Harmony

by Guoshwan Nian

It is the end of the Cenozoic era; the Holocene Epoch has concluded, and humans – at least, humans as we know them – are gone.

Aside from rotting tops of ragged trash and jagged tips of skeletal mountaintops, water had submerged the land entirely. The sea, like an innocent toddler, had joyfully swallowed everything. It absorbed the melting, screaming plutonium. It consumed silky-smooth plastic. It even enveloped the scorched rock, whose history of blazing heat and inky-black rain carved deep grooves on its old face. Now, they all rest in the ocean's depths, submerged and forgotten by “human” memory.

But not animal memory.

A tiny Pop! goes off in the depths. A strip of lone plastic – humanity's most "enduring," "undissolvable," and "unbreakable" invention – explodes in an instant. From the burst plastic pours wave after wave of tiny, shrimp-like creatures, their new exoskeletons gleaming in the drowned sunlight. Euphasia Plastica, the latest species of krill, evolved from the remnants of humanity. Unlike their extinct, more pinkish neighbors, the near-transparent Plastica directly utilizes toxic plastic in its chitin exoskeleton, creating a chemically mixed armor that protects it from stray acids and most harmful substances.

The young of Euphasia Plastica, just freshly laid among plastic, instinctively utilizes its surroundings. Adaptability persisted since the dawn of creation. It was there when plants reached out to grasp the light. It was there when amphibians grew legs and braced the radioactive fire of a naked sun. It was there when humans carved the earth bare to satisfy their insatiable lust for power. Now it is here for these critters, who must takes advantage of the silky, stretchy toxins. The infant krill promptly gnaw at the plastic, cloaking themselves in "poison." Their new attire, virtually impenetrable, will serve as a cloak of divine protection for the days to come.

…

However, Euphasia Plastica’s divine strength may not be enough for those who harness similar power. Nearby, a scrap of rusted metal stirs. Corrosion has already infected the aluminum shell, suffocating the Bush's Best! Original Baked Beans can with its cruel, aged hand. The rusty metal tumbles, shuffles, ever approaches the plastic hatchlings.

A flash—a silver shimmer. Suddenly, one scoop of Euphausia Plastica disappears. The metal inches closer. Another flash. Another scoop of krill vanish. The remaining krill sense the danger. Quickly abandoning their glamorous, silky outfits, they flee in a jet of whirling plastic bubbles.

Tiny, beady black eyes emerge from the metal shell, radiating disappointment. Coenobita Chalybus, the new age's hermit crab, has developed enough strength to manipulate soft metals like tin and aluminum. Its young, laid within heaps of soft metal, release chemicals that soften their surroundings, allowing them to envelop themselves in pliable materials comfortably. As they grow, they forcibly roll new metals into their shells.

Unlike their extinct relatives, Coenobita Chalybus displays a remarkable instinct. While typical hermit crabs are already surprisingly social, this new species takes it further, often sharing shells in bountiful feeding grounds or under threat. They commonly trudge in the wreckage of tanks, plane carcasses, or mutilated ships as collective shells. The largest group of these hermit crabs thrives within the decaying remains of the hulking metal beast, the Titanic.

It's one of the only organisms that can consume plastic-harboring critters like Euphasia Plastica, as the crabs possess unique enzymes capable of dissolving plastic, such as FAST-PETase and MHETase. However, capturing the plastic prey is unfortunately not always guaranteed. Dismayed, a lone Coenobita Chalybus drags its tin can in search of new food.

…

A pale, ghostly leviathan, silent as a specter, transparent as a spirit, drifts lifelessly along the moody tempers of its mother ocean. Longer than even the Coenobita Chalybus’s Titanic, it is the largest organism on this whole poisoned planet.

It is called the Skeleton of the Sea, and there are only ten of them in the world, each more bizarre than the next. Generally, its “head” is a deformed skull of a long-dead whale, with fringes of stark-white coral corpses along the edges. Its see-through skin and flesh are made of layers of suffocating plastic, bound around a “backbone” attached behind the “head”. This “backbone” is really a string of mismatched debris. Some of these “bones” are made of metal—some of hard plastics—some of Styrofoam—some even made of dead plutonium. Like a chain of solid sins, the “bones” link up endlessly to form the body. There is no ribcage. Attached to its translucent flesh are skeletal flippers, sewn together with more plastic, that usually lie dead and immobile.

The Skeleton of the Sea is not a mammal. It is not an animal. It is not even of the phylum Chordata like most multicellular organisms. It’s real ancestry can be traced back to cnidarians, and its entire biology is run by a group of interlinked cells called zooids. They work together without any sense of developing basic organs, but they work nonetheless, wielding the ethereal body of the Skeleton as a massive krill-gathering factory. Thus, the organism earn their scientific name: Exerticus Spiritus. Army of ghosts.

It feeds by waiting. Most of the year, there are no Exerticus Spiritus inhabiting the skeleton. When there is a krill-feeding season, however, they gather like masses of black sludge, seeping into the bones through specialized holes. Then, like a skeletal symphony, the ghostly leviathan moves its flippers. When it swims through krill swarms, the first layer of plastics opens, allowing the krill entrance. Then, like a tripwire trap, the first layer closes and the second one opens, flooding the krill with some of the deadliest toxins mankind has ever invented. Among them are arsenic, dioxins, pesticide, and (like Coenobita Chalybus) plastic-dissolving enzymes. These chemicals bore through plastic armor, gnaw through flesh, and tear heart and blood apart. Eventually, when the poisons finish their quick job, the group of Exerticus Spiritus moves in and harvests the raw materials. And the cycle repeats.

…

Around the end of summer, a spectacle would occur in the depths of the inky ocean waters: Nautilus Splendorus finds its glow. Branching off from its cousins the chambered nautilus (Nautilus pompilius), this newest species has incorporated radium and phosphors into its tentacles. Monsoon tides often bring fresh piles of functional radioactive materials for Nautilus Splendorus, but only in the summer. Therefore, unlike the chambered nautilus, Nautilus Splendorus has a set mating time of a single day.

After that day, all adult Nautilus Splendorus will suffered critical damage from radium poisoning and perish. Their eggs will drift back to the bottom of the ocean, while their corpses will float idly on the surface, unable to be eaten. But, like every creature under the age-old sun, thoughts of death are ultimately unimportant to the mating Nautilus Splendorus. There is no future to think about. There is only one time, and that time is now.

It begins with a single, angelic tentacle probing from its unseen spiral shell, its hollow eyes nervously seeking a mate. Then its body, laced with phosphors such as zinc sulfide, is ignited by its precious radium. Just like that, a sharp green glow of poisonous love suddenly pierces the suffocating darkness.

Its minute glow has a certain fragility and softness – at least, at first. Soon, like a shimmering emerald wildfire, bravery spreads amongst the gathered Nautilus Splendorus. More light. More green blazes emerge from their tentacles. More Nautilus Splendorus arrive. Soon enough, the shadows of a dead sea are set alight with the ghostly flames. Pulses of emerald luminescence wave across the rolling seas, glimmering ways never before seen in the history of this tumultuous planet.

In the ghostly glow, other unseen beauties shine in tandem. The crowds of Euphasia Plastica, previously invisible with plastic bodies, now reflect the emerald shine like green moonlight. The lumbering metal shells of Coenobita Chalybus glints with green as the light blesses even their aged rust with an entirely new brilliance. A Skeleton of the Sea, hulkingly giant, paradoxically invisible, and regrettably hollow, glows too with haunting luminescence, joining thespectral parade.

It is as though the whole world is just that tiny bit of sea, in that tiny planet, in that tiny universe, on that one single day. That glow is all of everything.

…

We gaze in the distance. Our flesh-knitted feet paddle softly as I reached out to the emerald light with a webbed hand. Our eyes, entranced yet solemn, dance melancholically with the slow, silent symphony of radioactive glow.

"Who could've known," foamed the fellow Homo Delictum beside me, "that the world would end up like this?"

"Who, indeed?" I foamed back. I sighed with a little stream of heavy bubbles, each glowing slightly with the green luminescence of our consciousness.

Yes, who would have guessed that nature's harmony would be so beautiful?