The Only Constant

                                        
                                         

THE HERE AND NOW  (How it All Started, & We Didn't See It
                                                            Until it was Pointed Out)                   

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-44579422





***

THE HERE AND NOW

(How Mankind Battled Against a Mounting Tide of Pollution & Apathy)

Bryony gave a deep sad sigh and looked up at her husband Cliff.  There was a trace of a tear

in his eye too. His jaw was set, which meant he was not only sad, but frustratedly angry too.

“We worked so hard yesterday,” he growled.

Bryony patted his arm,

“I know love, I know, all we can do is try to do our best, what more can we do?”
Bryony knew the answer before Cliff muttered it,

“It’s no good some of us trying, we ALL have to try, this isn’t even our problem!”

Saying it wasn’t their problem made Bryony angry, so a little sharper than she had intended,

she answered her husband.

“Of course it’s our problem, maybe we didn’t cause it, but we’ve been landed with it, so it’s
OUR problem.”

Her last few words ended in a hacking cough.  The medic she had finally managed to locate

assured her that it was not a virus, but bacterial.  The medic seemed almost cheerful as he

informed her that she would either get better...or she wouldn’t.  The era of antibiotics was over,

it had become too expensive to produce a product that simply didn’t work.  Her beautiful

babies would be alive if it had.

Cliff placed his arm around her shoulders and drew her away from the depressing sight,

“Aww love, I’m going to put in for one of those respirator hoods and safety suits when we
reach HQ, they surely must have produced enough now.”

With her body still being racked by her coughing she shook her head and held a hand up in
denial of what he had said, when she had eventually regained her breathing she gasped,
“It’s not outside so much that’s the problem, it’s our house, it’s so damp, it…..” the coughing
started again.  She knew what the coughing really was, but didn’t want to give voice to it.
Many old buildings had just been allowed to collapse into rubble...the air they all breathed was thick with asbestos.

Cliff hurried her along. Providing what was left of the road had not sunk into pothole ruin, they
should reach HQ, where it was not damp, within the hour. The Volunteers for Roads had long
been disbanded, they knew they had been fighting a losing battle.

He cast a last disgusted look at the river bank of the mighty Humber, for as far as could be
seen there was flotsam, (it was hard to believe that not twenty-four hours earlier they had piled

most of it in skips, he strongly suspected that the skips were in turn taken out to the
North Sea and dumped, just for it all to wash up again next high tide).  The debris consisted
mainly of plastic, discharged off old garbage trawls over the years, landfill sites were over full,
mainly with plastic that had been ‘recycled’. The plastic would never degrade and unless
humankind learned to do without it’s beloved product the problem would grow and grow.  
It had already had a devastating effect on marine life, the stench of rotting fish and marine
mammals interspersed with the garbage was testament to that.

Bryony trembled under his arm, and his temper seethed again.  She was wrong, it wasn’t their

problem, not solely.   They were Volunteers, their particular squad being River Shoreline

Clearance. There were few enough of them in any Squad. The forming of the Volunteer

Squads had exasperated the problem leading to most of the population to disregard the need

for solving their own waste and mess,  they had deluded themselves into believing that

someone else (The Volunteers) would deal with it, after all, surely that was their job.  They

tried so hard to deal with it all, the leaky outdated sewerage systems, the air pollution from

cheap solid fuel powered industry (God Bless America for importing that one),the flood

defences, factory farming and the land surface pollution it caused. The rarity of fully trained

medics had caused a new Volunteer Squad to be formed, their sole directive was to keep tabs

on anyone trained medically, and to try to assign apprentices to them….the list of people

begging for a medic in their ‘hood was endless.  Now there were rumours of constructing an

underground bunker system for living in, resigning the Planet to it’s unsolvable pollution, the

surface only being good for heavy industry.

A soft damp splatter on his hand brought Cliff's attention back to his spouse...blood, she had
coughed up blood.

***

BEFORE THE DOME (When the Surface of our Planet Became an Object of Curiosity, & other
Solutions for Human Life were Sought)

Myrtle stared down at the churning waves.  She couldn’t help but wonder if anyone had tried

to walk across to the far bank of the Humber.  Ok, she understood that it probably wasn’t

possible, in fact it probably never had been possible. She had seen a photo in the Cellar City

Museum, a fascinating photo, of boats making their way along the Humber to the North Sea...

The caption on the photo simply read “Fishing Trawlers. 1997.”  That would have been, Myrtle

quickly did the sums on her fingers, seventy years ago. For the life of her she couldn't

understand why anyone would risk their life hunting fish! She had eaten fish once, as a

special treat for a birthday, it was horrible. Uncle had said it was the most expensive, prime

farmed, and genetically modified fish to be had, it made no difference, she still found it

horrible.

Adjusting the inlet valve on her Breather, Myrtle sighed.  She would have loved to have seen

The Humber as it once was, with boats and fish.  Uncle said the Dome would be completed

soon and they could all get inside, safe and sound.  No more risking infected lungs, no more

worrying about being flooded out, no more stench of rotting flesh, household garbage,

and poo.  She remembered there being animals, once, it was a vague memory of thin pathetic

creatures viewed through bars or reinforced glass, their bodies denuded of any fur or feather,

open weeping sores.  It made her feel sad, but Uncle said they just couldn’t afford to make

Safetysuits for animals. He had also gone on to say that she wasn’t to worry, specimens had

been collected, slaughtered, and stuffed before they had become sick.  She would soon be

able to see them properly exhibited in all their former glory in the Dome. Myrtle supposed

that was something to look forward to.

It was time to go back to the Cellar Living System she called home, the warning beep on her
suit’s timer was sounding urgent now.  

She cast a last look at the churning waves of plastic, sewerage, corpses, and diverse

rubbish caused by just being human and thought it would have been nice to be able walk to

the other bank.

  ***

IN THE DOME (Many Centuries in the Future, Life Outside a Dome was Impossible,
but Humans adapt, they always adapt)

The older children screamed with excitement and tore around the family home pod,
“Zoo, zoo,zoo!” They yelled at the top of their lungs.

“Zoo, zoo, zoo!” echoed the youngest, a year old girl, her chubby legs waddling overtime to
keep up with her siblings.

Olive grasped her current pod-mate’s shoulder, rocking with laughter.  Fallan was the sire of
the yearling female, and unusually, was very attentive of the child.  It had been his idea to take
them all for a visit to the City Dome’s Zoo.

Crispin, the eldest of the two boys, who’s sire was unknown being the result of experimental
communalsex, ran up to his Mother and grasped the front of her long pod smock, his excited
exertions left him gasping,
“Can we touch ‘em, can we Olive, please, pleeeeeease can we touch them?”

Olive shook her head, laughing back at her eldest offspring,
“No Crisp, no...touching is not allowed.”

Crispin’s face took on a sulky expression, he pouted and furrowed his brows before whining,

“But why Olive, why, why why?”

It became a chant quickly taken up by his next born sibling Fern.  An ugly female child, Olive
was still undecided whether to keep her or have her ‘placed’, Fern’s next mental assessment
would be the decider.  Fern’s existence was the only regret Olive had ever had about
lackadaisical research that led to her taking her youngest brother as a pod mate.

Olive raised her hands in submission to the children’s clamouring, even the infant was joining
in now.

“Hush, hush,” she said, “If you will just hush I will tell you.”

Surprisingly there was instant silence.

“Right then,”  Olive took up her tutorial stance,
“If everyone was to touch the exhibits then they wouldn't last very long would they?  They
would fall to pieces, all the stitching would come undone and the stuffing would fall out, and
that would be a sad thing, don’t you think?

Crispin pouted and nodded in agreement, but his frown let his dam know that he wasn’t
pleased about it.  Fern’s eyes widened and a trace of saliva coated her rose-bud smiling lips,

“Cool!” She said in delight, “Can we touch ‘em and watch the stuffing come out?”  

Olive decided that this brat’s assessment was long overdue.

Fallan smiled up at her as they strode through the Dome’s main causeway on their way to the
Zoo,

“Do you think they were once real living, breathing
animals?”  he asked.

“Don’t be silly!” Snapped Olive back at him.  He was becoming a bore, Olive had already had
her eye on a decent sort who worked in water purification as her next pod-mate, she just had
to investigate his lineage, she didn’t fancy risking another Fern being born to clutter up her pod.

Fallan decided she was probably right, it was just another myth, like the one that human males
were once  taller and stronger than their females. Although he had never believed the one
about them living outside the Dome, now that was too far fetched.

Within the Dome the supremacy of womankind, long fought for millenniums since, reigned
supreme.

Outside the Dome the skeletons of long dead creatures were slowly fossilising with the
passage of time.  

The plastic dessert was still there, undulating above a river that would never be seen again.
The plastic would always be there, never ending, non-degrading, the only constant.

***

Our Children and our Children's Children will come to see the pollution of Planet Earth as the norm.  Is that what we want for them?  Is that the inheritance we leave them?  Do we really want them to adapt to the filth we are now creating?