“Wrapping and packaging. We are entrapped in it. Our whole culture depends on it.”

He has crushed the paper cup he was holding in his hand, while watching the vast dark city beneath him. He imagined that it is some sort of 2100-s something gigapolis, but really, it was just some dirty concrete block filled with hard waste up to the windows of first floor sometimes. Yet the year was 2030.

“Many had expected more ecology this and ecology that and smart tech approach to everything. But we have more debris, coming from things we use once to cover some possessions or nutrition…”

He was an engineer. Middle-aged and jobless. Times of ambitions have passed, bearing no fruit but sour grapes. All but one last ambition: to combat waste. Pandemics and war-time economies made people to distance themself from interaction with someone else’s bodily fluids as small as finger mark.

“Well, it comes from about a hundred years’ history, I gather. First people needed to ship things on long distances and keep it in good shape and state. Then they decided that for it to be cleaner, the container or wrappings should be used and thrown away. Then there were some folks who felt that individual packaging makes them special…”

The Engineer looked at twisted cup in his fingers and thought about his secret project again. Morph-X, he called it – morphing substance, that could be made from paper, plastics and fabrics and then recycled numerous times after usage! Also colored by means of some oscillation to extent enough to make it marked and pretty as a commercial package should be. But now it was just another piece of trash, final and proud of being such. 

“I guess these theories are foolish indeed, as she always used to say…”

Vernon, and this was his name, threw the cup into the receiving funnel of a morbid device in the middle of the living room. Morph-X machine. Made from some scrap, of course. And good electronics. He was a logic, not a fanatic of DIY from cheapest parts possible. The principle of matter dissociation was yet a bit unclear, so he managed to achieve some grey mass and residue as most often result. Vernon tried to persuade himself that at the very least he would make sustainable bricks out of this crap, but then he realized that ‘crap’ part was not much of a joke. 

“I am 46 year old, a bit too old to have crisis going on, several more years and I will be a penniless pensioner, able to pay my food and rent and some clothes to replace rags.”

Thinking of rags, he took up a shirt from the floor and tossed it in the machine in bitter irony on the verge of despair. While the apparatus was consuming the fabric and buttons, inventor looked at the portrait on the wall. Bearded cheerful man, after whom Vernon has been loosely named, was once the most famous science-fiction writer, enabling many wondrous discoveries to be inspired. That writer’s excitement about electrical machinery made him to make it central in many of his famous novels.

“My ex. she hated Jules’ books. She hated all the science-fiction, science and fiction separately as well.”

Morph-X machine made vile sounds as it boiled and regurgitated materials. 

“She was annoyed by me collecting the scrap for years, while herself, she threw away not just packing materials, but whole almost new things, when they had started to annoy her!”

He recalled that bitter and weird day, when this apartment – inherited from parents – was half-full of empty cans, paper bags and boxes, plastic bottles (of course, every item carefully pressed to take less space); and on that day, when he decided to collect also paper coffee cups, she made him choose. “It is me or THIS”, she exclaimed. Obviously, he made a very strange choice back then. Laurel, his wife, walked out of the flat, laughing and crying at the same time. Vernon couldn’t decide who was mad of them two, but settled for himself. Mad scientist. A common cliche. 

“So, then I have placed my bet on me being right. On me doing the right thing. On me saving the planet, or humanity at the very least, from itself! I can’t be wrong!’

Morph-X machine went on making awful noises. Vernon looked onto another portrait of a famous detective story author who also was fond of sci-fi and had produced several novels of the genre. Including one of matter transformation. 

“As if alchemy has gone real science”, thought Vernon the Engineer in a gloomy inner voice. If it would be, he’d work side-by-side with Laurel on this thing. 

“I wonder, how much waste had she alone produced in these ten years? Or was it twelve?” 

Morph-X machine gave way to awful stench and beeped to call for its creator. 

– Let us see, now, what do we have this time… – he murmured as he took the mass in his hands. 

It appeared to be resilient enough and clear enough and elastic and flexible, if only it could fly and that’d a different invention. But a glimpse of hope sparkled in Vernon’s mind. He rushed to a workbench to spread the warm mass and give it a dry under some ray exposure. In half an hour, he had a paper like sheet with logo “Morph-X” written over it. 

Engineer wrapped a rock in it and then made a boat from it, tried to tear and to burn it. It was quite a generic package paper of sorts. But – could it be easily recycled after becoming dirty?

Vernon spent several hours putting food, oil, paint, blood, mud and other popular sources of impurity over Morph-X samples, letting them dry, and then recycling them all over in same machine. 

– Eureka! – he breathed finally roughly at midnight. The new material could be easily separated from food or mineral traces and redone clean! – Here, Laurel, for all your desire to unpack and throw away carelessly! 

It was essentially magical. 

“Now then, I need to run some real tests: make it into thin layer and wrap goods for long”, thought the Engineer happily. 

Needless to describe those weeks of more and more elaborate experiments, which finally had got him into being sure that Morph-X existed. But there has arisen a new kind of trouble. 

As inventor ran out of his first sample, he had found of the correct formula of obtaining it. Running through his notes and machine logs once and once again, he could not repeat the consistency of Morph-X he had discovered before!

“Why won’t it work? All the ingredients are the same. I am running out of paper cups. Should I go and buy more coffee? Coffee! Maybe, it is essential? Or any paper would do?”

Anxious to present something to public and remind people he was still alive and going, he was desperate enough to create a beta version, without a brand name, as a better new wrapping paper. Amazingly, it sold well. Which helped to muster some funds to make a new version of Morph-X machine, precise and shiny. 

“Wonder Wrap” went into mass production in April, 2031, and there was a grand opening of a gift store where everyone could order the right sized package with no excess paper to be cut, no matter what the form of a gift could be. But paint had to be applied externally and there could be just one or two recycling times of it. Still, how it consumed waste to become gift wrapping, amused customers. Of course, he waited for Laurel to come and see his triumph. But she did not bother. 

– It has a very pleasant smell to it! – exclaimed another lady, raising her wrapped gift to her nose. 

“Pleasant smell? Morph-X was created in stench. Why such difference? I have used generally unclean raw materials, maybe, and these are somewhat washed? No, that can’t be that stupid”.

He smiled and thanked for her patronage as lady went away. And in the evening, mind torture had set in. 

What was it? Some secret ingredient, so secret that in fact closed from the very creator of the concoction. Vernon started pacing across the room, collecting things and throwing them into the new machine, but before he pressed ‘Start’ button, he realized that he’d just cause malfunction. 

“This is just random rubbish in there”. He sat down to calm a bit, covering head with hands. 

That was the time he had felt some faint scent. Chemical yet somehow not industrial kind. Meaning, everything is chemistry around us this or that way. But it smelt sort of natural. Slowly, he’d risen his arm and sniffed his armpit. 

“Sweat”, he laughed, “it could be my sweaty shirt”. 

Inventor eyed the room full of reporters who came in person and flying cameras of some other channels. Devices like these were in the sci-fi stories of his childhood, and now they were real. And he was contributing to the Progress himself. 

– That’s it? – reporter of “Science Daily”, trendy magazine, printed on recycled paper.  

– That’s it. Do you need more? It alone would change the face of many industries and would solve waste problems eventually! Many types if garbage would become resources. Endless resources.

– Sounds implausible! – guy from “Streetwise” cheap leaf. If he’d known how many of those went into Morph-X-31… 

– We can only know by trying and measuring. 

– Did you achieve brighter colors for it? – girl from “Psychobiology”, fashion glantz. 

– No, and I do not think they are needed. People rarely notice wrapping these days. There would be colors enough. By their hues, buyers would know this is Morph-X, and love to get into its cycle. 

– Will you replace all kinds of wrappings and packages?

– No, just some. And maybe, temporary clothes as well. Or some gazettes, – Vernon pushed his luck with a joke, half of the audience laughed, and other half murmured.

The other questions went on and on, while samples were being presented. Vernon Coil knew this was just the beginning of Morph-X story, however twisted it could prove to be. But however twisted, it could be recycled now.