Decay

Have you heard of Murkshore, the city built on the ruins? If no, then gear up, turn your globes and find out the little city on the far end along the 40th Parallel North, stranded somewhere in the middle of the vast oceans on all sides. If yes, then I am here to tell you a story today. 

Murkshore is built on the ruins of plastic waste accumulated over the years. The major landmark in the city centre is a statue of an old woman pointing towards the oblivion with her frail, black, arthritic fingers. Her temples are punctured through and filled with used bottles and pipes. Her other hand, which has only three fingers, is raised above her head, holding the banner "To a better yesterday", the letters made of iron, succumbing to moisture and acid over the years. One of her eyeballs is five times bigger than the other, and she has a lopsided jaw with ten crooked teeth.

All the people in the city are variations of this remarkable inanimate figure, tall and short, walking in a funny gait, never hugging when they meet, instead opening their skull table ajar and closed again, as a gesture of greeting.

In Murkshore, there are no fish. The scientists say the waters are way over the toxic limits to support any aquatic life, but they are consistently trying to bring down the levels of contamination. There is enough water, mind you, in fact, a third of the city is submerged, hot, boiling water in grey and green, burning the skin of the pedestrian who treads even knee-deep into it.

In Murkshore, the people are happy. Sure they are suspended in a perpetual state of delirium and confusion. Their brains decay. Gradually, the people find themselves losing the ability to understand and interpret what they could before, forgetting information that they so thoroughly enjoyed earlier, losing muscle memory and being reduced to a flailing toddler from a high functioning athlete. Sixty years of vigorous study by the farsighted scientists have attributed this major decomposition to the toxins from tonnes of plastic waste buried underneath, causing the anomalies in physical and genetic composition, the basis of all constitution here. Oh don't be surprised. 

In Murkshore, time runs backwards.

If you ever happen to go there, please say hi to my friend Ray. He wakes up at sundown and frantically makes record of everything he has studied so far, in a leather bound journal with dog eared pages. He watches the news and jots them down neatly, and remembers how flying cars were now a part of history. Nobody understands the technology anymore, but he used to really like them. Just the way he liked calculus, but now he simply cannot fathom how he could do it with so much ease earlier. You can sit with him and talk to him : You'll find him in a garden of sunflowers doing his homework on simple algebra, looking mostly at the wilted flowers with torn petals and excoriated leaves, drooping into the ground, kissing the earth of their birth and burial alike.

Ray is a thinker and has great empathy for his fellow beings, something that gets him bullied in school all the time. His grand father works in the research lab, wearing a green hazmat suit all the time, except when he is home with Ray, when they talk about things that matter. Ray shows him the leather bound journal, the pages where he has written his thoughts about how people do not die here, but grow younger and younger until they can do nothing but cry in a crib helplessly and suddenly they are wiped off the face of the planet. It bothers him. Grandpa then tells him that once these humans perish in their way, the planet will heal. With them getting younger, the planet does too. Unlike them, there is life for the planet as it gets younger. He also talks of how he is working on a simulator that destroys an acre of plastics in 0.3 seconds. He says that trees might be the greatest thing of the coming times, the ones that emit a gas that will help them survive in a better way. He even talks of clean water, the sparkling kind that will drop off the highest waterfalls amid an evergreen forest. Ray gapes in awe and then finally falls asleep, dreaming of how years after they are all no more, the planet will heal. Like his Grandpa has said. He understands that he or most people around him will never get to see this transformation, but he also understands that they must work tirelessly in order to achieve this breakthrough. Not for the sake of themselves, but for the sake of the planet. 

2046. 

In Murkshore, everyone is ten years younger now. Grandpa can walk a lot faster, and get to his lab ten minutes earlier. Ray plays ball in his free time and waters his plants. Today, however, Ray's house is in grief. His little sister is lying in her cradle, crying like babies do before they are no more. His mother is sobbing too, his father holding her longer hand in his and trying to comfort her. 

Ray does not cry. He feels something heavy in his chest and remembers the times he'd take his sister to the park. His grieving heart makes a somersault in his chest, but he knows this is for the greater good. He questions himself why he would have to lose everyone he cares about, in order to establish something far-fetched and on some point, vague. The revolution that had stirred in him years ago, suddenly finds no place in his mind. He wants to give up, his eyes are red, he somehow blames himself for wanting this to happen to his sister, but he does not cry.

Grandpa looks at him, and takes him out to the garden. Ray is glum, he looks at the rising sun, and then at the pebbles near his feet. Grandpa shows him his favorite sunflower, the one beside the gravelled path leading to he house, leaning against the wall. The flower is bright yellow today. This solitary flower. Bright yellow, with its petals arranged in perfect symmetry, a bee sits on it for a pretty long time, and the leaves are green and untampered with, dew drops on it shining in perfect coordination with the rays of the sun. 

Ray looks at it, and stumbles his way to support himself against the wall. His head swoons, and the goosebumps make him dizzy. He gapes at it again, and cups his hands around his mouth in wonder. He lets out a gasp and realizes that he has never been this happy before. He shrieks "My planet is healing-g-g-g-g", the echo pursues, and he breaks down into tears.