearing a patchwork of scavenged gear. She holds a long metal pipe across her knees, looking not surprised, but annoyed.
MERO
> You squashed the mint.
Her voice is flat, almost lost in the HUM of the massive ventilation fans. Hellan follows her gaze. Under his steel-toed boot, a small green sprig is crushed against the rust-flaked grating.
HELLAN
> What?
MERO
> The mint. Took me three months to get the pH balance right for that. You just... stepped on it.
Hellan slowly lifts his foot. A green smear. He looks around properly for the first time.
The recess is a secret jungle. Plastic buckets, cut-open coolant canisters, and scavenged helmets are filled with dark soil. Tubes drip filtered water from an HVAC unit above. Growing in them—defiant and impossibly green—are ferns, spindly onions, and a single, stubborn tomato plant tied to a rebar stake.
HELLAN
> (rasping)
> Who are you?
MERO
> Mero. And you're loud. Security sweeps are in ten minutes. You stay there, you get scanned. You get scanned, they find this. They find this, I have to throw you off the ledge.
She says it like a logistical fact. Hellan sits down heavily, leaning against the vibrating fan housing. His shoulder throbs.
HELLAN
> I'm not a snitch. Just... fell. Cable snapped on the uplink node two levels up.
MERO
> Cheap fiber. Corporate cutbacks?
HELLAN
> Standard operating procedure.
He fumbles in a side pouch for a pain patch. His fingers are numb. He drops it. It skitters across the grate, stopping near her boot.
Mero looks at the patch, then at him. She sighs, a puff of white in the chill air. She leans forward, picks it up, and tosses it to him.
MERO
> Apply it. You look like you're about to pass out on my radishes.
Hellan slaps the patch on his neck. A cool rush of analgesic hits.
HELLAN
> Radishes? Real ones?
MERO
> As real as the acid rain allows.
She stands, moving with efficient grace, and inspects a leaf on the tomato plant with surprising tenderness.
MERO
> It's Spring.
Hellan lets out a harsh, barking laugh.
HELLAN
> Spring. Right. Calendar says so. Sky says otherwise.
MERO
> The sky is a liar. The calendar is a construct. But the cycle... the cycle tries. Even here. Even in the rust.
She pulls out a small folding knife and slices a small, lumpy, red sphere from the vine. A tomato. Barely the size of a golf ball.
She walks over and offers it to him.
MERO
> Eat.
Hellan stares at it.
HELLAN
> That's... credits. Serious credits. You could sell that to a mid-tier manager for a week's worth of rations.
MERO
> It bruises easily. Can't transport it. Besides. Eating is better than selling.
He takes it. The skin is rough, warm from the nearby vent. He wipes it on his sleeve, then takes a bite.
His eyes widen. A shock. Flavor explodes in his mouth—acidic, sweet, real. Nothing like nutrient paste. He chews slowly, juice running down his chin.
MERO
> Good?
HELLAN
> (muttering, full)
> Unbelievable.
He finishes it. A strange tightness fills his chest.
HELLAN
> Why? Why do this? The risk... if housing authority finds this...
MERO
> They won't. They don't look for green. They look for heat signatures and illegal weapons. Plants are... invisible to them. They don't register as a threat. They don't register as anything.
HELLAN
> It's a lot of work for a salad.
MERO
> It's not about the salad.
She gestures to the buckets, then out through the grate at the smog-choked skyline.
MERO
> Everything else... we just fix. You fix cables. I fix broken tech. We maintain the rot. But this... this makes itself. I just help it. It's the only thing in this whole damn sector that isn't dying or being rebooted.
Hellan looks at the crushed mint under his boot. A pang of guilt.
HELLAN
> Sorry about the mint.
MERO
> It'll grow back. Mint is a weed. It's stubborn. Like us.
They sit in a companionable silence, a rare thing.
HELLAN
> I used to be a terraformer. Before the contracts got cancelled. Off-world prep. We were supposed to go to Mars. Make it green.
Mero looks at him, her interest piqued.
MERO
> What happened?
HELLAN
> Funding cut. AI simulations were cheaper. They decided they didn't need to actually grow things if they could just trick the brain into thinking it was seeing green. So they laid us all off. I ended up running cable.
MERO
> Simulations don't taste like that tomato.
HELLAN
> No. They don't.
He looks at his scarred, grease-covered hands.
HELLAN
> I miss it. The dirt.
Mero reaches into a nearby bucket and pulls out a small, heavy plastic pouch. She tosses it to him.
HELLAN
> What's this?
MERO
> Seeds. Peppers. Hot ones. I don't have the room for them. They need more light than I can steal here.
Hellan holds the pouch. It feels heavier than his tool belt.
HELLAN
> I don't have a setup.
A faint smirk touches Mero's lips.
MERO
> You're a cable runner. You have access to the roof arrays. The solar collectors. Highest point in the sector. Best light.
HELLAN
> That's illegal. Highly illegal. Tampering with corporate energy infrastructure...
MERO
> So is falling onto my balcony. Take them. Or don't. But if you grow them, I want half the harvest.
Hellan looks at the pouch, then at her. A deal based on peppers, not credits. It's the most hopeful thing that’s happened to him in a decade.
HELLAN
> Deal.
He tucks the pouch into his breast pocket.
A low HUM vibrates through the floor. The grey light through the grate shifts, sliced by a SWEEPING RED BEAM.
MERO
> (hissing)
> Drone.
She moves instantly, throwing a thermal tarp over the tomato plant, kicking buckets into deeper shadows. Hellan scrambles back, pressing himself into a dark corner.
The red light of a SECURITY DRONE sweeps through the grate. It pauses, hovering just outside. The mechanical WHIR of its optical zoom focusing.
Mero freezes, hand gripping her pipe. Hellan holds his breath, his hand instinctively covering the seeds in his pocket.
The drone hovers. Scanning. Calculating. It scans the crushed mint leaf. It scans Hellan's boot print.
A crackle of static from the drone's speaker.
DRONE (V.O.)
> Sector 84-G. Unscheduled obstruction detected. Clearing path.
A mechanical arm extends from the drone, holding a high-pressure SOLVENT SPRAYER. It aims directly at the tarp covering the tomato plant.
Mero tenses, ready to lunge—a suicidal act.
Hellan's eyes dart to a sparking JUNCTION BOX next to him, the one controlling the fan speed. He could short it. The fan would blow the drone off course. It would also scream his location to every enforcer in the sector.
He looks at Mero, ready to die for a vegetable. He looks at the red light of the drone.
He touches the seeds in his pocket.
His choice.
The roar of WIND and SULFUROUS RAIN.
Three hundred stories up the slick, grimy face of a corporate monolith. HELLAN (30s-40s), worn down and pragmatic, dangles from a service cable.
A sharp CRACK like a gunshot. The cable snaps.
Hellan plummets. No scream. His mag-gloves SCREECH against the siding, showering sparks into the grey mist below. A desperate scramble in freefall.
He twists, slams a reinforced hand into a protruding COOLING VENT. Metal GROANS. The impact jolts him, but the grip holds.
For a second.
The rusted vent SHEARS OFF. He falls again, tumbling through a fifty-foot tall HOLOGRAPHIC AD—a smiling woman’s face. He punches right through her pixelated teeth.
WHAM! He hits a metal grate. It bends, throwing him sideways onto a narrow, recessed service platform, hidden behind a colossal exhaust intake.
Hellan rolls, landing in a heap. He gasps for air, the taste of copper and burnt plastic in his mouth. He lies there, staring up at the city's underbelly, waiting for security drones. The rain drums on his blast-jacket.
He pushes himself up, joints popping. He checks the readout on his wrist. Shattered. He wipes grime from his face.
Then he smells it. Not rot. Not chemicals.
Damp earth. Something alive.
He freezes. He’s not alone.
Six feet away, sitting on an overturned crate, is MERO (20s). Grimy, wearing a patchwork of scavenged gear. She holds a long metal pipe across her knees, looking not surprised, but annoyed.
MERO
> You squashed the mint.
Her voice is flat, almost lost in the HUM of the massive ventilation fans. Hellan follows her gaze. Under his steel-toed boot, a small green sprig is crushed against the rust-flaked grating.
HELLAN
> What?
MERO
> The mint. Took me three months to get the pH balance right for that. You just... stepped on it.
Hellan slowly lifts his foot. A green smear. He looks around properly for the first time.
The recess is a secret jungle. Plastic buckets, cut-open coolant canisters, and scavenged helmets are filled with dark soil. Tubes drip filtered water from an HVAC unit above. Growing in them—defiant and impossibly green—are ferns, spindly onions, and a single, stubborn tomato plant tied to a rebar stake.
HELLAN
> (rasping)
> Who are you?
MERO
> Mero. And you're loud. Security sweeps are in ten minutes. You stay there, you get scanned. You get scanned, they find this. They find this, I have to throw you off the ledge.
She says it like a logistical fact. Hellan sits down heavily, leaning against the vibrating fan housing. His shoulder throbs.
HELLAN
> I'm not a snitch. Just... fell. Cable snapped on the uplink node two levels up.
MERO
> Cheap fiber. Corporate cutbacks?
HELLAN
> Standard operating procedure.
He fumbles in a side pouch for a pain patch. His fingers are numb. He drops it. It skitters across the grate, stopping near her boot.
Mero looks at the patch, then at him. She sighs, a puff of white in the chill air. She leans forward, picks it up, and tosses it to him.
MERO
> Apply it. You look like you're about to pass out on my radishes.
Hellan slaps the patch on his neck. A cool rush of analgesic hits.
HELLAN
> Radishes? Real ones?
MERO
> As real as the acid rain allows.
She stands, moving with efficient grace, and inspects a leaf on the tomato plant with surprising tenderness.
MERO
> It's Spring.
Hellan lets out a harsh, barking laugh.
HELLAN
> Spring. Right. Calendar says so. Sky says otherwise.
MERO
> The sky is a liar. The calendar is a construct. But the cycle... the cycle tries. Even here. Even in the rust.
She pulls out a small folding knife and slices a small, lumpy, red sphere from the vine. A tomato. Barely the size of a golf ball.
She walks over and offers it to him.
MERO
> Eat.
Hellan stares at it.
HELLAN
> That's... credits. Serious credits. You could sell that to a mid-tier manager for a week's worth of rations.
MERO
> It bruises easily. Can't transport it. Besides. Eating is better than selling.
He takes it. The skin is rough, warm from the nearby vent. He wipes it on his sleeve, then takes a bite.
His eyes widen. A shock. Flavor explodes in his mouth—acidic, sweet, real. Nothing like nutrient paste. He chews slowly, juice running down his chin.
MERO
> Good?
HELLAN
> (muttering, full)
> Unbelievable.
He finishes it. A strange tightness fills his chest.
HELLAN
> Why? Why do this? The risk... if housing authority finds this...
MERO
> They won't. They don't look for green. They look for heat signatures and illegal weapons. Plants are... invisible to them. They don't register as a threat. They don't register as anything.
HELLAN
> It's a lot of work for a salad.
MERO
> It's not about the salad.
She gestures to the buckets, then out through the grate at the smog-choked skyline.
MERO
> Everything else... we just fix. You fix cables. I fix broken tech. We maintain the rot. But this... this makes itself. I just help it. It's the only thing in this whole damn sector that isn't dying or being rebooted.
Hellan looks at the crushed mint under his boot. A pang of guilt.
HELLAN
> Sorry about the mint.
MERO
> It'll grow back. Mint is a weed. It's stubborn. Like us.
They sit in a companionable silence, a rare thing.
HELLAN
> I used to be a terraformer. Before the contracts got cancelled. Off-world prep. We were supposed to go to Mars. Make it green.
Mero looks at him, her interest piqued.
MERO
> What happened?
HELLAN
> Funding cut. AI simulations were cheaper. They decided they didn't need to actually grow things if they could just trick the brain into thinking it was seeing green. So they laid us all off. I ended up running cable.
MERO
> Simulations don't taste like that tomato.
HELLAN
> No. They don't.
He looks at his scarred, grease-covered hands.
HELLAN
> I miss it. The dirt.
Mero reaches into a nearby bucket and pulls out a small, heavy plastic pouch. She tosses it to him.
HELLAN
> What's this?
MERO
> Seeds. Peppers. Hot ones. I don't have the room for them. They need more light than I can steal here.
Hellan holds the pouch. It feels heavier than his tool belt.
HELLAN
> I don't have a setup.
A faint smirk touches Mero's lips.
MERO
> You're a cable runner. You have access to the roof arrays. The solar collectors. Highest point in the sector. Best light.
HELLAN
> That's illegal. Highly illegal. Tampering with corporate energy infrastructure...
MERO
> So is falling onto my balcony. Take them. Or don't. But if you grow them, I want half the harvest.
Hellan looks at the pouch, then at her. A deal based on peppers, not credits. It's the most hopeful thing that’s happened to him in a decade.
HELLAN
> Deal.
He tucks the pouch into his breast pocket.
A low HUM vibrates through the floor. The grey light through the grate shifts, sliced by a SWEEPING RED BEAM.
MERO
> (hissing)
> Drone.
She moves instantly, throwing a thermal tarp over the tomato plant, kicking buckets into deeper shadows. Hellan scrambles back, pressing himself into a dark corner.
The red light of a SECURITY DRONE sweeps through the grate. It pauses, hovering just outside. The mechanical WHIR of its optical zoom focusing.
Mero freezes, hand gripping her pipe. Hellan holds his breath, his hand instinctively covering the seeds in his pocket.
The drone hovers. Scanning. Calculating. It scans the crushed mint leaf. It scans Hellan's boot print.
A crackle of static from the drone's speaker.
DRONE (V.O.)
> Sector 84-G. Unscheduled obstruction detected. Clearing path.
A mechanical arm extends from the drone, holding a high-pressure SOLVENT SPRAYER. It aims directly at the tarp covering the tomato plant.
Mero tenses, ready to lunge—a suicidal act.
Hellan's eyes dart to a sparking JUNCTION BOX next to him, the one controlling the fan speed. He could short it. The fan would blow the drone off course. It would also scream his location to every enforcer in the sector.
He looks at Mero, ready to die for a vegetable. He looks at the red light of the drone.
He touches the seeds in his pocket.
His choice.