The unused filter

 The cylinder was dumped an hour ago.

It looks like some sort of fallen spaceship. For tiny aliens.
It looked pristine and completely out of place among the old pieces of litter.
Awkward old and moldy shapes and materials. But the filter was completely intact. Clean and unstained.
Though most of the people leaving their cars to dump their rubbish couldn’t recognize its shape and simply ignored it, as it was in their minds tainted by the wastes.

A young husband and wife dealing with their severance from hippydom and into family life.
They were hauling out a window frame with a good main pane and a wonderfully decorated stain glass. The woman almost tripped over the air filter.
“What the hell is this?” she says.
The husband looks back at it. “it's a vat of agrotoxin used on the local corn crops.” he snorts cynically.
“Eew.” She says.

An older man in his fifties came upon it and actually picked it up.
His nephew spoke up “Oh whoah.”
“It’s a new robot stomach son”
His nephew looked up at his uncle unbelievingly.
Why would a robot need a stomach? His nephew thought.
The nephew picked it up and threw it across the landfill.

A girl and her mother were throwing out old paper and damp books. The girl saw the air filter land close to the last books she left. She picked it up. It was so light.
She turned it in her hands, her mother continued to the trunk of the car and came out with her arms full and threw it all down, just keeping her daughter in her peripheral vision but not actually checking what she was doing.

She attempts to throw it exclaiming please dont touch the trash honey. Except the air filter catches the wind and makes it back into the daughters hands. The mother turns red noticing that other people have now turned to observe her and her daughter. Her shrill voice had given her away. Her daughter's giggling felt like an irritating social sabotage. Her arms wanted to reach out and throw it again this time far away where her daughter wouldn't get it. But no, now the eyes were there.

The air filter looked at her daughter's favorite new toy.
The woman let her keep it. She didn’t know what it was and almost changed her mind as she drove home with her daughter playing with it in the back.
After a morning of the daughter getting acquainted with the air filter she opened the purifier in her mother’s bedroom.

“What are you doing?” Her mother asked. But the daughter tucked the piece in. It fit.
“A new filter mom.” Her daughter said.
It was in fact working and as both mother and daughter both put their heads against the purifier.
The hum of it, comforting and homely.