- Mar 21
- 5 min read
Science Fiction
Did you know 90% of your stomach lining is plastic? If you are a child under the age of ten, 3%–8% of your total body weight is plastic, and if you’re an adult in the United States, you are likely to be 30%–40% plastic when measured from the waist up.
You protest: But I don’t feel the plastic. That is because a lot of it is stored behind your eyes. What? MY EYES? Don’t worry—the majority of people who suffer from optic plastitus feel no discomfort because the plastic particles simply float around their optic nerves like benign flotsam bobbing in an algae bloom. Occasionally, a random particle of plastic might smack the optic nerve, and wow, that can be uncomfortable. Inflammation of the optic nerve, or optic neuritis, affects one in one thousand people. Want to know if you're at risk for this or optic plastitus, a condition which may or may not exist outside of this article? Keep reading!
In past studies, scientists linked the likelihood of optic nerve damage to the color of your eyes. Perhaps you have noticed that in old age, people’s eyes turn gray or even blue. When you noticed this, it was most likely during your niece’s ballet recital, while you were sitting in a metal folding chair and trying not to fall asleep. An old timer sneezed during “Waltz of the Flowers,” and he turned to you and his eyes were like Boo-Berry marshmallows, and you stared back and thought: how bizarre. Will this ghostly discoloration happen to me someday? Keep reading to find out!
What causes a person’s eye color to magically transform from the hazel-ish brown they were in your high school yearbook (when you were voted MOST LIKELY TO CHANGE THE WORLD) to the chilly blue or cloudy gray of a walking bag of regrets? The change is the result of the copious consumption of plastic, which disproportionally affects North Americans who play fast and loose with their dietary choices. If you are part of that sub-group, by the time you’ve reached the age of Adrian Brody when he won his first Oscar (29), you have most likely eaten your weight in plastic. Therefore, when you reach the age Jessica Tandy was when she won her first Oscar (80), you will either be foggy-eyed or dead.
There are many kinds of plastic particles, most of which are bone white or dead-grass yellow, but some of which are fire-engine red or robin’s-egg blue. Regardless of original pigmentation, all plastic particles eventually degrade to an inoffensive neutral shade of gray-blue that will complement almost any shirt, even those ugly neon green ones your son wears when he works construction, or the awful plaid ones he wears when he consumes three to five Molsons in the evening after work. Will your son ever get a job that makes use of his $200,000 degree in Economics? Keep reading to find out!
What happens to the plastic that does not collect around your eyeballs? Good question! New studies suggest that it floats aimlessly through the solar system of your body like a cluster of asteroids. Specifically, it blasts through your arteries and veins and will occasionally poke very small holes in your heart. These holes are responsible for 100% of the chest pains experienced by Luxembourgers over the age of 55. Why Luxembourgers? A new study intends to find the answer!
Here’s something interesting: If plastic has free range to roam inside a human body, its physical characteristics tend to mutate, much like the way your son mutated from a lovely baby full of promise into a recalcitrant young man oddly devoted to the comedic albums of the formerly SNL-affiliated group The Lonely Island. Only in the plastic’s case, it wants to change. It longs to be something more.
In this way, tiny plastic particles are very similar to genome-editing CRISPR RNA—and yes, crRNA is a real thing that you first heard about years ago listening to Radiolab. Remember that one afternoon when you were sitting in your car outside your sister's house because you weren’t quite emotionally ready to witness your niece's eighth birthday party, where the full opulence of your sister’s "successful life-choices" would be on display? Remember the reflective tower of metallically wrapped gifts, the actual living pony walking lazy circles around the backyard, and the famous musician casually eating a slice of cake under your sister’s persimmon tree?
Anyway. The scientists who declined to be interviewed for this article said that plastic particles like to mimic the organisms they encounter, which means that right now a bit of your toothbrush might be transforming into a liver-chunk or a spleen-blob, all of its own accord inside your body!
Plastic surgeons are the most knowledgeable surgeons when it comes to plastic. Occasionally, they will find particles lodged in the inner wall of a patient’s skin, which is nice because then they can vacuum up the particles and use them to make more comedic albums of the formerly SNL-affiliated group The Lonely Island. However, do not be fooled. Skin particles do not look flat and thin like skin. Instead, they choose to imitate common chunky shapes: cubes and orbs and a 3-D version of that Star Trek triangle. These shapes remind you of the sorting blocks your son managed to insert into the correct companion holes when he was just nine months old, which was a clear indication of his (squandered) genius.
A daily plastic check of one’s own body is recommended by 9 out of 10 doctors, some of whom are dentists. The plastic protrusions you discover in and outside your physical form are often smooth and have a kind of sheen to them. I recently removed a micro thing from my left tear duct. The duct made a noise. A quack. The duct had turned into a duck—a transfiguration, both banal and beautiful. The new duck was a rubber one. Being modern, it was not made of rubber at all, but of plastic. Good old plastic.
I am currently holding the plastic duck in my hand. I look down at the little guy and find so much promise in his pliability. I think: Here is a thing of wonder. I think: Why couldn't he have been a scientist? I think: Hello, progress.
JESSIE REN MARSHALL’s story collection, Women! In! Peril!, was an Indies Introduce selection and one of Debutiful’s “Best Debut Books of 2024.” Her writing has been in places like The New York Times, New England Review, Electric Lit, and Joyland. She lives off-grid in Hawaiʻi and is working on a novel called Alohaland.