Katerina (Patreon)

About the only thing that did work on my ancient laptop was Word.  Here's a story from the Metamorphosis Project stream.

Katerina was hiding. She’d hoped they’d just leave her be.  Their drones had overflown her yesterday while she was out foraging. She had barely enough time to get under cover.  Now today, here they were outside the entrance to her cave. Maybe they’d get lost in the maze of passages she used behind the main cave and not find this tiny opening.  She was beginning to regret the past five years and the five years before that, too. Was it really only a decade ago?

Katerina had accepted “Society’s Great Gift” like every other person on her twentieth birthday.  Each was gifted with $200,000 to pay for further training or advanced education, start a business, to contribute to society.  Of course, they expected you to become a productive member of society at the end of it. Katerina, though, was tired of schooling. Schooling now extended to your twentieth year; fourteen long years were enough. Katerina hated the classroom and, when given the money, she squandered it.  
It had been a wonderful five years but those five years, like the money, came to an end all too quickly. Everyone was evaluated on their use of the “Great Gift”.  Even a failed business was better than doing nothing. More established investors would pick up the young entrepreneur and help them start anew.  Most, of course, took degrees or had become journeymen in the trades and had productive jobs in the trades or professionally. There were very few professional gaps as had occurred in the early twenty-first century with hundreds of thousands of positions open and no one to fill them.  Others had become artists. Art, too, was valued in this society; far more than it had been in previous centuries. Unfortunately, travel, parties and expensive clothing didn’t count as productive use of the “Great Gift”.
Katerina knew what she was facing: Reassignment. There were jobs for which the human body was ill-equipped. People were transformed to meet these jobs and then, unceremoniously, sent to do them for the rest of their working lives. Katerina was terrified of what they’d change her into and bolted for the mountains.  She’d been thinking about what she’d do to evade the authorities and had found a cave system deep in the mountains.  It was impossible to get there save on foot and she’d spent weeks moving her things and survival gear into the large cavern.  It had taken another month to really get the lay of the land: to scope out where edible plants could be gathered, where to place her snares to catch rabbits and other small game; where to hunt for larger prey. It was a good thing she’d become adept with a bow. A gun was too noisy and required ammunition. Then she hunkered down and hoped they would just leave her alone. Maybe even forget about her. After all, she was a single person, hardly of any significance.

That had gone on for five years. When anyone had come around, Katerina had retreated to her cave. Sometimes days went by before she’d venture out again.  Up to last week, this had worked. She’d been careful to erase the only path into her cavern, even going so far as to cause a minor landslide to sweep away a 100 meter stretch of the precarious path.  But last week, she’d heard the unmistakable whine of a searcher drone.  She quickly spotted it and beat a hasty retreat to her cave. One advantage to living in the cave for so long is that she’d mapped some of it.  One tiny cave mouth overlooked the entire area and she’d carefully set it up as a hide so she could watch.  
With trepidation bordering on fear, she watched as the drones performed their autonomous search pattern before narrowing it to the space immediately in front of her cave.  One drone parked itself at an altitude of about 25 meters, clearly watching the cave mouth.  Katerina hoped the searchers would give up when nothing happened for several days. She used a smaller cave mouth to retrieve her snare lines and their trapped bounty.  That’s when another drone had overflown her.  She hoped she hadn’t been spotted.

The next morning, the lone drone was joined by a much larger drone. It quickly landed and a door in the huge pod it was carrying opened, debouching hundreds of tiny spider-like drones. She was no expert at drones but these clearly were to search the cave.  She hated to cut herself off but could see no way to keep them from her save to collapse a narrow tunnel of the cave leading to the hide. It was while she was trying to collapse the tunnel that she felt the sting of a dart and felt her world grow dark.
She awakened, shackled to a prisoner control drone, in a prison cell. Clearly, they were taking no chances with her.  Somehow, in the time between darting her and her awakening, they’d stripped her, replaced her clothing with an orange prison uniform, and shackled her to the drone.  She sat up on the bed. The drone responded by turning a monitoring camera her way. A few minutes later, a human guard approached her cell.
“Well, Wastrel,” she sneered. “We’ve finally got you.”
“What happens -“
“You’ve been tried and will soon be transported for reassignment.”
“Reassignment?”
“You’ll be useful to society, never fear. Perhaps a reclamation worm in old waste dump.”
Katerina had always thought those creatures were robots. They burrowed through the centuries of accumulation in the city’s old dump, eating everything.  Useful materials were secreted in ostrich egg-sized pellets to be reused. Old, long dead organic material … well, that’s what they fed on.  Her horrified expression was obviously what the guard had expected. She smirked.

“Prisoner 19980315-21,” she read from her tablet.  “You are judged a Wastrel, having squandered Society’s Great Gift. Further, you are judged as a Fugitive having run from and evaded the legal authorities and your legal Reassignment.”

Katerina said nothing. There was nothing to be said. The guard tapped the prisoner control drone. It pulled Katerina to her feet and she had no choice but to follow or be dragged down the hall.  The march was a short one. They came to a doorway, which opened automatically, into the bright sunlight of an enclosed yard. A black van was parked a short distance away.  Katerina could see no driver but this wasn’t unexpected.  Autonomous vehicles were far more common than human controlled ones. She was led to an open door at the back.  A second pair of shackles clamped her wrists and the prisoner control drone that had dragged her to the van released her. It quickly returned to the building they’d come from and vanished into the interior.

Katerina entered the van, partly under her own power but mostly from the pull of the shackles. She sat in one of the seats facing the robot she was shackled onto. The van started and Katerina soon lost track of the twists and turns. She knew that, at one point, they’d joined and then left a major highway but, past that, she had no idea where she was.  She was surprised to discover they were at an airport. Clearly, she was being transported somewhere by air.  Maybe she’d be able to see her mountains one last time.

A cylinder on wheels rolled. With a smooth hiss of hydraulics, the top separated revealing a form fitting inner lining.

“Prisoner 19980315-21,” her robot captor announced. “Enter the transport pod.”

Katerina was, at first, disinclined to do so but quickly realized she had no choice. She would enter on her own or be forced in.  She doubted she would be able to overpower the robot. She entered the pod, lay down on the soft surface and felt it conform to her body. The robot disengaged its shackles. Katerina had a momentary thought to run but quickly decided there was nowhere to run to. The transparent lid slid down and, with a soft click, sealed.  Katerina felt cold air circulate and soon felt sleepy even though she’d just awakened.  ‘Gas,’ was her last conscious thought.

Hours later, though she had no way of knowing how many, she swam back to consciousness. She was still in the transport pod but it was now open.  She had no shackles. With some difficulty, she sat up. The conforming foam made it difficult to move but, after several minutes, she managed: first to sit up and second to get out of the transport pod. It responded by quickly sliding into an opening and disappearing.  Katerina was alone. She found herself in a blandly painted small apartment. There was a single bed in one corner; a door leading to a bathroom; and what would have been a kitchen in any bachelor suite. This ‘kitchen’ had no facilities for cooking nor any appliances. A small table was affixed to the wall with a single chair. A slot in the wall at the tabletop height was the only break in the smooth wall.

Katerina touched the wall. It gave to the touch. Even the bed linens were too light to make a decent noose. Her new uniform was one piece and had no belts. All the obvious ways out had been eliminated. They had dealt with far too many prisoners to lose one to such obvious ploys.

Click! The wall slot had deposited a plastic box of some sort. Katerina opened it to discover a lunch of some sort. Realizing she was hungry, she sat and ate the proffered meal. It wasn’t as good as the ones she’d had years past, of course, but it was better than her own cooking in the cave. When she finished, she noticed a small label on the back of the box. She was to pack everything up, close the box and slide it back into the slot. Katerina did so and the box vanished.

She sat in the barren room looking at the rubber walls. She would soon be bored if nothing happened.  No holovid, no internet, nothing. Not even books!

She needn’t have worried.  A prisoner control drones appeared and offered her the shackles. She placed her wrists into them and they closed automatically. The drone turned towards the large blank wall of the room and, towing Katerina, headed toward it.  The rubber surface parted and a hidden door slid open. Katerina soon found herself moving along a narrow corridor.  The corridor held a row of doors, each with a glowing number, similar to Katerina’s own.  In fact, all began with the same 8 digits that Katerina realized was a date.  Likely the date of capture or sentencing, she decided.  No names, just numbers.

At the end of the corridor, another of the automatic doors. Pulled through it, she found herself in a far different environment.  Sterile and white and incredibly bright compared to the corridor outside. The first human she’d seen in quite a while was garbed in a sealed spacesuit-like garment.  An air hose to a track in the ceiling told Katerina that the man or woman (it was hard to tell), wasn’t even breathing the same air as she was.  Nannites.  Obviously, they were using the nano-machines to effect the transformations.  This technician couldn’t allow any exposure to whatever she was going to be subjected to.

“Over here.”

Katerina found herself beside a 3-meter-tall glass cylinder with an open door. Strange apparatus in the ceiling hung over and around the cylinder. Inside, more equipment hung from the ceiling.

“Strip,” he demanded.

Katerina was, at first, disinclined to undress before a strange man. When she hesitated, the man merely grabbed her sleeves and pulled. The uniform split down the middle falling to the floor in two sections.

“Strip,” he demanded again.

This time Katerina obeyed. It was clear there was nothing she could do shackled to the drone.  Getting the sleeves off over the drone’s shackles was simple. The man merely tore them off leaving Katerina naked, trying to cover herself by crouching.

“Into the Trans-tube,” he stated.

Katerina stepped onto the somewhat slippery glass surface of the tube’s floor.  A section of the tube rotated and slipped into place with a thump. Clearly sealed into the tube now, Katerina looked about the room. Two others, a man and a woman were in tubes in two of the other corners of the room.  A fourth tube stood empty, its door open.  Looking at the other two people, Katerina noticed they were floating in a strange greenish fluid and breathing from a face mask whose tube coiled up to the top of the tube. Katerina looked about for her own face mask but couldn’t find it.  

The technician walked over to a console and began to make gestures in the air. Clearly, he was interacting with a holographic display but, unlike most, it was only visible to him.  She wondered what he was doing and realized he was likely selecting her final form.  That would be why she couldn’t see it.  No sense getting your victim too upset before it was too late to do anything about it.

Katerina felt something flow in around the base of the tube. Looking down, she saw that the tube was slowly filling with a clear, warm fluid.  Where was her breathing mask? She thought in panic. Once again, her concern was unnecessary; the process was quite automatic.  Once the tube was about three quarters full, it stopped filling.

“A short pause,” he stated walking over to her tube. “Adjusting the density to match your body.”

Katerina wondered whether she should say something but decided against it. What was there to say?

After a few minutes, the tube continued to fill until it was up to her shoulders. Her breathing mask finally made its appearance and Katerina quickly put it on. She wondered what would happen if she had refused but realized, they could just knock her out again and make her wear it regardless.  She discovered that the fluid was viscous, far thicker than water would be. It was hard to move in it. A small part of her mind wondered what it was. Another part hoped it wasn’t poisonous. The tube continued to fill until it was filled completely and Katerina could see no large bubble at the top.  A tooth aching whine filled the tube and tiny bubbles appeared everywhere. These quickly rose to the top of the tube and were removed. While the whine continued, the fluid was thin, easier to move her hands through than water. As soon as the whine stopped, it quickly returned to its former thickness.

Katerina found herself standing, naked in a tube of clear, thick fluid.  She slowly turned her head to see what would happen next. She felt a pressure at her feet and discovered she was being elevated to the center of the tube on a small plastic cylinder. The fluid again changed viscosity and she discovered it was nearly impossible to move. The tube dropped, leaving her floating in the center of the tube.

The technician walked to a plastic cabinet, opened the door and extracted a cylinder with a conical tip.  Katerina started to laugh at the idea that it was a cake decorating implement. She remembered helping her mother decorate cakes at her business years ago, before. The way the man held the cylinder, though, it may as well have been a bomb. Clearly, this held the nannites and he didn’t dare get exposed to them.

Upon reaching her tube, he inserted the tip in a small opening at its base. The dark green contents were sucked out to be replaced by the clear fluid Katerina was floating in. Several minutes went by before a soft chime sounded and the man removed the cylinder. He was far less careful with it now and merely tossed it into a bin in the corner.
A network of green filaments appeared from the base of the tube.  They looked like embroidery threads for some reason except they were linked like tree branches; larger threads at the bottom, dividing again and again until they were almost too fine to see.  All the while, these threads dissolved into the clear fluid until the fluid was the same greenish tint as that of the other two people in their tubes. Katerina felt a tickle over her whole body. It was as if something with thousands of legs were walking over every square centimeter of her skin. It was annoying and Katerina wanted to scratch the horrible itch.  Fortunately, this only lasted a few seconds before it faded.
There she hung, floating in her tube, wondering what was to happen next. The fluid was strange and made it hard to see details in the other two tubes; so Katerina could get no clues there, even if they were undergoing the same change she would be. A muffled click broke her reverie. Another woman was being led in after a drone. Katerina watched, as well as the fluid let her, the other woman’s processing.  This woman was far less cooperative than Katerina had been. She fought the drone and the technician to her best ability. Some incoherent shouted words managed to penetrate the fluid. It took Katerina several seconds to realize they were not in English but some other tongue. Still she struggled until the drone did something and the woman collapsed. ‘Drugs,’ Katerina decided.

The man stripped her, connected her to a harness that dropped from the top of the fourth tube. The harness dragged her upright and into the center of the tube.  Katerina watched as the outer door rotated and dropped into place. Still supported by her harness, the fluid slowly filled the tube until it reached her shoulders.  Katerina wondered how they’d get the breathing mask on her. A robot arm from the top of the tube pulled the mask free and dexterously placed it over her face.  Once the mask was in place, the robot arm retreated into the tube’s top and clear fluid filled the entire chamber.  Several minutes went by until the cylinder pushed her into the center of the tube. The harness then disengaged and returned to its niche.  Katerina slowly looked up. It was hard to move in the thick fluid.  She could see where both the robot arm and harness were stowed. Katerina relaxed, held by the warm fluid.

After a time, Katerina fell asleep. When she awoke, she felt different but she couldn’t quite put a finger on what had changed.  Something felt odd, though, and she was more curious than afraid. Peering through the fluid, she made out the man and woman who had been undergoing transformation longer.  Both had short tails! Katerina reached back, fighting the fluid, until she could feel her own back. She, too, now had a short tail from near end of her spine. A tail? What was she becoming? Clearly part animal, but what animal?  There was really no way to tell as yet.

The technician entered through what was obviously some kind of airlock. Katerina noticed that the ‘he’ had been replaced by a ‘she’!  Clearly she’d been in the tube quite a while if there had been a shift change.  With nothing else to do, Katerina looked about the room. Strange equipment everywhere and, of course, the four tubes with their occupants.

The next time Katerina awoke, the technician was male again. Another shift change?  Or a full day? The technician no longer wore the spacesuit. Clearly nannites were no longer a hazard for those outside the tubes. Her tail was now longer than her legs as were the tails of the others in their tubes. Her legs felt oddly weak. It was harder than she remembered to move them even given the thick fluid. Several minutes of determined investigation led to the realization that the others now had legs that were much thinner and, perhaps, shorter. It was hard to tell. Katerina wished she could see out of the tube better but the glass of the tube and the green fluid distorted everything. After ten minutes struggling to focus her eyes through the distortion, Katerina found it hard to stay awake and soon found herself asleep once more.
Her next awakening led to the discovery of a small monitor that had revealed itself inside her tube.  It showed several labels with progress bars. One said ‘HS skeletal’; another ‘HS respiratory’; another ‘HS cardio-vascular’.   She wondered what they could mean. She watched the progress bars for several minutes but they appeared not to change.  Once more she fell asleep.

Her tail was considerably larger at her next awakening while her legs had definitely shrunk.  The strange progress bars had definitely shrunk and new ones had appeared.  ‘LA skeletal’, ‘LA respiratory’, ‘LA cardio-vascular’ and ‘LA skin’.  Each showed small progress bars. She finally figured out that the HS was Homo Sapiens. Her own systems were diminishing, that much she could tell. She had no idea what ‘LA’ might mean.
At her next awakening, the room had been dimmed. Night shift? Katerina had no idea. Her tail was as wide as her hips now but still quite narrow past her knees. Her legs had shortened to the point of nearly invisibility but the feet had become thinner, the toes lengthening. It made her feet look more like paddles than feet. The fluid was as thick as ever and Katerina noticed the beginnings of webbing between her fingers. She was puzzled. What kind of creature had swimming webs that looked more like spider webs than any kind of solid skin? She had seen art on the Internet, of course. Mermaids sometimes had webbed fingers, but it was always more like as transparent skin flap between the digits than this.  This looked more like, well, a sieve or strainer.

Katerina found she couldn’t stay awake and was soon asleep again.  When she next awoke, the lights were back on. She now had a well-defined, solid tail. It looked more like a dolphin rather than a fish except it didn’t have any caudal fins. For all Katerina could tell, she was going to end up some kind of worm. She felt horror at the thought that she’d end up in a landfill eating old food and recycling the metal and plastic. Her skin didn’t look like the metallic like the recovery worms she’d seen. It was very smooth and appeared to have no hair whatever. It was starting to darken as well. This darkening spread from the tip of the thing past Katerina’s waist. There was the hint of some lighter color on her sides. Moving slowly, she managed to get her increasingly webbed fingers through the thick fluid. Feeling behind her, she felt her back. As she had guessed, she had the beginnings of a fin just below her buttocks or where her buttocks had been before. The skin was completely smooth. It was completely sealed now and seemed solid muscle instead of the expected human backside. That gave her pause. If she no longer had an anus, how would she …? She felt all around only to discover a pair of slits close together on her front. It didn’t take long to discover which was which. She could feel her probing fingers. It felt very strange to move her fingers over the front of her body and feel something moving over what her brain told her was her backside. Her legs and feet completed their transformation and had disappeared to be replaced by flippers attached just below her hips. These flippers were definitely not fish fins; they were dolphin flippers.  Katerina had seen dolphins perform years before as she travelled about and was amazed at the grace of the creatures in the water. She wondered what kind of dolphin an ‘LA’ was.
Looking at her other three tube-mates, she discerned a few more details through the fluid and the glass of the tube. The other three had changed in the same way she had. They were human to the waist but now sported a weak-looking dolphin tail instead of legs complete with a small caudal fin at the tip. She couldn’t tell how their plumbing was arranged.  It was too hard to focus her eyes with all the distortions of two tubes and the fluid. This effort to focus caused her a massive headache the likes of which she’d never had before. Definitely a 12 on a scale of 1-to-10.  Her brain felt fuzzy and out of focus. After a few minutes, she lost consciousness once again.
A technician awakened Katerina. How many hours or days had she been in the tank? The man’s tank was empty. The first woman’s tank had been nearly drained and she was curled in the bottom, clearly in discomfort.  A transport tube and cargo handling robot was waiting by her tube.  Two technicians or doctors were standing by with all kinds of equipment.

“Good morning prisoner 19980315-21,” the technician was reading from a tablet. “You’ve completed your twelve-day stay with us. You’re being transferred to the physiotherapy section to learn your new body and get trained for your new profession.”

Katerina thought it was entirely inappropriate that the technician seemed so bubbly. She walked over to the console, pointed to controls in the air only she could see to issue commands to the computer. Katerina felt movement in the fluid and watched as the fluid level fell. Soon, it was down to her shoulders and, for the first time, discovered she could hear sounds again. She soon discovered she felt weak and could barely hold her head up. As the fluid level fell, she found herself sinking to the bottom of the tank. Soon, she was half-coiled in the bottom; supported by her tail and the glass of the tube. The tube began to retract into the floor, leaving her without its support. As the tube retracted, she felt herself falling forward until she slid out onto the smooth floor. A technician pulled her free from the tube onto a wet patch of the floor. Unceremoniously, they washed her down with water hoses. She was lying on her stomach, unable to even raise her shoulders and head. How had she gotten so weak in only twelve days?
Not given any time to ponder, the people in the room swarmed about her. They did all kinds of tests, taking so many blood samples that Katerina was sure she’d die from the blood lost.  A robot wheeled a portable X-ray machine from the first woman’s tube and Katerina found herself scanned from all directions. Finally, a robot approached her side and pressed a flat tool against her. A brief sharp pain was all Katerina felt but she had no idea what the purpose of the test. After waiting on the floor for five minutes, Katerina realized it hurt to lie there. She could feel everything inside her slumping to her belly. She was no longer able to take being out of the water for an extended period. ‘Just like the dolphins,’ her memory supplied.

She needn’t have worried. Very soon the medical results returned and she was given the ‘all clear’.  A pair of robots efficiently hoisted her into the waiting travel tube which was half full of water. She discovered a breathing mask and donned it before top of the tube was sealed and the tube filled entirely. Katerina discovered the bliss of once more floating in water. Her internal pain quickly faded away and she floated in the tube as it was trundled along a corridor. Her side stung in the salt water but the tube prevented her from seeing what the robot had done.

Eventually, they reached a huge swimming pool. The travel tube was backed into the water until the outside water was halfway up the glass. It then popped open and Katerina found herself free for the first time in days.  Two others were waiting in the pool; the man and the woman were trying to talk but discovered they could no longer do so. As Katerina swam up, she discovered what the final robot had done. Down each of their sides, a UPC had been imprinted. When she tried to talk, her vocal cords refused to work. The best she could manage was an incoherent squeak, much higher in pitch than any she’d been able to make in past.  They tried a number of ideas but discovered that they just couldn’t make any sounds that were useful in speech.  One of Katerina’s cousins was deaf and she knew sign language but, unfortunately, neither of the others did.  Even that avenue was blocked. In the end, the three sullenly floated in one corner. An hour later, the final woman arrived in a travel tube and was released. Once again, they tried to communicate with her but, once again, this proved impossible. The four floated disconsolately in the pool and waited for something to happen.
Hours went by without incident, then a click at the far end of the pool announced the arrival of the familiar food trays. They swam over, dragging their tails and using their arms instead of using the tails for propulsion. The trays contained unfamiliar squeeze tubes instead of recognizable food. Katerina shrugged and opened one. It was fishy in taste and definitely not any kind of gourmet meal.  It was food and Katerina found herself ravenous. The other two tubes held different tasting contents but they were filling and Katerina finished them all.  After they’d eaten and the trays returned, the lights dimmed. Clearly they were expected to sleep, but how?  Katerina soon discovered the knack. She could float partially upright with just her face out of the water. Some new instinct kept her floating even when asleep but Katerina was not sure she’d ever been fully asleep. She knew dolphins slept by putting half their brains to sleep while still remaining partially conscious to keep from drowning.  Katerina decided that this must be something similar.

The next day, a slot opened in one end of the pool and they were herded into a much larger pool. A large number of others swam energetically about. A trainer pointed a laser pointer at them and indicated they were to enter a side pool. There, robotic arms kneaded stiff muscles. Finally, they were let loose to practice swimming. The four were clearly the newbies. Barely able to move their stiff new tails, they were helped by others who’d been in the training tank far longer. The four soon discovered that these merfolk were using a variation of sign language.  Katerina, already familiar with the original version, quickly adapted.

The first week, the four found themselves in the small pool once a day. The robot soon progress from massage to more intense and painful exercises. By the end of the week, their tails had progressed from nearly dead appendages to far more supple and useful replacements for their missing legs.

Over the next two weeks, the four became increasingly adept at swimming, diving and, in Katerina’s case, tail-walking. This was, of course, discouraged but Katerina still practiced it and leaps as well when none of the trainers were about.  Two weeks later, a horn sounded. Trainers pointed at several of the most experienced swimmers with the laser pointer and pointed to the small pool. Clearly, they were to swim into the small pool that Katerina had been in for the first stage of her physiotherapy.  They didn’t need physio so why were they being gathered into the small pool? When all had gathered, the tank gate shut and Katerina heard the unmistakable sound of water being pumped. A quick leap confirmed her suspicions. They were being loaded into travel tanks. She let the others know underwater. Oddly this wasn’t as much of a surprise as Katerina thought it might have been. There wasn’t anything that could be done at all.  An hour later, the gate to the side pool swung open again.

This process went on for six more weeks. During the week, new transformed people would join them in the pool. Trainers would make sure everyone did long hours of practice with their new bodies. Every two weeks, another group of the most experienced would be selected and transported. One day, Katerina realized something. There was no one more experienced in the tank than the four she’d been transformed with. It came as no surprise when they, plus a half dozen others nearly as adept in the water as her four, were laser tagged and guided into the small tank. Contrary to her expectations, the pool wasn’t completely drained.  Instead it was drained to the level that entering the travel tanks was made as easy as possible. She and the others quickly entered the travel tanks, donned the oxygen masks and waited. Expecting the tube to seal immediately, Katerina was surprised when, few minutes later, robots appeared and snapped a ring around her tail just ahead of her flukes. Only then did the tubes close and other robots pulled each travel tank from the water. Each was taken down a concrete path to the cargo pod under a waiting transport helicopter.

Once fully loaded and the cargo pod door sealed, Katerina heard the roar of the blades and felt the vibration as they lifted off. ‘Cargo’ couldn’t see out so Katerina didn’t get to see where they were going. The helicopter flew nearly ten hours according to the clock on the inside of the pod before Katerina felt the pod tilt.  They were landing. The question was where?

Once they were unloaded, Katerina got a look at her new home. It looked, for all the world, like some kind of floating oil platform but that couldn’t be right. Plastic recycling was mandatory and the demand for petroleum had dropped over a quarter century before. It held the expected crews quarters but none of the extensive machinery a drill ship would have sported. It took a half an hour for the ten, still in their travel pods, to be picked up dropped over the side by crane into a waiting netted off area. Once there, the travel pods opened, disgorging them. The pods were quickly whisked away leaving them floating in salt water.

“Welcome to the Great Pacific Plastic Gyre,” an unfamiliar voice stated. “As part of Global Plastic Recovery, your job, from this day onward, is to gather as much of the plastic as you can and return it to this station. You will be fed and receive medical treatment. You will be expected to gather at least ten kilograms per day.”

A small platform dropped down into the water and Katerina realized it held a number of what looked like backpacks. She quickly grabbed one and discovered it was full of cloth bags. Clearly these were to be filled with the recovered plastic. She donned her backpack and pulled one of the bags free.

Katerina looked at the web between her digits. It all made sense now. The webs would help her capture even small bits of floating plastic. It would be good work but, not for the first time since her twenty fifth birthday, did Katerina regret her spending. Everything of hers was all gone now, likely sold off to partially repay the debt of her wasting “The Great Gift”. She would clean the oceans until she was unable to do so. Would that expiate her crime and allow her to return to the land? But what could she do there? She’d likely be old and have no useful skills whatever. As a tear dropped from her eye, she quickly dove to clear away. She followed the others out to begin clearing the mess of the last century. She wondered what would happen if she didn’t capture enough plastic but decided she’d rather not find out.

Woman: Creative Commons

Dolphin: Wikimedia

Porthole: SeekPNG.com