It's Raining Again

Today, when the town of New Granville woke up, it wasn’t our familiar clocks that aroused us, but some hard material that was descending slowly from the sky and landing on our streets and hitting roofs, making tapping sounds as they landed - although softly - startled us. Our little luscious, green hill town was now covered with these materials all over our lawns and pavements. 

Still in my pyjamas, as it was only seven in the morning, I stood in my doorway, stuck my hand out, and patiently waited for one of the pieces to fall into my hand so I could examine it. They rained down leisurely, each piece looking different from the other. If the objects dropped down any faster, they could seriously hurt someone. When one landed in my hand, I took a minute to investigate it. 

It was in a strange, solid, chunky shape about the size of my fist. The physical feeling of it felt alien to me. It was smooth, but also had a hint of rigidity, and I really had no idea what it was. I picked up another piece that fell on my dahlias. This piece, as opposed to the random shape in my left hand, almost looked like a little, doll-like figure. It was about the size of my thumb, yellow, rectangular, and its head had a little hole in it. Next to it, lay a little gold packet with the words MAGNUM printed on it. This piece felt light, only smooth, and soft, but it was still a texture I was unfamiliar with.

Neighbours had their heads stuck out the windows, looking up and down, just as confused as I was. I saw a man pick up a piece as well. He nodded at me and started collecting pieces off his lawn. Did he know what these were, keeping the objects in case they were useful? Or was he just curious, like me.

Last spring, it rained sugar cubes for a day, when we needed a reminder to feed some sweet stuff to the horses. A few weeks ago, the sky poured blood when someone in town needed a transfusion and nobody in town had the correct blood type (that one was gross, but luckily, it rained closer to the hospital, not over any homes). When it rains, it means we need something. So maybe I should be picking up the mysterious material too, before everyone else takes it all.

I shut my door and went straight to my grandfather's grandfather clock which sat in my dining area. He was brown and sturdy, and he still looked pretty tired. 

“What is that stuff?” I asked him. “Do we need it?”

“Good morning to you too,” he said, an impatient chime, and tone. 

“Hi, hello, good morning,” I said obligingly. “What is that stuff?” I wasn’t too eager to know. I was sure the town would figure out its usage and that it likely is for something very important, I just don’t know yet. 

“I don’t know, but your mother is coming over in thirty three minutes from now,” the clock said, followed by a yawn. “With your aunt. 

“Why?”

“I’m a clock, not a crystal ball. I can read the time, not the future.”

“Kinda the same thing,” I mumbled. “For how long? I have work, which they know.”

“They leave at 7:55. Also, I don’t think you'll be going to work today.

★

I poured my mom and aunt some tea, but instead of the lemon tea, the same material as the objects outside came out of the spout.

“This,” my aunt said, “is what we are here to talk to you about.”

“The rain stuff?” 

“It’s called plastic,” my mother had said, pulling the so-called “plastic” out of the pot. “It was last used a few hundred years ago, for all sorts of things. Bottles, jewellery, chairs. Bigger things, like in homes and technology. Cars. Toys,” she said, gesturing to the tiny doll I took out of my pocket to show them. 

“Why don’t we use it now?” 

“I don’t really remember all the details from school, but I do know that it was bad in some way for people, so they stopped using it. It took a long, long time because people relied on it. Not all the world leaders agreed, but they got rid of plastic eventually,” my aunt told me. She wore a wool sweater and thick earrings made of metal and leaves. Her smile instantly put me at the same ease I get after a cup of hot chocolate. 

“So what happened?” I said, sitting down with them. 

“There is a problem. This town isn't taking it seriously. They think it will pass. But it won’t. My eye glasses cracked this morning, and that means that there is something sinister about this. They are right six out of 10 times. 

I stood up now, my hands on my hips, looking at the two ladies I trust most in the world. 

“So you’re telling me, for the first time in history, that it's raining something not useful. Something bad. Just because of what your glasses told you,” I said.

“Yes.”

“I don’t buy it. We always use whatever falls.”

“Also, through what history taught us,” my mother chimed in. “This material causes problems.”

“A history you forgot,” I added.

“Violet, can you just trust us, and look into this?” My mother said,  

“So you…what? You want me to get rid of it?” I laughed. The idea of not at least trying to use the plastic first made me laugh. 

“We have no idea. We just want you to speak to the trees.”

“I have work and honestly, as much as I am curious about it, even if it’s not personally useful to us, it's old material.”

“But it means something,” they both said. They looked exasperated with me, tired with me. Mom’s hair turned a flaming red, as if I couldn't see her annoyance from her face well enough. 

“How long would this take me?” I asked the clock. 

“Well, I know you’ll leave here at 8:06 am, but I can’t tell what time you’ll be home at,” my clock laughed, mechanically and nervously. 

“What?” I said, shock and tension rising in my voice, coming out in a pitchy sound. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

I turned my gaze towards my family to see if they heard what I just heard. They both looked at each other, then back to me. 

My aunt smiled nervously, her hair turning yellow. “What did you dream about last night, honey? I dreamt of you and the trees, and so did your mom. They’ll tell you what to do.” 

“The trees.” I said in a wary voice, knowing that this meant I really did go have to see the trees.

The trees I have been referring to were trees up on a hill that used to speak to me, but last time I went to them, I was a teenager, and they taught me an annoying moral lesson on why not to lie to your friends. It involved tricking me, and so now I am not too keen on getting classes in ethics from pieces of living wood.  

I sighed and said, “I’ll go call my boss,” in the most monotone but disappointed voice I could manage. 

“Come back over to ours, before you go anywhere too far,” my mother said, her voice warm and indulgent with her love for me. Her hair shone a bright pink.

I kissed them goodbye, but I was pretty tense about the clock's unknowledgeable answer on when I’d be home tonight. 

★

I was out of breath by the time I reached the top of the hill and was panting when a piece of plastic fell on my head. It was soft and delicate. I wasn’t sure what it was used for; it likely was a smaller chunk of a larger object, but I couldn’t see how something so small could be bad. I dropped it onto the earth and rounded the corner to the trees.

The three trees were sisters of the Hemlock species. They were very tall, larger than normal Hemlock trees, slender and muscular, and always chatty when approached. They were called Agnes, Iris, and Penelope. I don’t know how old they are. I tried to ask once, and got an earful of why to never ask a lady of a certain age that. What certain age? I’ll never know. 

While our town had wooden furniture and homes, the Hemlock sisters always advised us when and how to do it ethically and ecologically. 

“Violet,” Agnes said, twisting her body to face me. “You’ve grown since we last saw you! And got a bit fatter?” 

“Hey, it's the 22nd century, you're not supposed to comment on bodies anymore. That was out like a hundred years ago. Should have always been.”

“Speaking of 100 years ago,” Penelope broke in.

“The plastic. What about it?”

“Well, you need to get rid of it,” they said in unison, eyes glowing.

“Okay, well, I don’t know why I should take responsibility for that.”

“All it takes is one person to start it,” Iris said.

“What do you mean?”

The plastic was still slowly descending onto the land. The air that usually smelt green and herbaceous and wet felt a bit different now, but I couldn’t say why.

Agnes moved her branch over to my head, tapping it a little too hard.

“Ow,” I whined. “What was that for?”

She sighed, and gave side eyes to her sisters, a look that said, "how can I possibly not be getting this?”

“You need to work in your sleep,” she said finally.

Penelope spoke next. “You need to first find out from your dream why it's here, and then reverse it, or get rid of it, when you wake up. You’ll figure it out.” 

“The most I’ve dreamt into the past was fifty years,” I explained to them. “Plastic is way older.” 

“That’s why you’ll be sleeping under us, then we can take you back over a hundred years.” Iris said. 

“All we can tell you about plastic is this: Eternal, unyielding, it defies the grasp of time's cruel hand, for though it cannot be vanquished, it may be banished from the land,” whispered Agnes. 

Can’t be vanquished. 

“Now come sleep in our shade, and when you wake, tell us what you see,” Iris said. 

“Now?”

“Now,” they told me, blinking seriously. 

I looked at the village down below and noticed that small piles of plastic were forming. “Wait,” I began, hesitantly. “What if plastic is a good thing, and that's why it's raining plastic. We haven't given it a chance yet.” 

“You don’t want to,” Penelope said. “Go to sleep.” 

So, I did. I took off my coat and used it as a pillow, curled myself up like a cat, and laid down under Agnes. She smelled comforting, like sugared wood and bittersweet citrus from her needles. I closed my eyes and let myself dream.

I saw a clock. It wasn’t my clock, and it wasn’t speaking, so I couldn’t tell who it was or who it belonged to. But the dial kept spinning and spinning. I then stepped foot into a city, with towering buildings and people everywhere I turned, but I couldn’t tell where I was because it was so smokey in the air and over-crowded. More noticeably, plastic was everywhere. I was shocked to see how much plastic it was raining in New Granville, but here it was a million times worse. Spilling out of holes in the ground, people were wading to walk. Cars, which I haven’t seen in person for a while, couldn’t move because of the plastic on the street. There was a foul, gut wrenching smell that made me grab my nose. I looked around, and up to the left, and I saw the hills in the background. I was in Old Granville. I hurried towards the direction of the hills, which were quite far away, but since I was dreaming, it only took me about three seconds to run there.

 When I was at the bottom of the hills, I saw, to the right of me, a well. A portal well. A short and round man, with red bulging eyes, dumping a plastic bag, full of - surprise - more plastic, into the well. 

“What are you doing?” I asked the man. He didn’t move or speak, he just kept tossing the bags and bags of plastic, like a robot. Only, he wasn’t a robot, he was a real man, who looked incredibly sick. 

“Why are you getting rid of the plastic?” I asked, louder this time. 

“Sick of plastic. Sick of being sick.” 

“You’re not getting rid of it, you have to destroy it.” 

“Plastic can’t be destroyed, physically.” he told me sternly. He was wheezing, and looked corporeally frail, even with his large body. “Plastic did this to me. We are all sick.” 

“Why did you make so much if it's so bad? Why?” I told him. “When are you sending it?”

“This isn’t my fault. One person can’t start this. One person can’t fix it. But I’m going to start.” He looked around at all the garbage near us, gesturing with his arms. “I am sending it to the future, obviously, I don’t know when, I don’t know where, all I know is that I’m sick, my family is all sick, and the whole world is sick, and nobody is doing anything, so it's gotta go somewhere.”

I stood there next to him, and all I could think to do was to dream the plastic away. I tried really hard, but it didn’t work. I’ve never been able to not dream something away. 

“Why can’t I dream this away?” 

I could feel myself starting to wake up. “Don’t send it into the future. I don’t want what's happening to you to happen to us,” I called out. 

I woke up under the sisters.

“So?” Iris asked. 

“So, your little riddle-like statement before kind of makes sense now. Plastic can’t be destroyed, but it can be sent away. It’s what they eventually do. I tried to dream it away, so that maybe it never even existed, but I couldn’t, at least not in that time period. Plastic can’t even be destroyed in dreams. I tried to change the future, by changing the past, but I couldn’t.”

The trees waited for me to continue. 

“It’s like a cycle. They got rid of the plastic in the past by sending it to us in the future through a time portal. And because their city and land got better, we got better, and now we have this healthy future. But now we are going to get all their plastic, and it's so, so much plastic, and we will have to send it to someone else and ruin their future. It's only a temporary fix. 

I looked around at New Granville. It's a great town, and although it looks idyllic ecologically, with small wooden houses, beautiful grass that cuts itself to an ideal length, and a huge forest full of more beautiful trees (that fortunately don’t talk), politically and socially, there are still a lot of issues. Even if they didn’t affect me, and I couldn’t see them, it was obvious we had them. Unless I also got rid of the plastic, we would be living like they did in the past. We would be swimming in trash to work instead of taking the horses or birds or walking. We’d get a disease that made us look like the sickly man from the dreams. If I let the trash come down more, we’d have no future. But if I sent the trash to the future, even though it will take years to get rid of it all, after that time passes, we’d be back to normal. But then, the future people of New Granville would have to do the exact same thing, and send the plastic away. And wouldn’t that be wrong? 

“I can either send the trash away now, fixing today, but creating a worse tomorrow for someone else, or I can go back to the past, and dream away the invention of plastic all together,” I told the trees. 

“Doing that,” Iris said, “will not only change our future right now and the future futures, but it may change the past.” 

It hurt to try to understand what that meant. 

“She means that you might never exist, in the future. Changing something from the past affects everything since then. It may mean that Old and New Granville never existed. Think about it.” 

So I did think. There is a chance that removing the existence of plastic through my dream could mean I will never be born. It could mean my aunt and mother never exist, but would that hurt me if I won’t remember? What if removing plastic's existence does something even worse to the earth? 

Would it be easier to take the simple way out, by sending all the plastic to the future, or would it be better to erase it from existence, possibly changing over 100 years of the past's history, which will in turn affect the future and my life? 

★

It was getting darker now, and the streets were really starting to fill up, and this was just the beginning. People were picking it up, and bringing it inside. I would discourage them from getting used to it, but I knew what I had to do. But first, I had to go talk to my mom and aunt, as they did tell me to come see them before I went anywhere too far. And I was going quite far. Far into the past.