The Slick | Planet or Plastic

The Slick

My father said the ocean was blue.

He said when he was a kid it was like a gigantic sapphire lying over most of the world-- an unapologetic presence that ancient societies believed it could birth gods. He said the whitish foam would stick to golden sand, that people rode boards on white tipped waves and dived to the old world.

He said the water sparked with the sun bore down, and as it fell to its knees again the water would enrobe the sunset in glinting glory.

He said the moon would call the water and it would swell up to try and touch it's far off bride. He said they were called tides.

There are no tides now.

They stopped calling it the ocean a long time ago.

I wonder what a sapphire looked like.

I sipped and cringed at my too bitter coffee. It was all I could stand before I went to work. I knew from experience there was no food gentle enough to tempt me when it wouldn't stay down.

I sat down my empty ceramic mug on the kitchen table before stepping outside, where Dan was waiting for me. We made our way silently down the decrepit street. There was no need to start gagging before it was necessary.

It wasn't long before we got in line for our axes and shovels, the walk was less than half a mile. Down the line came our brown aged masks, the only protection afforded for the workers of the Slick. There were never enough masks to make it down the line. Dan and I were lucky today.

I look out onto the warped salty corpse from the line I wondered if it smelled differently before. Rotted garbage rammed its fingers down my throat, the odor was strong enough to rest on your tongue and cling to your clothes.

Dan and I hefted our tool allotment on our shoulders and shuffled through the stinking sand to the border of the Slick. It was the start of an endless pit of yellowed water and garbage--- sprinkled with the remains of animals that were extinct and forgotten to the world. The whales were the worst, they took the longest to decompose, even now.

I swung my ax into a melted together block of plastic, breaking it apart enough for Dan to collect it with his spike and put it into his crate. At noon it would be his turn for the ax.

It took an hour before I found some dead creatures bones, so buried that there was still bits of meat attached to the ribs. I gagged and was able to shove it to the side so Dan could reach the plastic. This was the side of Project Plastic the world didn't like to see, but as long as we gathered enough plastic for the world to reuse they didn't care. As I slipped into mechanical movements I let my mind wander, wander to sapphires...