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Working 2050 is a speculative fiction oral history project.
Working 2050: Re-composition Technician
Elmer Machado has a large beard and an even larger thermos of coffee, which seems appropriate for a 6:30 AM meeting. The building where we meet is all glass and plants, a giant garden with 7 massive green cylinders on one side.
Elmer runs one of the City of Chicago’s main decomposition sites and memorial gardens for human remains. I couldn’t figure out what made them so full of energy until I realized we were meeting 4 hours into their work day: Elmer wakes up at 4:30 AM.
So first, what is a decomposition site?
Well, if you watch anything from Amazon, it’s a body farm, where we harvest bodies to power communism. [laughs] If you listen to the City, or any other person involved in death care, then a decomposition site is part of death care: we receive the human remains of those who have passed on and opted into decomposition.
That decomposition happens in vessels, housed here, that generate soil for indoor gardens, vertical farms, biomes and arboretums around the city. They also generate soil for the public memorial gardens connected to this site. Each body generates about 1 cubic yard of soil. Since this is one of the largest decomposition sites in the area…
