Translation Walkthrough with Plastic Farmers, Part II

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Dear Readers,

   On Friday I gave you some primary sources and a little bit of analysis of those sources.  Now today I'm going to synthesize those sources into a story about the various characters.  I'm going to draw on some other sources that I know of for this time stream that would have been too complex to include, but the important thing here is that you'll see how it is I draw from clues in the sources to write something that gives a clue about what it feels like to live in one of these time streams.

  This experiment is becoming something longer than I expected, so here I'll give some further analysis and then the full narrative will post on Wednesday.

  See below.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople


Well!  Let's dive right in, then.
On the heels of yesterday's seminar, let's first get a mindset for these people.  Based on a couple of factors (the term "plastic trawler") being one of them, we know that the primary goal of all the characters that we have in our sources is to collect plastic for an economic use.  Their business is the business of recycling.

We have to figure out why that is, though.  Is it because the world has turned much more environmentally conscious?  I doubt it.  Hereditary mayoralties imply a loss of centralized control.  I doubt this is an environmental conservation issue.

Otherwise, it must be the economic value of the plastic that drives these men to the Pacific Gyre.  In your era, the Pacific Gyre is already a vast sea of plastic.  I can only imagine what several centuries would add to that.  It is likely thick, maybe even like an arctic cap, with plastic. 

Plastic takes resources to make.  Namely, oil and electricity.  The loss of central control that we concluded on earlier probably made these a lot more scarce.  Suddenly it's worthwhile to go out to sea to get plastic.  It's a question how they power the boat without oil, but there are options like sails and solar panels, so I'm not too concerned about that.

All right, so we've determined that some events eliminated economic centralization and made the collection of discarded plastic from the sea into a worthwhile endeavor economically.  Fantastic.  We can say, therefore, that an important part of this Mayor's power comes from his principality's ability to collect plastic.

The next thing to understand are the characters.  Let's take the Mayor's son, for example.  For him, this is a punishment.  Farming plastic is an undesirable job, apparently.  It might be lucrative, but not so much so that adventuring aristocrats go out to do it themselves.  This assignment is meant to teach Stephen a hard lesson about work.  So we've established that he sees the task as beneath him.

Since it's not a glamorous job, they use throwaway laborers off the dock, and it appears that no one cares about these people.  Human life has no doubt cheapened with the loss of centralized authority.  These people are barely considered individuals: they are a numbered and nameless crew.

However, we know that much of the process is regulated and there is paperwork to be done, like the customs form and the ship's manifest.  To take care of this as well as run the ship, there is a Captain and also a First Mate.  These people are obviously important because they are named.  I would suggest that their place in life is to be part of a Middle Class, which I would expect is still somewhat small and does not have a lot of power.

Yet, the Mayor is willing to entrust these men with his own son and intended successor.  That is curious in itself.  I imagine that when career plastic farmers and someone who looks down on their profession find themselves in the same straits, there will be some sort of confrontation.  We shall see what that means tomorrow.