#159 Dream Cargoes- J.G. Ballard
This is an interesting work of speculative fiction. What if a
cargo ship of dangerous chemicals leaks into the ocean and creates a chemical
reaction, a perfect cocktail akin to the primordial ooze of early creation on earth?
Johnson, a hapless seaman had been duped into joining a
mission to illegally dump Organo-Phosphates into the ocean. It was supposed to
be a quick trip, but once the word of their existence got out there was nowhere
to set port. Three years later they were still cruising around the Carribean
looking for a place to dump:
“For months they had cruised forlornly from one port to
another, boarded by hostile maritime police and customs officers, public health
officials and journalists alerted to the possibility of a major ecological
disaster.”
One by one, the crew and eventually the captain abandoned
the ship, leaving Johnson to his own devises, now by default as captain of a
poisonous sinking vessel.
“All his life he had failed to impose himself on anything…He
had always reacted to events, never initiated anything on his own. Now for the
first time, he could be the captain…and master of his own fate.”
He found an old island used during WW II just north of
Puerto Rico where he beached the ship. As the chemicals seeped into the lagoon
causing amazing bloom in new vegetation, he meets a biologist who is studying
the island herself.
“Everywhere a deranged horticulture was running riot.”
“By now, four months after his arrival…the one-time garbage
island had become a unique botanical garden, generating new species of trees,
vines and flowering plants everyday. A powerful life-engine was driving the
island.”
She begins using Johnson’s exposure to the new eco-system as
part of her studies. She feeds him new fruit, make shim trap new birds, and
even becomes pregnant with his child, one she is sure will be a new, stronger
human species. Johnson in turn falls to delusion, and long bouts of
hallucination.
“You’re learning to control time.”
“There is no time anymore—everything is too beautiful for
time.”
Things become untenable and the authorities are brought in
to destroy the failing new mutant island, including Johnson himself. The child
still grows within Christine but with little hope of surviving, for with all
the new species:
“The life of the individual becomes the entire life of the
species.”
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