Fifteen minutes before closing, we pushed our way through a three–deep crowd at Deal Club to get the last ones. At the register we ask, “Stupid question, but what is it?”

The clerk laughs, “Relax, everyone asks that. Forever Plastic’s got a lifetime warranty, break it or lose it and the company gives you a million dollars.”

“But what’s it do?”

“It’s got a lifetime warranty. Put it back, if you want. We can’t order enough Forever Plastic.”

If all those Deal Club customers have to have it for $9.99, it must be something we want.

It takes a table saw to open the packaging. An empty-plastic-water bottle sits inside. It doesn’t even have its cap. First we’re pissed, until we remember the warranty. We call Deal Club’s 800 number to claim our million for the missing cap, but no luck. It’s not included in the $9.99 version.

“Can we return it?”

“No returns ever. It’s part of their lifetime warranty.”

“What do we do with this Forever Plastic?”

“Break it or lose it. It’s what all our customers are trying to do. You wouldn’t believe how many sledgehammers we’re selling.”

“We can do things like that?”

“You can try, but no one’s collected yet.”

We run the bottles over with our cars and flatten them, but minutes later they’re round again. We fill them with gasoline and set them on fire. They melt then reconstitute amidst clouds of noxious grey smoke. We buy chainsaws, shotguns, pit bulls, turkey fryers; even try liquid nitrogen dispensers followed by ballpeen hammers. We ponder the raised letters “Bio-regradeable” on the bottle’s bottom.

Still confident and counting on Forever Plastic millions to come, we purchase houses.

Unable to break the bottles, we try to lose them instead. In New York at rush hour, city workers clear subway cars crammed with them. A Vermont Little League walks across Lake Champlain to New York. The Park Service has to close the Grand Canyon and Forever Plastic sponsors the cleanup. People jump off the Golden Gate Bridge without bungee cords and live. Rumors circulate of a Forever Plastic island the size and shape of Borneo somewhere in the Pacific. Bloggers insist it’s the product of an Indonesian nuclear test.

Inevitably, our bottles come back, though sometimes with dead fish, subway tickets, or bits of San Francisco Bay inside.

Congress refuses to address the issue. Forever Plastic has its own PACto argue that their bottles create jobs. Radio talk shows label the President’s Forever Plastic tax “socialist” and “anti-business”. Paid scientists publish Wall Street Journal op-eds questioning the dangers of bottle proliferation. “Eons ago, before fish, the oceans contained even more plastic.” The Pope seizes on “Lifetime warranty” and declares the bottles “living beings”. Exhausted and forced to acknowledge the fiendish intelligence of their design, we concede.

The bottles will outlive us all, our legacy to the earth, our monument to ourselves.

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