by Neil Clarke
They told their stories, one by one, what they lost and how they had gained a replacement. “To think,” Wen said, “how much damage we’ve done with plastic; how much we’ve destroyed. And how plastic might turn around and save us, in return.”
“We’ve lost a lot; I won’t deny we’ve lost a lot. It was a hard lesson. The world is changed,” Michael said.
“The world is always changing,” Wen said. “We just have to find a direction for it.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Audra said, laughing, “it seems to have found its direction on its own.”
They contemplated that for a while, gazing off to Egg Island as the sun set, wishing for the morning.
And in the morning it was there, a few hundred yards away, a faint new slap of water hitting plastics. Egg Island was a looser island than Sister Island, and there would only be a day or so to weave plastic ropes into it, to maintain some kind of integrity to it as they went forward. Some swam over, dragging ropes and nets behind them; some paddled over on foam boards. They pushed aside the plastic eggs, looking like mottled Easter eggs that lay strewn over the surface. They pushed some down into the matted debris, and used the coils of ropes and plastic bags they’d brought over from Sister Island to sew the island together. They walked carefully, but even so they had to rescue each other from patches where their legs went through. It was safer to kneel and inch their way around, patting and tucking, pushing ropes down and through and up again.
They worked quickly and efficiently, patch by patch, tightening the island so it would maintain integrity, aware that the island would only be here briefly. “This part needs help,” someone would call out, and one or two people would nod and kneel their way across to that section, pulling pieces together, working like weavers on a giant, watery loom.
The island landed up against their own island, and they took a break, went home, ate quickly, and went back to work. One particularly bad section required a ladder laid flat on it to hold their weight as they worked to restore it. On the far side, a wide fish net with ballast had been caught and dragged along; they hoisted it up and wove it in. A hairnet, Audra thought briefly and then tied her section into the mass of the island.
They worked for two days that way, barely speaking, pushing in lines and pulling them out, sewing the island, tugging at it, patting it and pushing it.
Egg Island was still moving even as it rested against Sister Island; it had its own volition, its own imperative to move, move, move on.
“Soon,” Johncy said. “I think tomorrow,” and they nodded, exhausted, and slept without further discussion. The constant work had tamped down their sense of anticipation, but now it rose again and even as exhaustion overtook them, they slept fitfully, waiting for dawn.
The island was now just touching on the east end of Sister Island; it had shifted slightly all night long, touching and moving the length of Sister Island. They could feel the tactile way the two islands met, a handshake, a rub on the shoulder, the smallest, most basic communion. Not that anyone believed the islands were alive. They were part of a new order, however. The earth was ingesting the plastics and mixing the plastics and finding a new use for them. The unnatural was becoming the natural. The order was changing and it hardly mattered whether it was for better or for worse.
And in the midst of all the change, strange new beauties occurred.
They worked all day and kept vigil when the dark fell and the moon rose. They sat and murmured on their own moving island, talking of nothing important. Things they’d seen, books they’d read, odd places they’d been. But their conversations only lasted a few minutes and they would pause and listen. Their ears played tricks on them; their eyes saw shapes that turned out to be yet another plastic bag, with trapped air bubbles, a child’s toy, a piece of Styrofoam, all things that they gathered and saved. “If you see a plastic arm wash by,” Audra said, “please save it for me!”
“Or a leg!” Michael cried.
“I think a plastic eye would be hard to spot,” Johncy said.
And then the first sea turtle appeared, breaking out of the water, its reptile head prehistoric and determined. On Sister Island, the people stiffened and pointed and got to their feet and stepped over onto Egg Island, now close to detaching itself from Sister Island. The turtle dragged itself up Egg Island slowly, thick flippers pushing against discarded flashlights and computer keyboards and the tarps and pails of the island, its shell toughened and knobbed with small pieces of plastics. And then another and another, all huge and gnarled, and they moved across the discarded plastics that had been thrown into the sea and had grown into the sea. One by one they inched their way forward, their backs stippled with plastics that had latched onto their animal bodies, seamless and as irreproachable as Audra’s arm, as Wen’s heart. It was a selective turn in the usefulness of flesh, in the utility of plastic. Omnipresent now, polluting what had formerly been pristine, pierced by the shoot, the claw, the plow, plastics had threaded their ways back into life.
The turtles selected their space and shifted, pushing their great bodies back and forth, having found the spot where they would lay their eggs, which had gathered bits of microbeads in the process of forming. The eggshells had once been smooth; they now had a granular quality to them, like sand in paint. Was it an evolutionary device, making them unpalatable to predators? The turtles’ massive heads looked straight ahead, mouths slightly open from their efforts. These mouths ended in sharp beaks, and their infants would only emerge when their own beaks were strong enough to pierce the mix of plastic and calcium housing them.
Audra leaned delicately from where she stood on the edge of Sister Island and patted the head of a turtle that had chosen a spot near her. She patted it with her 3D arm. She felt the turtle’s damp knobby head, then let her hand move down to its carapace. The leatherback’s shell was not as hard as other turtles’. It had bony plates beneath the skin on its back, and Audra could feel irregularities on the plates, a feel of edges and lines that felt, to her delicate 3D fingers, familiar; related. Bits and pieces of plastics had worked through the turtle’s skin to the plates below. The turtles, the eggshells, her arm, Wen’s heart: all connected, all synchronous.
The whole event was over in less than an hour. The eggs were laid, the turtles covered them with any loose debris so that they would remain hidden among the other types of plastic overlaying and underlaying the island. They heaved themselves around and used their massive flippers to drive themselves forward, until finally they slipped back into the ocean. Heads could be seen leaving steadily away from the island, and then the heads dipped silently, one by one, and were gone.
The moon was setting, running a light on the ocean. A few oil slicks picked up muted rainbow colors and the merest movements of the waves broke the colors up like a sophisticated painting. A single turtle head surfaced and disappeared again.
“I want to live here forever,” Audra thought, picking idly at the garbage closest to her. It seemed her arm, the 3D arm, was intent on sifting and sorting.
Egg Island pulled away slowly, like a lumbering train obeying strict laws. It wavered and washed in the setting moon’s last luminous light.
On Sister Island, they joined hands and rejoiced at the beauty of the world.
About the Author
Karen Heuler’s stories appear in literary, fantasy, and science fiction magazines regularly and have won various awards, including an O. Henry. Her 2014 novel, Glorious Plague, was about a strangely beautiful apocalypse, and her second story collection, The Inner City, was chosen as one of the best books of 2013 by Publishers Weekly.
Summer at Grandma’s House
Hao Jingfang
He pondered silently: the chain of unconnected actions that had determined his doom and destiny had been of his own creation.
After this summer, I finally understand what Camus said of Sisyphus.
I never looked at the word “fate” this way before. In the past, I always thought that either it was pr
earranged, and all we had to do was follow along; or that it didn’t exist at all, so we had to devise our own path in life.
I didn’t realize there might be a third option.
A
In August, I leave for my grandmother’s home in the country, fleeing ruckus like Newton fled the Black Plague. I want a quiet summer, nothing more.
The taxi drives out of the city, then along the dusty highway. I stuff my big, empty backpack under the seat and slump against the window.
Really, I’m not running away from anything earth-shattering. My graduation from college is going to be delayed a year. I broke up with my girlfriend. On top of that, I’m feeling a touch of ennui, leaving me unable to take interest in anything. The last one scares me a bit, but other than that, there’s nothing big. I’m not given to drama.
Mom approved. Find someplace to fix up your spirits, she told me, and come back ready for another go. She thought I was really tormented, which wasn’t true. There’s no way I could get her to understand that, though.
My grandmother’s little two-story bungalow sits at the foot of the mountain, its red roof hidden in the dense treetops.
A small chalkboard hangs from the wooden door. Written on it is: “Zhanzhan, I’ve gone shopping. The door is unlocked, so come in on your own when you arrive. There’s food in the fridge.”
I try pulling on the door handle, but it doesn’t budge. It doesn’t turn either, even when I twist harder. I can only sit on the steps and wait.
Grandma’s getting muddle-minded with age, I think. She must have locked the door by habit when she left, then forgot about it.
Grandpa passed away early. My grandmother’s lived here ever since she retired. Mom and Dad wanted to buy her a house in the city, but she turned down all their offers. She said she was used to living alone, as she pleased. She disliked the noise and clamor of the city.
For all her life, Grandma was a college professor; her mind and body were still sound. So Dad agreed. We keep saying we’ll spend a holiday here, but either Dad would be busy, or I’d have something planned with my schoolmates and couldn’t cancel.
I hope Grandma can still take care of herself on her own here, I think to myself, sitting on the steps.
Grandmother finally returns in the evening, quickening her strides when she sees me in the distance. She smiles at me. “Zhanzhan, when did you arrive? Why didn’t you go in the house?”
I dust off my butt and stand up. Grandma walks up the steps, shifts all her bags to her right hand, and pushes the door with her left hand, on the side closer to the hinges—opposite from the handle. Just like that, the door swings open, no fuss. Grandma walks in first, holding the door open for me.
My face flushes a little. I hurry in after her. It looks like I was overthinking things earlier.
Night descends. Night in the countryside is quiet and tranquil, just the dance of tree shadows cast by the moon.
Grandma quickly prepares dinner. The rich fragrance of beef fills the small house. After a long day of travel, the smell makes me ravenous.
“Zhanzhan, bring me the mayonnaise in the kitchen, please.” Grandma carefully sets a tureen of steamed eggs with mushroom on the table.
My grandmother’s kitchen is spacious and decorated in soft colors. Soup simmers on the stove, wreathed in steam.
I pull open the fridge, only to get a shock: inside of the fridge is a baking tray, and the inner walls glow red with heat. A row of apple pastries are crisping on the tray. The sweet smell of butter and honey assaults my face.
Turns out this is the oven. I hurriedly push it shut.
Where’s the fridge, then? I turn around. There’s a glass-windowed metal door under the stove—I assumed that was the oven. I walk over and pull it open, and discover that it’s a dishwasher.
So I pull open the dishwasher, and find that it’s a water purifier; pull open the water purifier, and find that it’s a trash can; open the trash can, and find that it’s filled with a broad selection of CDs, neatly sorted.
Finally I realize that the “heating unit” under the window—I thought it looked like a radiator in its ridged casing—is, in fact, the fridge. I locate the mayonnaise, and make sure to open the lid and sniff it, just to make sure the jar doesn’t actually contain condensed milk. Only after I’ve checked do I return to the dining room.
Grandma already has bowls and chopsticks set out. The instant I sit down I start stuffing my face.
B
I spend the next few days furiously learning how to identify everything.
Almost nothing in Grandma’s house has a function that matches what you’d expect from the form. The coffeepot is a penholder, the penholder is a lighter, the lighter is a flashlight, the flashlight is a jam container.
That last one gives me trouble. It’s the middle of the night when I get up to go to the bathroom. I unthinkingly grab the “flashlight” in the living room, only to get a handful of jam. In the darkness, the wet stickiness on my hand scares the sleep right out of me. When the realization dawns, my first instinct is to get a tissue, but the tissue box is filled with white sugar. I reach for the lamp. Who could have guessed that the table lamp is fake, and that the switch is actually a mousetrap?
With a sharp pa, I find myself in an awkward situation. On my left hand is jam dipped in white sugar. On my right hand is a table lamp smeared with cheese.
“Grandma!” I call softly, but don’t hear a reply. I can only climb the stairs, keeping both hands lifted in front of me. Her bedroom is dark, but yellow-orange light seeps from a small room at the end of the hallway.
“Grandma?” I try, outside of the room.
Following muffled scrapes of table and chair, Grandma appears at the door. She looks me over and bursts right into laughter. “Come with me,” she says.
The room turns out to be much larger than I thought. The lights are bright, and it takes my eyes a moment to adjust. Only then do I see that this is a lab.
Grandma takes an oddly-shaped little key from a drawer and frees me from the table-lamp-mousetrap. I lick my fingers. The cheese still smells delicious.
“Why are you doing experiments this late in the night?” I can’t help but ask.
“With bacterial colony growth, I have to take observations every hour.” Smiling, Grandma leads me over to a milk-colored countertop. A neat row of round Petri dishes lie on the counter, each filled with a translucent substance that looks like medicinal cream.
“Is this . . . nutrient agar?” I’ve done similar experiments at school.
Grandma nods. “I’m observing the movement of transposons in the bacteria.”
“Transposons?”
Grandma opens one of the Petri dishes on her end. She hefts it in her hand and says, “They’re pieces of DNA capable of encoding reverse transcription enzyme, which allows them to migrate along DNA, breaking away or re-integrating themselves. I want to use them to insert synthetic genes for drug resistance.”
Grandma sets the lid back on. “But I don’t know if it will work. This Petri dish is exposed to the air, providing a low-humidity environment. The one next to it is submerged in a sugar solution. The one after that has been enriched with extra ATP.”
I follow her example and open the Petri dish closest to me. “What are the conditions in this one?”
I dab my cheese-covered fingertip on the agar. I know that having plenty of nutrients makes cells reproduce faster, which should speed up the genetic integration.
“Zhanzhan!” Grandma hesitates, then says, “That’s the control sample. It’s not supposed to have any added factors.”
I’m always like that, full of assumptions when I do things, and careless ones at that.
One time, when Jingjing and I fought, she said that I always went about things impulsively, inconsiderately, immaturely. She’s right, I think. She was complaining about the way I always forgot to call her, but I know my problem goes further than that. Jingjing’s a person with lots of plans, and the capability to
carry out each one of them reliably, but I’m the total opposite. When I try to carry out my plans, they always go wrong, as sure as bread lands butter-side down.
Without a control, Grandma will have to redo the whole experiment. She can keep observing, technically, but at the least she wouldn’t be able to use it in proper published results.
I’m panicked, unsure of what I should do, but Grandma doesn’t seem to be angry at all.
“It’s no big deal,” Grandma says. “I could use a sample with added cholesterol anyway.”
And Grandma really does take out a marker pen, makes a note on the lid, and keeps on observing.
C
The next morning, Grandma makes sweet osmanthus flower porridge. The morning sun is lovely shining down on the countryside. The only sound for miles around is birdsong.
Grandma asks me if I have any plans for these few days. None, I say. That’s the truth. The only thing I might want to do is think about what I might want to do.
“Your mother says your graduation was delayed because of English, but I don’t see how that could be the case. Weren’t you an English major before you switched? You should be quite good at English.”
“I didn’t test past the fourth level,” I mumble. “I forgot to register in junior year, and this year I forgot the test date.”
I gulp down the porridge with my head lowered, and stuff up my mouth with a sandwich.
I’m not afraid of any English exams, no, but that might have been why I failed to take them seriously. As for my change in major, that’s starting to look like another mistake. I switched to environmental studies, only to discover I didn’t care that much about the environment. Then I fled to hardware engineering in junior year, and attended a year’s worth of biology too. The result was today: I was jack of all majors, master of none.
Grandma cuts me another half slice of bacon. “What did your mother say before you came?”