My Best Life

In 2219 AD an archaeology exhibit stuns visitors with a display of intact plastic artefacts from the early Anthropocene. The objects provide tantalising clues about a lost civilisation which produced such a miraculous substance; prehistoric organic matter transubstantiated into a material indispensable to the functioning of the ancient civilisation, yet produced in such vast quantities that it was considered disposable. The alchemists who perfected polymerisation in the mid 20th century were unaware their invention would not only outlast them, but almost kill the biosphere in the process.