Plastic Squid
“So it’s just evolution, ok? Humans dump all this plastic and it ends up in the ocean, and then with like, the sun and storms and waves and all that, the plastic breaks up into microplastic, like, little tiny plastic pieces. The pieces fall into the deep ocean, like, eventually, right?” Taylor made the weird sinus sound only he could make.
“And they get mixed in with marine snow. Marine snow is just well, it’s a lot of tiny animals and bits of other animals’ poop and it’s a real important feed for the critters who live at the bottom of the sea. Ok?” Sometimes when he made fricatives he spit a little. The windshield in front of him looked like it had passed through a light mist.
“Ok so now half the marine snow is plastic and all the sea creatures at the bottom are eating plastic nonstop. A lot of those animals are gonna die, but eventually? Some of them will naturally be able to eat the plastic and survive, and then, get this, since you are what you eat, they’ll become…plastic! Plastic squids, at the bottom of the ocean. You see all those crazy shits that wash up on the beach with giant teeth and big glow lanterns on their heads,” at which point held his arm above his head and wiggled his fingers for pulsating light.
“And they’re terrifying, right? Like that time in National Geographic. What was I saying? Yeah so, plastic squids. Usually, those creatures in the deep ocean can’t come up out of the depths because the like, the pressure difference causes them to just basically blow up. They’re big piles of goop by the time they’re on the beach with like, big teeth, right? But once the animals down there start being able to like, take in the plastic? Become plastic? They’ll be able to survive the big pressure difference on the trip to the surface. And then, you know what? It’s over for us. All them fuckers—sorry ‘Laina—all those squids, they’re gonna come up and take over our shi—our stuff. They’re gonna colonize land, and life as we know it? Folks, it’s done.” Taylor made an emphatic time-out gesture that jolted his Evan Dando hair into his eyes, which he pushed back.
“Could be, man, very well could be,” said Steve, the driver, who was taking in Taylor’s third theory in just as many hours. Taking it in and letting it pass by, flowing over his head and out the roof of the truck. He turned the key and hit the recirculation button again. Jaime let out a little snore from the way back seat and Alaina looked up from her book. “We’ve seen the treatment, Steve. Let’s sign the papers and go to lunch.”
“I’m ready to go but we need to stay until the end. Remember what Yvonne said the Natives Nursery people did last week?”
“Yeah but those guys are always scamming.”
“Probably. But we need to make sure the owner sees that we’re here until the end. Sorry, boss says.”
“You’ll be sorry, if they run out of my chicken fries before we get there.”
“Very sorry.”
The treatment truck team, or the “titittays” as Taylor called them while making devil horns, tended to get tense by the second or third hour of watching a pesticide treatment from the truck. Usually if it was a big nursery Steve would leave for a bit and drop a couple people off to use the bathroom and come back later, usually with Taylor, who had no trouble being stuck inside a small space with nothing to do for several hours. The guy was super smart, it couldn’t be denied, even if the other teams avoided him. One time when they all knocked off for the rest of the day and went to her house to play Super Mario, Jessica said Taylor told her that he had been studying for his PhD but it hadn’t worked out. Steve had not pursued it with him, he didn’t think he wanted to know.
The team pulled up to the BK and decided to get a table outside. Steve went inside to place their order and use the bathroom. When he got out Alaina was gesturing wildly from the truck and Steve couldn’t understand why she was still in there after complaining so much about their confinement, but he looked in the direction she was gesturing toward. Jaime was the only team member at the picnic table, but he wasn’t alone. He was being held off the ground at the shirt collar by a big guy in flannel with a buzz cut.
Another day at his good government job. Steve ran to the table.
