This would be a short story along the lines of a science fiction psychological exploration. I've outlined it a couple times but I haven't really started writing it because I don't know how to include the background details into the actual story. The background details of the environment, but it comes off as dry exposition. So I'm just going to throw this one out here and see what comes of it.
In the future everything is recycled thanks to the invention of microbots that can automatically sort materials with little human oversight. The story takes place at a particular garbage installation that is run by one man. Garbage is trucked in from the nearby industrial area and dumped onto a huge conveyor. As the conveyor travels down, the army of microbots comes in and identifies, tags, cuts, and separates the trash. The material is then compacted into blocks and sent back to material supplies to process and send to manufacturers. Metals are separated into their respective alloys. Glass and plastics too. Any paper or wood products are also separated. Basically everything is recyclable except purely organic material which is composted. But at this facility that is rare and the compost is maybe touched every quarter.
The facilities operator is in charge of scheduling shipments, sending compacted materials blocks, and maintaining the microbots. It's a cushy job but is fairly around the clock so he actually lives at the facility. He's a nearly retired old man who's just working to do something. He runs the facility well, keeping an eye on the microbots and material shipments. In his spare time, he watches the news and keeps up with his old friends and catches what sleep he can in between shipment calls.
The microbots look like insects. There are three kinds for the functions; taggers, cutters, and lugs, as they are called in the industry. Taggers identify the materials of the object and send information to the others about what materials, quantities of the materials, and three-dimensional location. The cutters then use the best tool and cut the object along material differences and into pieces that the lugs can carry into the respective material bins.
All together it is a pretty efficient process.
The story follows the old man as he goes about his day as an explanation of the setting. (This is where it's too dry.) But he notes that a friend of his haven't been responding to his messages. They usually pretty active about it too though. When he turns on the news, his friend has been added to a list of recently missing people. Oh no. The old man is very distraught about that. Crime has been at an all time low. And it's not like his friend is just off on a holiday, the friend would have told him. He gets upset and it starts affecting his job, making him miss a few schedules and having to have the computer tell him that the compost is full. He tries to start a campaign to find his friend but nothing pans out. Fine, the police will handle it.
Life goes back to normal. He still worries about his friend but there is nothing he can do about it. He falls into his same old routine. He cleans and maintains the microbots and such. It's nice.
Just when he is fully settled, like a week or two after the first incident, another friend goes missing along with about five more people. This is becoming a serious problem. But the police can't find the bodies. Oh no! The old man really freaks out and again his schedules suffer and the compost goes off again.
Wait. It's only been two weeks since the last compost. Usually it takes three months to fill the organic bin. The old man goes out to the bin to see what the microbots are putting into it.
He finds the bodies. (Cue horror)
The microbots have been classifying the bodies as organic material and depositing them there. The parts are barely recognizable because of the cutters and there is definitely quite a few people there. The old man panics because holy mother of god he found the bodies. And who knows how many were in the first compost load. He's destroyed evidence. The police are going to think he's an accomplice or even that he is the murderer! Cue mental freak out.
Eventually he talks himself out of the belief that they are going to think he's the murderer because he's been at the facility all this time. And he's not an accomplice; he's only been doing his job. So he picks up the phone.
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