Prospecting for plastic

As the muddy-red moon glared down, Imperatrice surveyed the vast ruined landscape around her, littered with rubble, lined with technological scars. Quickly, she whispered an almost voiceless prayer.

May the hunt be good.

May the harvest be fruitful.

May the Earth provide.

Around her, dozens of other earthlings were scavenging for the same prize – original pre-apocalyptic plastic. They were thinner and more translucent than any humans she’d encountered in the locality. They also wore exotic proto-metallic clothing that bore no resemblance to Terran clothing, and so they clearly weren’t earth-born earthlings, but some star-born variety from a distant earthling station. After more than one generation in space, the human form tended to change in unpredictable ways. Distinctions between humans were no longer always cultural or racial. Now there were distinct sub-species too.

Whatever their origins, whatever their characteristics, star-born humans inevitably returned to their ancestral planet. And usually, within a few months, most of them would join the hunt for plastic, with dreams of striking it rich.

As those other-worldly human genus beings picked their way through old wheels, discarded engines, spools of razor wire and miscellaneous alloys now rusted beyond recognition, Imperatrice had to wonder why they’d selected this unlikely spot for their prospecting. Did their off-world technology give them data she could not access? Had they detected something on some arcane instrument?

Briefly, she felt the pang of hope. Perhaps today would be different. Perhaps today she would chance on an old soda bottle, a cache of plastic knives or spoons, or a set of Tupperware containers, all nested nicely together. Such a find might provide enough income to feed her and Bateleur for a year. Such treasures were still out there. Everybody said so. Every day she dreamt of stumbling across one, just lying there in some irradiated puddle of sludge. In a chaotic universe, ruled by the laws of chance, miracles were not just possible – they were statistically inevitable.

Carefully, she picked her away across the debris. Even after two hundred years, most of the stainless steel was still intact, if not completely free of corrosion. The only way to avoid injury was to step carefully. Not even titanium footwear was any guarantee against injury, or the consequent radiation contamination.

Suddenly, her polymer detector beeped.

It was so faint, and so buffered by reverb, that she almost ignored it. But she had learnt long ago that machines make far fewer mistakes than human beings. So, she paused, and returned to the spot. Slowly she moved back, then forward once more, and once again…

….beep!

She bent down. Titanium gloves prodded into the ground. Something yielded – something soft but cohesive. Something, like….plastic?

Beep! her polymer detector moaned.

In a frenzy she dug, carefully excavating the mud around the object, then gently extricating it from the clutches of the Earth. Whatever it was, it wasn’t very big. Nonetheless, a modest amount of ancient pre-apocalyptic plastic of that size would easily provide more than enough wealth to buy a home, or to lease a small piece of land on the moon.

On uncovering the object, however, she was stumped, for it was a strange object indeed. It had an oddly symmetrical shape, one strangely familiar. However, though she may have seen something like it before in old archived files, she had no idea what it was.

It was certainly a strange shape and colour for ancient plastic, at least to her young and untrained eye. However, plastic had been produced in such a wide plethora of forms before the apocalypse that it was simply impossible to tell. Some of those forms were rough and rock hard; others were smooth and pliable. There was green plastic, black plastic, translucent plastic, luminous plastic, plastic that was radiant and multi-hued, and plastic that was dull and monotone. From thick and durable to flimsy and membrane thin, that ancient miracle material had been cast in every hue and shape, at one point the most ubiquitous material in the world, and unquestionably one of humankind’s most astonishing achievements.

Unobtrusively, she slipped it into her garment.

Surely her man Bateleur would know.

It took her several hours to make her way out of the prospecting fields, for the throngs of fortune hunters were now bearing down on the locality in great numbers. Perhaps word had now got out about this field and there’d soon be a fully-fledged ‘plastic rush’ in progress.

Once beyond the fields of steel and iron, Imperatrice headed to her home, deep in the heart of the slum. She found Bateleur at home, sitting on the bed, in a soporific state, inebriated with rotting grape juice. It was sad to see a man of such intellectual prowess in such a state of powerlessness. Things had not been easy for Bateleur. It was not easy being the repository of all human knowledge, but still not able to put food on the table.

“Imperatrice,” he said dourly, the moment she appeared in his doorway. “You’re back quickly.” He sat up and glared at her. “Have you found another worthless trinket for me to look at?”

“This time I think it’s plastic,” Imperatrice said hotly. “Please, please, please this time let it be plastic.”

Bateleur threw back his head and laughed. “Oh Imperatrice,” he said darkly. “How I love the way you cling to hope.” He snorted. “Plastic, dear girl, was really a by-product of petroleum, you know. Once the climate crisis necessitated the end of the combustion engine, that was truly the beginning of the end for plastic.”

“I know the story,” Imperatrice sighed.

“Once plastic choked the rivers and estuaries of this planet. Once it threatened the seas, this thing we value so highly now.”

“Yes, I know. Supply dried up, demand rose, and so did the price. You’ve said this many times.”

“Soon human beings drained every remaining particle of plastic from the waters of the Earth – not because of any concern for the planet, but because of greed. Vast landfills of plastic soon became vast repositories of wealth for the narcissistic classes. Plastic, once worthless, was soon priceless.”

“Bateleur, just look at it, please,” Imperatrice said softly. “You never know. You just never know.”

“Okay,” Bateleur sighed, and dropped his head into his hands. “Show me what you have.”

Imperatrice walked over to the bed. “Here,” she said, withdrawing the object from her garment and dropping it onto the dirty sheets.

“A heart-shaped locket?” Bateleur said in surprise.

“If you say so,” she shrugged.

“Well,” he said, his eyebrows arching upwards as he picked up the object. “It looks to be pure gold.” He wiped away some of the grime. “Unfortunately,” he said ruefully, “gold is plentiful. They mine it on every moon from here to Uranus.”

Suddenly the locket sprung open. In it was a stone, of iridescent hue.

“A diamond,” Bateleur grunted. “Do you have any idea how much these were worth before the apocalypse?”

“No.”

“A whole lot more than plastic,” Bateleur grumbled. “Now they grow them in petrie dishes.”

He groaned and lay back on the bed.

“In theory,” he said, as he closed his eyes, “plastic should be far easier to make than diamonds. You know, natural diamonds actually take many millions of years to form.”

“I know, Bateleur. So you’ve said,” Imperatrice said, sinking onto the bed in disappointment. “Many, many, many times.”

“I love you, Imperatrice.”

“I know,” she replied, as her body curled around his.

And then they both drifted off, to a place of plenty, where the water was free of poison, where the wind didn’t spit sharp shards of radiation, where the cockroaches were fat and nutritious, and the roads were paved in plastic.