Welcome To Hellville - Part 1 (2/2) By Rich Mills

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I remember as a child how the sea literally bubbled and sometimes seemingly glowed on many a night. It wasn't long before all the fishing industry was finding in their nets were fifty-year old used condoms, plastic bottles, and every kind of disposable 20th century consumer packaging imaginable. That caused a bit of a stink (literally), as much of what back in my Dad's day the people thought was being recycled, was actually being thrown into vast secret landfill sites.

My Dad has told me how back then the government tried to encourage everyone to recycle, but didn't tell the people that to actually recycle the plastics was not economically viable. It was cheaper to carry on producing more and more new plastics. So they secretly created these vast landfills of purely plastics. To be fair there had been attempts to pour chemicals on these landfills that were supposed to help the plastics degrade. These attempts didn't work out how they had hoped, and when the landfills washed into the sea the part degraded plastics slurry covered the surface of the water with some massively poisonous film of sticking chemical shit.

This stopped oxygen reaching the water, so the fish gradually suffocated. Those that didn't suffocate were cooked to death as the water started heating up, the thick chemical film acted like a green-house, trapping the baking heat that radiated down from the sun.

Ah, time check! The water taxi will be passing by soon. My chance of temporary escape, into a synth-a-hol stupor of roaring drunkenness. Love it! Drink as much as you want, get absolutely wasted, and then walk out of the bar stone-cold sober.

Although when the Anti-Alc filters aren't working, the hang-over can last for days though. Synth-a-hol is lethal stuff, in fact poisonous to the system in the long-term. It's only the Anti-Alc air-lock on the way out of the bar that feeds drunken revellers the antidote. The regular filter system breakdowns mean a lot of people ending up in hospital to get the antidote before their system closes down, or taking an inadequate home remedy from the local chemist. Oh well you drink the stuff, you take the risk.

Continued Welcome To Hellville - Part 2 By Rich Mills.. Next Page

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