Bits of sand lay deep inside a heap of waste and garbage in a large land-empty. Much time passes.
Slowly, the sand amalgamates into small, clear glass crystals, which combine further into glass shards with razor-sharp edges.
Trucks start routinely coming and taking away load after load from the land-empty, carrying it away to facilities for processing. In one such truck, all the shards of glass amongst other scraps of materials, are picked up and dutifully carried away.
At the processing facility, the shards of glass are loaded onto a conveyor belt. Alongside the belt, people are at work, taking different sorts of items coming on their own conveyor belts, and placing them on the main conveyor belt to create a diverse mix of materials. Plastic bottles, metals, and cardboard combine into a disorganized mass.
At the destination of the conveyor belt, the mixture is aliquoted into bags, and the bags are loaded onto trucks to take them away. One such bag, containing the glass shards, finds its way on a truck heading into the city.
The truck arrives at one man’s house, and puts several of them into an empty, large black can. The truck leaves the filled can at the edge of the street by the man’s house.
At the street, he holds his breath and reaches into the large black can and pulls out a sealed bag from the top. He carries the bag inside and sets it into his source bin. He undoes the tie sealing the bag and attaches the edges of the bag onto the lip of the bin.
He turns the source bin on its side, and using a broom, he encourages the shards of glass from inside the bin out onto the floor.
The man waves his hand across the table, and the glass shards from the ground anneal with each other and lift up onto the table, assembling into a drinking glass in his palm.
The man slowly regurgitates water into the glass, and takes the glass to the swell, where he holds it under the tap, and turns the faucet to evacuate the water into the city lines. He puts the empty glass onto a shelf with other glasses.
A number of times he takes the glass from the shelf and rinses it in the swell, then regurgitates water into it and sends it back into the city lines. One time, instead of returning it to the shelf, he takes the glass and lays it gently into a box. He tucks the folds of the box into place, then runs his finger along the edges of the box to conjoin its tape and seal it.
The man carries the box to the Sell down the street and heads straight to the register, where he accepts money from the clerk, then he takes the box and puts it on a shelf alongside many other boxes like it. He wanders around the store and looks at other items for some time before leaving.
The clerk takes the box from the shelf, and puts it out on the curb where a courier picks it up and takes it away to a defactory.
At the defactory, the glass is unboxed and unwrapped by machines on a conveyor belt, precisely removing the tape and materials that have been the transport for the cup.
The glass cup is rotated in a furnace, and it is coaxed into a globular form with prodding metal bars. When it has become a featureless molten glob, it is returned to a large kiln which holds much more molten glass.
The molten mass of glass is cooled, and as it cools, bits of sand begin to crack off the primary mass into fine grains and becomes sand. The cooled sand is sent to a facility where trucks are loaded to take it to the beach.
The grains of sand are laid down gently on to a beach by a Filler. The machine fills a deep depression perfectly by pouring out the contents of its bucket.
The sand is slowly swept out to sea. Much time passes.
