Lens // #PlanetOrPlastic

Lens

I zip up my suit and give my helmet a knock before climbing out the top hatch of my sub, lowering myself down onto the piles of garbage. The air is thick with smog and chemicals.

The havoc of society lies on top of this once beautiful area; streaks of plastic blend with broken bottles to form a rotten wasteland. A wasteland that I must sift through with my own hands to survive.

I go for wires, computers, bits of technology. Glass and metal are valuable as well. I'm rummaging through a dense pile when my fingers curl around something hard and square. I stop digging and pull it out, intrigued. It's a camera, dirt streaking its surface. I smile; it'll fetch a good price. Tracing the simple designs on its surface, I put it in my bag before I return to scavenging.

When the sun starts to sink, I return to my sub, limbs aching. After undressing myself, I bathe with the purified water that I have. Once I am clean, I take my bag to the control station of my sub and sort my haul, calculating what I can earn at the market. I keep coming back to the camera, not wanting to put it in any pile.

As night falls, I find myself eyeing the camera. Curiosity eventually wins over, and my hands plunge into action.

I open the camera's screen and flip through it. Color immediately strikes me and pierces through my eyes. I see blue skies; bigger and more beautiful than the entire ocean. I see children in rainbow worlds; houses doused in pastel; different people smiling at me, faces flushed with glowing shades. Even the grays send me into a dreaming fit. I sit in my sub for a long time, hunched over, eyes fixated on the camera, watching and wondering and dreaming as the ocean starts to darken. And finally, after I have explored the entire surface world through one tiny screen, after I have felt and lived more than ever before, I see the final picture: coordinates written on a scrap of paper.

I fly into action, setting the camera down as I start up my sub. My keyboard glows red as I punch in the coordinates, focused on nothing else but the screen in front of me.

Location: Found. I rev my sub into action, pulling up a map onscreen.

Traveling through the night, I maneuver around in the dark. And finally, as the sun shines through the waves, turning black into blue, I spy my destination.

Letting my sub groan to a halt as I rise, I stare out the front window, wanting to touch the scene before me. It is the hull of a once-operational sub, its metal now rusted green and crawling with barnacles, carrying a reef of splendor, protecting it from the elements. I stand there for a while, staring at the coral and swarms of fish darting around, thriving within the belly of this polluted ocean.