💯 Story Challenge | Flash Fiction

Journey Across an Ocean of Plastic

A sci-fi/ utopian adventure story.

Today was the day.

The day of Amelia’s voyage to where no one had been since the Beginning when the Founders built the Dome as shelter from the toxic earth.

Amelia’s survival suit hung over the wardrobe and her kitbag lay beside her sleeping pod. She 3D printed some avocados on toast for her breakfast and a piece of cheese for her pet mouse. She scooped it into her arms, petting its soft fur and cooed, “Who’s a good boy.”

Ready to leave, she took a long look about her room. Her gaze fell on her bookcase of treasures and the first artefact she’d found on her own which sparked her interest in history.

A shell. She’d shown it to her mother, who told her, “The ancient humans believed that if you hold a shell to your ear then you can hear the ocean.” She held the shell to her ear and listened. Of course, it wasn’t the ocean. She heard a roaring sound like running water and nothing like plastic knocking together.

Amelia’s bookcase also stored some ancient artifacts the museums let her keep from her archaeological digs. Fishing hooks, a VR headset along with a fiction book called the Atlas. In it the ocean was blue rather than multicoloured plastic. They even wrote that the world was round, and some people have incredible imaginations.

Picking up her kitbag, she left her flat and walked through the grass-covered streets to the Dome gates.

“Good luck,” someone yelled. She looked and saw a beekeeper gathering honey from a nest in the tall trees. He turned back to work but slipped and knocked the bee’s nest. Angry bees charged out, and he fell, plummeting towards the ground. The Automatic Gravity warped, and he was floated gently to the ground. “Good job I’m not the one leaving the Dome, eh? You take care of yourself out there.”

Amelia thanked him for his good wishes and continued to the gates, where a small crowd was gathered, waiting to send her off. She smiled and waved. Amelia posed for a few photographs and speeches with the Explorers Guild and their funders. Finally, she hugged goodbye to her mother and boarded her ship. It was a simple one-person vessel, but had everything she needed.

With a final wave, she set off through the gates and left the Dome.

Out of the Dome, plastics of multiple colours and shapes passed in a blur as her ship hovered over the ocean. Clouds of red and burnt orange streaked through the brown sky. Amelia smelt the rose-scented air in her respirator and smiled at the beauty of the world.

Several days out to sea and Amelia was sailing in unchartered waters.

Amelia’s ship stuttered and wobbled with turbulence. The plastic ocean was falling apart. Beneath the plastic was a strange surface, somewhat mirrored and greyish blue in colour.

She peered over the edge to get a better look. The ship lurched sideways. She fell overboard and splashed into water.

The impact winded Amelia and every inch of her skin was sore. Yet that was nothing compared to how the tow of the water pulled her underneath. She thrashed her arms desperately trying to cling to the surface and find something solid to pull herself up. It was no good, she was sinking.

After her initial panic she managed to calm herself with several deep breaths of her respirator’s rose scented air, grateful that her survival suit was waterproof, and wondered why on earth there was so much water in the ocean.

Sinking lower the water was filled with odd creatures. There were small colourful ones the size of her hand, large ones with sharp fins and giant teeth and a creature with a bulbous head and enormous eyes. It came closer, the creature’s eight tentacles stretched out towards her.

Amelia braced herself, tugged on the zip cord on her survival suit and was reeled back to her ship.

Looking out, blue stretched as far as the eye could see. The blue abyss consumed the horizon so Amelia couldn’t tell where the sky ended and the ocean began. She had to get home and warn the others.

She had reached the edge of the world. Here there be monsters.

№9 of my version of the 100 story challenge; 💯 stories in 💯 days, at least a 💯 words.

Inspired by this months Microcosm theme of utopia and Bradan Writes Stories Mash Up prompts. Thank you to Sweet Chaos for challenging me to write this.