Bottle Cap-tain

It’s never sunny in these parts of town. There’s just something about the place that stifles any attempt to introduce warmth and light, leaving it as cold and dark as the heart of the criminal who has made their home here. Maybe it’s all the metal sheets overhead. Someone should really move those.

The task of rebuilding the TriPolar Detective Agency HQ was tougher than a special edition cubic boron nitride bottle cap and twice as abrasive. TriPolar themselves had very exacting standards despite contributing very little in the way of practical assistance, and the arguments that resulted from your prioritisation of finding bottle caps in the debris often ended with one or more of you threatening to leave the Agency for good. You pulled through in the end though, as you always do. These days, the HQ is better than ever, providing you all with a well-hidden and well-stocked hub for essential detective activities such as:

• Analysing evidence
• Researching suspects
• Filing reports
• Bickering
• Gazing pensively out of a rain-streaked window

With the HQ fully functional, the next step was to track down the bot who damaged it in the first place. Strange to think that one bot’s decision to take some elastic bands and chewing gum could cause a building to collapse and its inhabitants to relocate. If they hadn’t moved to the river, would you ever have met them? Would you still be ignorant of the city’s underbelly of crime? Would you have never known the thrill of the chase or the euphoria of piecing together the right evidence? The Bottle Cap-tain existing in the parallel world where they never met TriPolar probably doesn’t know how it feels to bounce across the city on a wobbly tripod, and for that you envy them.

But there’s no use thinking about realities other than the one you find yourself in today, staring down your adversary across a pile of tragically capless polyethylene terephthalate bottles. Since discovering your first clue to the identity of the Gum Collector (or, as TriPolar calls them, the Horrible Evil Home Destroyer Who Ruined Our Lives), you’ve followed their trail all over the island, uncovering a greater conspiracy of rubbish-related acts of destruction that captivated you more and more with each discovery.

“Well, it seems I’ve been bested! Well done, detective!”

Your opponent gives a hearty laugh as they speak. You weren’t expecting your investigation to lead you to them, but… well, isn’t it true that the best place to hide something is in plain sight? You think you’ve heard TriPolar saying that before.

“I know everything you’ve done,“ you tell them. “The theft, the arson, the botnapping… why did you do it?”

“Oh, my friend, isn’t it obvious? It was all a means to an end. Call it a necessary evil!” They laugh again, not maliciously. “You know, detective… we’re not so different, you and I. Everything I’ve done… I’ve done it out of love for recycling. Don’t tell me there’s not a part of you that understands?”

You grit your non-existent teeth. Your time with the detectives has given you an unshakeable sense of justice, and yet… you can’t help but see the elegance behind this bot’s so-called crimes. You felt it during the investigation, that electric connection between you and your target as you played this game of robocat and computer mouse.

Maybe that’s why you let them get away. Maybe that’s why you return to the Agency and shrug off TriPolar’s questions about your encounter with the perp. Maybe that’s why, when you gaze pensively out of the rain-streaked window that evening, you whisper a promise to the bot who has once again slipped out of your grasp:

“This isn’t over, Jolly Green Giant…”

NAME: Recycling Plant Unit 496 (AKA The Bottle Cap-tain)
LAST SEEN: In the kitchen
CASES CONNECTED TO: All from KL-7 onwards
STRENGTHS: Metal detection, preliminary research (has lots of friends), dealing with Polar
WEAKNESSES: Bottle caps, heights
THREAT LEVEL: Very High (has access to all our files and could probably beat us in a fight)
STRATEGY: Make sure they don’t run out of bottle caps
ADDITIONAL NOTES: If you’re reading this, good luck with the factory opening! We’re super proud of you! Also, your bottle cap towers are very cool but please stop blocking the filing cabinets with them. Also also, have you looked into the Laver Con Artist case yet?

Hello,
I am writing to express my concern over the output of bottle caps from your factory. I take great pride in the view offered by this patch of land, and the piles of junk littering the landscape are ruining my attempts to gain artistic inspiration from my natural surroundings. Please could you consider moving your products somewhere out of sight? Thank you.

Hello,
Perhaps I was too harsh when I described your products as ‘junk’. I apologise for the emotional outburst, and fully acknowledge the hurt that I must have caused. However, I would like to also acknowledge that responding to my letter by doubling your production rates was both petty and unnecessary. Again, I ask that you please move your factory’s output away from my land. Thank you.

Are you even reading these? Maybe you don’t even live in the factory. Maybe you’re entirely unaware that a species of strange creatures with enormous eyeballs have made themselves at home in the veritable MOUNTAIN of bottle caps your factory has produced. I beg you to put a stop to this while you still can.

I write to update you on the state of your hubris. A house has now been constructed out of bottle caps by these creatures I have heard called ‘feeple’. They have begun attaching bottle caps to themselves as armour. They grow stronger by the day. You are a monster and if I find you, I will see to it that you will never again leave your cursed mark on this world.

Oh! Oh, visionary! Oh, great bringer of life! I can only offer so many apologies for the cruel things I have said about you. How wrong I was!

I believe I have been privileged enough to watch the birth of a civilisation. First a mountain, then a house, then a village – with each new batch of bottle caps produced by your factory, the feeple have grown in wisdom and creativity. I watched from my window as they developed trade with their subterranean contacts, and I watched the building of each mosaic and sculpture they constructed from the bottle caps they live among. To say that this tiny society has become my muse would be an understatement! As I write this, one of them is heading to the space elevator with a footful of bottle caps, in what I can only assume is an attempt to bring your bottle cap empire into the space age.

I was foolish to reject your vision for so many years. Please know that I will be forever grateful for what you have done for me.

However, while I hate to end this on a negative note, I am concerned about the colour of your factory’s most recent line of bottle caps. #2cfa1f registers to me as “evoking imagery of radioactivity”, which while not a danger to much of robotkind, may very well be a threat to our beloved feeple. If they grow accustomed to this colour in their daily lives, they may be less likely to avoid it when encountered in nature. Please could you consider discontinuing this line? Thank you.