PLANET OR PLASTIC

My fishing line is gently dancing with the rhythm of the waves. Nothing at the horizon except the endless ocean. The sun is already low. I knew that I wouldn't catch anything today... After all, there was a terrible storm yesterday and the fish fled far away from the Islet! I can understand them, storms tend to release the toxic substances from the decomposing plastics which serve as the soil of the Islet.

I tidy my fishing equipment, and leave home without anything to eat. A gull follows my walk, as disappointed as me from my lack of grip. Gulls, humans and rats, the only living things you can find on the Islet. Everything else is plastic: plastic for the soil, plastic for our houses, plastic for our clothes. Plastic everywhere ....

One day, a traveler told me that there are plants and trees on the main Island. It's our only source of vegetables because nothing growths on plastic but they are quite a luxury product. Not the type of thing my mother and I can afford. Not that I don't like fish, shell, or seaweed but I would do anything to taste a fresh lemon one day.

I enter the house, one of the smallest in the Islet, but comfy enough for two people. My mother isn't here. She is certainly still working at the Islet's Cabaret. I collapse on my bed, tired of fishing all day. The wind resonates between the plastic walls and rings the little bell in the entrance. This bell is one of the only objects in metal that I know in the Islet, and its sound is one of my most precious childhood memories. I remember when mother told me the stories of the Islet and all the other plastic islands. We were lying in bed, the sun was almost set, and the night wind took its place. The bell was fluttering softly and rang periodically, like a shield against the rats that come out at night.

She told me that, many centuries ago, people who lived on the continents didn't pay attention to their consumption. All their stuff was disposable, and when they had finished using it, they threw it in the ocean. The amount of plastic was so enormous that it began to kill all the marine life. The currents carried all the waste and concentrated it in a specific area in the middle of the ocean. After years and years, it created huge islands several meters thick. The survivors that fled the destruction of the continents, caused by pollution and war, found refuge on this plastic island. They created a bonafide society which became the one I was born in.

This is the story of my people, the people of the plastic islands. The life here, in the middle of the ocean, is harsh but we manage with what we have!

So yeah, welcome to the 8th continent!