Page 118 - The Perpetrations of Captain Kaga

Fasting the Plastiphage

long ago, following a catastrophic event in the sky. Two gigantic
carbonaceous meteors collided high in our atmosphere; it was a freak
combination of trajectories, completely unforeseen by our scientists.
Yes, human, we were quite advanced, too, in those days before the
Plastic Disaster. The collision resulted in a huge mass of hydrocarbons
being fused at high temperature and then scattered by the force of
impact. Sunlight was blotted out by the clouds of plastic particles;
vegetation and animal life faced extinction. We calculated the density
of the hydrocarbon mass and its rate of descent to the surface. It was
clear that no life-forms would survive the period before the
atmosphere was translucent enough to permit photosynthesis to
resume.”
“There was no alternative for us but to turn to our geneticists. We
had already been practicing eugenics and chromosomic alteration for
several generations prior to the calamity. Oh, you should have seen us
then! We were beautiful, graceful quintapods with multicolored fur
and musical voices. And now…” The creature stopped talking and
shook for a minute with spasms of grief. Then it composed itself, and
continued.
“I, and all my fellow-clones, were the product of gene manipulation
on a scale never before attempted. We were supposed to have the
same physiognomy, the same intelligence, everything the same—
except that we would be able to digest the particles of fused
hydrocarbon. We were to survive the disaster by instantly adapting to
it. Afterwards we would have re-created our original race. But
something went wrong. We were indeed able to eat the plastic fallout;
in that respect we were successful. However, our minds and bodies
did not stay the same. By the time the first batch of infant clones was
analyzed, it was too late. The scientists, and all other herbivorous life
on this planet, were moribund. There was no time to repeat the
attempt.”
“Picture, if you can, our distress. Thousands of ungainly creatures,
sentient but incapable of writing or manipulating tools, abandoned
with the memories of a great civilization. We understood what had
happened, but were powerless to reverse it. For years we lived off the
debris of the meteor collision. The petroleum pools these humans
found are nothing more than the waste products of our nutrition.
Once the sky cleared and the last of the plastic had fallen to the
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