Karma - The Relic | #PlanetOrPlastic

The head astronaut supported one side of the translucent container easily, "Leric's the descendant of the stingray transported in 'The Arc' to Mars." I struggled with the opposite side as we lowered it onto a table inside the holding facility. Astronauts were enhanced to be physically superior. I, head engineer of the 17th colony: Arma, had genes to make me smarter.

Humans had been trying to introduce Earth's flora and fauna in all their colonies for decades. Leric was one of the many to be released into Arma's pristine mega-ocean.

Rumbling roars echoed, source uncharted in the dense swirling clouds. One astronaut, inserting Leric's chips into slots at the container's side, looked up through the transparent ceiling. "Are those... Armak, natives of Arma?" I nodded, panting.

After the chips were inserted, the table whirred to life, connecting to the base terminals of the container. It slowly lit up: revealing the prone form of Leric, multiple tubes disengaging from her head after the chips successfully integrated. Propelled through the tubes to different parts of Leric's brain, each chip had memories right from the original stingray that had swum in Earth's oceans.

Leric would wake up anytime now.

There was a deafening ripping sound: a grayish sheet floated down from the sky. Gesturing to the "sheet", I said, "Armak spend their whole lives airborne, frequently shedding skin. Visually, they seem reptilian. Anatomically they resemble insects."

"Huge insects." One astronaut observed as a wing peeked through the clouds, span length longer than a human's height.

"And that's killing everything?"

"Though dissolving harmlessly inside oceans, when it ultimately evaporates on land noxious fumes are released which cause long term DNA damage in humans." I shrugged miserably, "And the ones unluckily trapped underneath die of suffocation before we can save them."

"Pollution." A mechanic voice echoed.

Leric was awake, her sparkly eyes staring.

Three tubes remained attached to the back of her head. Two for transcribing human language into a form Leric understood and vice versa, and one for projecting images from her head onto the walls of her container when her vocabulary didn't suffice.

"You were listening?" the head astronaut started.

Leric projected an image on the wall of the container – waste drifting underwater. It was a memory of the original stingray, the things floating in the water being "plastic", the handmade demon that had trashed Earth.

"You infringe upon other's territory." Leric's droning speakers weren't programmed to change the tenor of her "voice" according to Leric's emotion – making it scarier.

"Murderers. Destroying the planet, then showing great benevolence in carting us to new planets you choose to ruin." The image shifted – another stingray (perhaps Leric's ancestor's mate?), accompanied by a human female, swimming in an ocean that had more plastic than water. 

The image disappeared, leaving them only to regard her eyes gazing deep into their souls – descendant of oppressed blaming descendants of oppressors, "At least in this planet, the tables have turned."