Photo by Jong Marshes on Unsplash
Who doesn’t love a good monster? A sea monster at that. The ocean has long been a symbol of darkest fears. It is an unfathomable depth, which hides untold secrets. Even us modern humans, with our great scientific feats, have yet to truly conquer it. There is a great deal of the ocean that is uncharted. What do you think lies beneath the waves?
Here is what I wrote:
It looked solid. Perhaps we had charted a new landmass. Folds of plastic, you could see the tectonic plates in action. Pressing against each other, the murky polymers stretched into the horizon writhing and shaking. The landscape was sparse. There was an occasional hill that would bob up and down. The flat plateaus were in constant motion, more like waves than land.
We were cutting through, separating the continents. Colonisers of the new world. Between the masses of land, you could see shadows of liquid. It was difficult to discern the colour, but it was not one familiar. I took out a net and plunged it into a crack, rupturing an island into halves. The island flopped about, sloping away.
“Have you seen this?” I said.
Beth walked over, peering over my shoulder.
“That isn’t a health colour.” The water was a deep purple, subtly different. If you weren’t searching it would have gone by unnoticed. Most of the water was too dark and opaque to make sense of.
“Maybe it’s pigment from a label or some dye used on the plastic.”
“This isn’t just dye. Look it’s everywhere. This would take a huge amount of concentrated colour.” I sloshed around the net, picking up sheets of plastic and emptying them on deck. “It hard to move the netting through it, like it’s thicker than normal water.”
Beth began examining the plastic, none of it was identifiable. All the labels had faded, but she could make out the pale colours. None of them were purple.
“We should take samples.” Beth went to the back of the boat and levered open a crate. I continued pushing plastic away to unveil more of the sea. As well as various containers and tubs, there were paper wrappers disintegrating. The water was bubbling. Parts of it seemed more regular, still saturated with litter and discoloured, but an expected brown. Other areas were like treacle. My arms were beginning to ache. I stopped, leaning against the side of the boat.
“Do you think this will change their plans?”
“I doubt it.”
“It’ll at least give us an excuse to delay things.”
“Why are you here if you are so adamant it’s a bad idea? More importantly, how did you get hired?”
I thought it over. My mind was brought back to that first meeting. It all sounded too good to be true, the amount of funding and they were pitching to me. That doesn’t happen in the world of research, not to the likes of me. “Do you really think it’s a good idea?”
Beth gave me a sarcastic glare as if to say “do you think I’m stupid? Of course not!”. That’s what I hope it meant, at least. This last month was our first time having prolonged interaction. I still wasn’t sure I understood her half the time. We sat in silence. I was thinking about what was loaded in the crate. This wasn’t worth half a million, not in this economy. Still, it was a flashy number. To people like me, who have only ever seen big sums when it is debt, it seemed like a saviour.
My notes:
