The Unbreakable Bag
It had started out innocently enough. They’d gotten a carbon nanofilm devkit at their hackerspace, and started to play with the remarkable material. It was advertised as being as cheap as plastic, but 100x stronger, and true enough, the opaque black film was nearly impossible to rip. Even cutting it was hard, as it liked to slip between the blades of scissors and flexed away from knives. You had to use a rotary blade on a hard surface or set up a nanozipper to walk up the sheet and cleanly split it. After a few experiments with it, the roll of material had gone on a shelf, but he’d been thinking about it for weeks. Eventually, he got up the courage to try something. One night, he arrived at the space late, and got the rolls of material and the nanozipper and splicer out. First, he cut a few panels into a square roughly the size of a large bin liner. Next, he used the nanosplicer to reseal those edges, leaving only one edge open. Thinking a minute, he made a small incision in each side of the bag, to make sure air could get in. As he fluffed the bag in the air, it filled and floated down just like a regular trashbag would do. It looked just like any other bag, albeit it was a bit smoother and shinier. No one would notice it. He cleaned up the materials, and put the splicer in one pocket, and the zipper in his other, and exited the space. He turned and pulled his keys out of his pocket to lock the door, and turned with a start. Something had made a noise. He looked around, but there was no one there. Anyway, he was just leaving like a normal person - he just happened to be holding what looked like a trashbag. Satisfied that he was being paranoid, he headed down to the loading dock, where dozens of bags of trash were piled, waiting for pickup a few days later. Carefully, he lifted a few of them, and took a few steps into the pile. He arranged them around him, so that he had a nice soft bag under him, and a few squishy, heavy bags around him, nearly ready to topple down. He’d dreamed of doing this for years, becoming part of the trash. He’d actually done it once or twice in a big, regular bag, but it was so easy to rip out, he was desperate to try it inside the nanofilm. He’d play safe, of course, with the zipper in his pocket, but in this new bag, he could push and tear and thrash, and it would hold him inside. Getting excited, he fluffed the bag open once more, and then sat down inside it. Now it was time for his preparations. First, the gag. He popped a large black rubber ball into his mouth, and then wrapped a strip of the material he’d measured carefully around his neck and lower face, joining the ends behind his head. He fished out the splicer, and it walked up the plastic slowly, pulling the sides together until it was sealed around his face. He breathed through his nose, and felt the silky plastic conform to his mouth. He tried to spit out the ball, but it wasn’t going anywhere. He tried to make noise, and a muffled “mmph” came out, but he knew that was only a matter of time. ...