Chapter Text
It’s really not so bad in the Trash Zone, once you get used to it. And Spamton’s seen pretty much the whole Underground, so his standards aren’t even that skewed!
Well, he’s not sure what most of it looks like anymore. Nobody really gets any mail these days.
A few decades ago, back when Spamton was younger, when he was more spry, clean, and put-together, they used to, though. It had been everything, from bills from up-and-coming power and water companies, to regular communications from friend to friend, easy to deliver across the short routes between the different Underground settlements. And, for a long time, Spamton had been in charge of it all—it had been the only job he’d ever known. He’d seen everything the monster world had to offer! He’d met all kinds of people, and delivered often enough to be known, recognized, respected, and anticipated.
But, slowly, at first, and then all at once, the mail had stopped coming. Computers billed people, now, e-mail and cell phones handled communication. A trickle, then a flood. He’d blinked and become obsolete. He’d thought technology would all just be a phase, that they’d return to pen-and-paper mail within a couple of years, but time has only made a fool of him. They won’t come back. He knows that, now. Only a single house on his route remains–a lone mailbox that’s grown stuffed with unread advertisements.
But Spamton’s resourceful! Scrappy! He doesn’t just…give up, because one little thing falls out of fashion! No, he moves on! He finds a brand-new business model!
When he used to pass through the Trash Zone on the way to some better place, the place he used to live, he’d always thought to himself, Damn. This place could be a gold mine! All this junk nobody uses–why doesn’t someone fix it up? Get some stuff working again, sell it at a solid, marked-up price! That would be a real racket.
So, now that he’s been kicked out on his ass from his old place in Snowdin, he’s finally taken up that irresistible financial opportunity! The shop’s been open for a couple of years now, and, even though it’s not exactly the complete repurposing of the area he’d anticipated it would be, he’s proud of his little junk storefront–and particularly proud of the mechanical expertise he’s gotten in running it.
That’s been his favorite part, Spamton thinks. Picking things apart. Turning them over in his hands, then deconstructing them to see exactly what makes (or rather, once made) them work. He’s become intimately familiar with all manner of wires, gears, and mechanisms, figured out how to re-circuit and rebuild different kinds of scrap, from broken old wind-up toys to fried, waterlogged old laptops. And, sure, they don’t always work like new, but–but them working is what matters, right?
…he doesn’t get many customers. Nobody comes here looking to buy. Hardly anyone ever comes here at all.
Yeah, he’d definitely say that’s the worst part. It tops the list, no question.
It beats wading around in that stagnant water all day till his boots are soaked through and his socks are soggy. It beats picking through the massive trash heap, looking for something salvageable or even just the slightest bit valuable. It beats the smell, the stale-water and mildew, the rot of the organic and unwanted that hangs thick, pungent and hot-sweet in the air. The absolute worst part of living in the Trash Zone is that he lives there completely and utterly alone.
Spamton knows he could have chosen another place to hole up, sure. He could have been homeless in Snowdin, or Hotland, or somewhere else in Waterfall, or even back by the goddamn Ruins. It might have made things easier. It might have been more comfortable. Some days, it feels like self-imposed exile.
But here, he doesn’t have to beg. He doesn’t need to ask for favors or pity, isn’t fixed with sympathetic glances or judgmental glares. He can sustain himself, here, without assistance. He can find everything he needs, scrape a few bucks together with fixed-up old junk, and he can still be in control. He salvages what he needs, goes without what he wants, and from the outside, to any passers-by, it’ll be like he’s really meant to be here. Like he likes to be here. As if he’d never delivered anyone’s mail at all.
Still, every time that he goes into Snowdin—every day he picks his way across Waterfall to get there—he imagines it. He imagines what it would be like to get out of the Trash Zone.
He imagines, for one forbidden moment, the Surface.
Spamton’s never seen it for himself, of course, but he’s heard stories. He can imagine.
The Trash Zone is dark, so dark—but on the surface, it would be bright, so bright that his eyes might have to adjust for a while, bright enough to burn, at first, but then settle to just light enough that he’ll be able to see everything in full, sun-drenched color. It’d get properly warm, up there—and not the stuffy Hotlands kind of heat, either. A real, genuine warmth, one he’ll feel starting in his bones and radiating outward. He’d experience the rain–yes, that’s what it’s called–falling onto his skin, and tilt his face up towards an infinite sky until his glasses are covered in droplets.
He only lets himself think about it for a second, though. Any more would be escapist fantasy, and Spamton’s got to keep his head on his shoulders. He’s got enough screws loose without wandering around like he’s in one of Mettaton’s shows or something. Loneliness will do that to a guy.
Instead, he keeps his head down, scampering along his route each time there’s mail to deliver–a straight shot to Snowdin and back, first thing in the morning. No funny business. No time to stop and smell the echo flowers on the way, to hear their conversations. He moves quickly and decisively, trying to avoid watchful eyes, people’s gaze roaming over his shabby postman’s outfit and cracked glasses. He pulls the brim of his hat down far enough to cover his face, and stares at his own feet as he walks.
There’s no use getting distracted by the shiny, new things in town, anyway. Not when there’s rusty, old things to be fixed up when he gets home. Not when, any day now, something truly special could fall from the Surface right down onto his mountains of garbage. When he could claim that something–when he could finally, really make it big.
He knows it’ll happen, one day, if he just waits long enough. Some human will drop something shiny and gold, or a monster will leave something rare and coveted to go out with the trash, or he’ll find something everyone belowground has no idea even exists–and he’ll finally get his big break. He’ll put it in the shop window, and nobody will be able to just pass on by. They’ll marvel at it, maybe speculate on what exactly it is–and they’ll buy it, buy it for enough to make Spamton filthy rich.
He’ll turn trash into treasure, and get the hell out of the dump. Sometimes he even dares to hope that maybe, maybe, something too valuable to sell will fall in, one day. Something that helps him get up to the Surface. Something that the humans overlooked, let slip into the trash. Something important that got left behind–just like he got left behind.
Though, he thinks that first idea is far more likely. Either way, he can’t just spend all day wandering about like a vagabond. He has a business to run. So, once the mail is carefully delivered into that single, overstuffed mailbox, he hurries home to his den, picks over piles of garbage, and waits to be rewarded for his patience.
When the day comes that Spamton actually gets his reward, it starts out like every other day has for the past couple of years.
He wakes up to the shrill sound of his shoddily repaired alarm-clock, glitchy and arrhythmic, letting him know it’s time to start the day, and rolls out of his nest of holey blankets, busted pillows, and fabric scraps onto the cold floor of the back room of the shop. His joints pop as he stretches, eyes scanning the small, dingy space around him.
It’s a grayish room, with a broken chest of drawers in one corner, a desk with a small, metal hot-plate and a pile of tools crowded onto it, and a small, dim lamp next to the blanket-nest, which rests on top of an old, half-collapsed box spring. Boxes of half-assembled scrap crowd the rest of the place, crowded up against the four large sheet-metal panel walls that protect the mountain of trash from caving the room in. The roof is made of thay same sheet-metal–it’s leaky, but secure.
Spamton flicks the lamp on, shuffles over to the back of the desk-chair, and grabs his pants, white shirt, and blue mailman’s jacket. Once he’s pulled those items over his underclothes, he adds a tool-belt, a small cross-body mail bag, a postman’s hat, black waterproof boots, and his cracked glasses. It’s his daily uniform, and there are a few copies of the base items shoved into the dresser drawers, accompanied by some other moth-eaten garments that he rarely has occasion to put on anymore.
He surveys some of the ongoing projects crammed onto the small desk–an old music box, a busted-up accordion, and an old metal dining set, suspended in a fizzy mixture of citric acid, baking soda, and vinegar to soak off the Trash-Zone’s rust. It's a little promising, Spamton supposes, but not all that valuable. He can come back in here and work on this later, if it gets too cold or wet out there. Certainly, there will be better options to pick through today. Something that’ll sell quicker, with less restoration. Something that’ll make him a quick buck.
He considers heating up something canned on the hot-plate for breakfast, but decides against it, wanting to conserve his food until he makes some decent sales. He’ll probably just end up following the normal routine, today: scavenge in the morning if there’s no delivery, work the shop in the afternoon, and repair whatever garbage he found in the evening. He’ll find time to eat when there’s a moment to sit down–when there’s not a living to be made.
Spamton swings the rusty door open, and pulls a pair of thick, rubber gloves from his toolbelt, tugging them onto his hands and surveying the piles of trash before him.
There has to be something out there, he tells himself, just like he does every morning, something special.
Today, he doesn’t know just how right he is.
He begins the work, systematically combing through pile after pile, looking into the several inches of water at his feet for stray items that have floated off the mini-islands of garbage, eyes peeled for something shiny or largely intact or fancy-looking, something that can be fixed up and made new, or even a part to supplement an existing project, a tiny mechanism to supplement some kooky conglomerate-item he’s hoping to pass off as a useful gadget in the shop.
Spamton has picked over about a pile and a half when he begins to hear it. It’s an unfamiliar, staticky sort of sound, cutting in and out enough that he’s hardly sure it's real at first, but simultaneously so soft, terribly sad and almost…alive.
His head perks up, the mail-flag on the side of his hat sticking up straight. It sounds like…it sounds like crying. The mailman scrambles down from the trash heap he’s climbing on, eyes scanning, ears straining to make out the source of the noise.
“To Whom it may Concern,” Spamton starts nervously, the letter-greeting coming automatically as he starts his sentence, “Hello? Is anyone there? What’s that noise?” He opts not to sign off his call, wanting to remain anonymous.
A soft sparking sound. A sniffle, distant. “H-hello?” A quiet, buzzing voice replies.
He scampers around the pile, turning a corner, following the sound. Someone’s here, he thinks, a brief excitement shooting through him, someone’s really here! It’s been so long since anyone was really around in the Trash Zone–Mad Dummy’s unfriendly, when he passes through, hostile enough that Spamton hides himself away in the back of the shop. But this voice doesn’t sound unfriendly.
“Is someone th-there?” The voice speaks again, glitching.
In fact, it almost sounds scared.
Spamton stops in his tracks as he sees it–two legs sticking out from behind a massive pile of junk, sparks flying from one at the knee. Suddenly, his anticipation turns to cold, prickly nerves. What if this is a trap? That looks like a robot. What kind of creature would just…end up here? What happened to him?
Slowly drawing closer, Spamton raises a wary eyebrow—but, then, the robot speaks again. The mailman can hear the aberration in his voice more clearly, now. It’s waterlogged, of course—and not just by its tears.
“Please,” the staticky tone begs, as Spamton’s footsteps stop. “Don’t le-ave me he-re!”
Carefully, as if in direct response to the plea, the mailman pokes his small head around the corner of the trash heap.
There, lying on his back, darkened, cracked screen tilted up to face the caged-in sky, is his prize.
It’s a television-man. He’s dressed in a loose white button-up that billows out a bit around him in the shallow water, a brown vest, and a yellow tie. His legs, clad in purplish pants, would almost completely blend in with the garbage in front of him if it werent for his soaked green dress shoes. As Spamton stares down at him in awe, it takes him a moment too long to realize that the man is completely missing one of his arms. Sparks jump out from the socket, ragged wires hanging, the coating on some of them stripped back.
That’s dangerous, some part of him thinks, I could get shocked, trying to move him. His left leg is injured, too. Exposed. Maybe I shouldn’t—
Before he can finish the thought, he’s sidling up to the robot, pressing himself between him and the garbage pile and leaning over a bit to look into his prone, damaged screen. Two antennae droop over it in a non-expression that almost looks sad.
The display blinks on for a second, the same shade of green as his shoes, then just a mess of rainbow bars. “Is so-omeone there? Who are you?!” It flicks off again completely with a pained sound.
Apprehensively—shyly, even, when did he become shy—Spamton places his face before the broken screen display, subtly waving a hand. “Dear Stranger: My name is Spamton G. Spamton. Are you alright? What’s your name?”
A shaky, relieved exhale. “Oh, th-ank goodness! Um–no, Mr. Spamton. I–I’m afra–id I’m not.” His voice dips. “It–it hurts.”
The robot pauses for a moment, as if in shame, then adds, “My name’s Tenna. Ant Tenna.”
Spamton nods, inspecting the television’s body again, already trying to coordinate how to move him. Maybe I can make him some kind of splint? Or use a piece of driftwood, sort of like a raft, and float him back to the shop? He’s a hell of a find, isn’t he? Tech like this is hard to come by. It’ll be even harder to repair. Still… He hums tunelessly.
“To: Mr. Ant Tenna.
I think I can help you. Will you come with me?
Sincerely, Spamton G. Spamton.”
The fingers on the T.V’s good hand twitch, and one of his antennae tries to perk up. “O-okay,” he stammers, “How far?”
Spamton grins, and it feels out of practice. “Tenna: It’s not far at all.”