Plastic Sea — What's Left, Page 16
By Inkroost · Published
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Transcript
Underwater in sunlit turquoise water, Roka sinks slowly, eyes closed, one arm through the orange ring float, bright shards of plastic swirling around him. Beside him slides the Maw's vast milky eye, set in a hide of hexagonal plates crusted with barnacles and plastic. It passes him by.
Image description
Underwater, Roka drifts limp through bright plastic debris holding the orange float as the monster's huge milky eye passes beside him.
About this chapter
In the dark at the bottom of the sea, something is counting. On Candyreef, a candy-coloured island of floating trash, Roka wakes to a water bag in the face from his street crew, lifts breakfast from the old woman who would have fed him anyway, and tells the kid who follows him that he doesn't owe anybody. Then the gulls lift all at once, and a Maw eats half the island. A day and a night alone at sea later, the Garden Ship fishes him out and orders him to walk its treadwheels for fish heads. Roka is nobody's slave, so he goes looking for something to steal instead, and breaks into a barnacled case dredged from the seabed. The silver dust inside climbs into his arm and says hello. It is polite. It is curious. It wants every human dead. And it has just started counting again.