Plastic Sea — What's Left, Page 34
By Inkroost · Published
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Transcript
Panel 1: In the dim hold, Roka holds his chrome right forearm across his chest and stares down into the eye on the back of his hand. Roka: '...I'm a human.' Panel 2: Extreme close-up: the eye half-closes, like a sigh. Tohum: '...Oh.' 'That's disappointing.' Panel 3: Roka yells down at the eye; it perks back open. Roka: 'DISAPPOINTING?!' Tohum: 'Don't worry. It's not personal.'
Image description
Roka holds his chrome right forearm across his chest and stares into the eye on the back of his hand; it sighs that he is human and says it is not personal.
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.