Runner 47 and Earth Day 2031 both started out looking fabulous. The day, bright and sparkling. The runner, resplendent in tinted contact lenses, thick-soled shoes, lots of spandex, and a cheap souvenir sun visor. Just before the start, she applied hand sanitizer to herself, the visor, her watch, and parts of the sidewalk. The pump bottle was sputtering and there were many others, so she tossed it into the bin marked “biodegradable”.
Progress, she thought contentedly. No more inscrutable numbered triangles printed on jars and jugs for recycling. No more recycling. Toys and toothpicks and bins and bottles…those stupid screw-top caps on cardboard milk cartons…latex paint and the can it came in…all were now conveniently reduced to their component elements and whisked away by micro-organisms!
She sailed forth in an easy jog. There was no litter in sight, no trash near the curb or on the street. No grocery bags festooned the upper branches of trees; no six-pack rings clustered around storm drains on their way to strangle sea life. Such an improvement. Mother Earth herself was now taking out the trash.
It just goes to show that nature always finds a way. Mountains of plastic waste towering in dumps and ever-expanding islands of it gyring at sea, and what happens? New strains of bacteria and fungi spontaneously appear with the mutations needed to break down plastic.
Runner 47 smiled. To think people used to fear microbes! Those friendly fungi and beneficent bacteria! She herself had a fridge full of those little single-serving tubs of yogurt, the ones with live cultures of probiotics. And she knew enough to mix up a prebiotic smoothie now and then to keep her gut flora happy.
She glanced backward, then spun to hop a few steps in reverse. The other participants were way behind her. Some weren’t even running. Well, it was a bit warm today. She resumed her comfortable lope.
At the midpoint of the course she grabbed a half-liter water bottle from a Styrofoam crate. The nearby volunteer, who should have cheered her on, was instead bent over and struggling with his visor; it appeared to be tangled up in the band holding his ponytail.
The bottle was lukewarm and sticky. Pausing, she gulped some of the water and let some of it run down her chin. It was not very refreshing. She couldn’t finish it and she wouldn’t carry it with her for later, because everyone knows that plastic can leach into drinks that sit around too long. Then she’d be consuming microplastic or maybe even nano-plastic particles. No, she’d never re-use this bottle and if she felt thirsty later she’d just get another one. She cleaned her fingers with an anti-bacterial wet wipe and dropped it, with the bottle, for the invisible allies to locate and digest.
It would be fine. Humanity’s worst mistakes always ended up fixing themselves. Coal dust and horse dung got swept away by gas-powered engines, famine by petroleum-derived fertilizer. Humans hadn’t starved by the millions, as predicted, after the world wars of the 20th century. Instead they had boomed, dancing into the space age wearing nylon stockings, patent leather shoes, and acrylic nails. The future was built of Bakelite, vinyl, and polyester, smoothed by Teflon, cushioned with foam rubber, and stored in Tupperware.
Runner 47 was pretty sure her own existence could be credited directly to the invention of disposable diapers.
She was getting hot as she entered the final kilometer of the race. Her cheeks burned. She had exfoliated with microbeads the night before, so maybe the sunscreen was irritating her fresh skin. She stopped to pinch the contacts from her watering eyes. Blinking rapidly, she flicked the lenses to the ground and continued at a walk.
It was just a “fun run” anyway. The real winner today was the planet. It appeared that the Anthropocene wasn’t actually fated to destroy the world. The global ecosystem had been correcting itself for millions of years, after all, simply by applying the same evolutionary process to every living thing. Runner 47, vaccinated with single-use syringes, equipped with a polyethylene IUD, conditioned on a treadmill while sporting headphones over both ears: she was an exemplar of fitness, better adapted than any of her foremothers had ever been. Right?
Homo sapiens exploited its niche just as Ideonella sakaiensis did. Bacteria had the advantage of mutating more readily than multi-celled organisms. And they reproduced faster; some species could double their numbers every 20 minutes. That meant they could adapt to a different diet and habitat almost instantly. But humans had technology. So, yeah, there was no contest.
The elastic in her shorts suddenly relaxed; she had to grab the waistband to hold them up. Worse, her feet were hitting the pavement where her arch-supporting soles had worn through. And now she felt quite unwell.
It was shockingly unusual for her. She never got sick. She was so careful! She washed clothes and dishes with detergent pods, scrubbed exposed surfaces and her teeth with nylon brushes, swabbed everything else with polypropylene wipes. She even used an HDPE cutting board so she didn’t ingest wood fibers or, god forbid, germs!
And yet…she felt like something was turning her inside out. Her blood was boiling. Was she feverish? She could check her heart rate and temperature with her smart watch, but where was it? The strap must have broken at some point on the run.
Ahead there were folding tables laden with more water bottles, other promotional merchandise, and, of course, hand sanitizer. But surely this wasn’t the end of the race. There should be spectators and organizers and sponsors handing out ribbons. Instead the whole parking lot was roped off and the agitated figures beyond the tape swam in her vision.
Runner 47 staggered over the line marked by drooping flags on bending poles. Then she collapsed. There was no one there to notice, but it was definitely a clean finish.
C. J. Peterson is a writer of science articles and science fiction.