Stories

The Plant - A Steampunk Story Chapter 16

“It is a living entity,” the biologist replied.
“What part of it, the plant and the extension ducts?” the other speaker replied. “We already know that!” 
“No, not only those, everything that it interacts with, the wall, the dome, the wildlife inside it, well, by extension, every person that enters it,” the biologist smiled.
The audience gasped. For months, rumors of the plant being capable of integrating people into its dense network of stems have been circulating, rumors that the factory was very assiduously trying to dispel. 

The Plant - A Steampunk Story Chapter 15

It’s not that people don’t expect life to change, it is the way that change comes about that always catches them unprepared. Sometimes it is as trivial as rain on the day of the picnic that everybody had spent months planning and looking forward to, or as significant as a shift in circumstances that makes one’s life plans lose consistency, but these are things that people usually adapt to, that they talk about with their loved ones, and then, after sufficient time had passed, they put behind them and move on. 
Other changes can’t be assimilated gradually, because they just don’t fit in the general understanding of existence, and they put a kink in the smooth passage of time, a singularity of sorts, that divides life into before and after. The reality of the plant belonged to the second category, and no amount of commiseration could make it blend gradually into the fabric of life.

The Plant - A Steampunk Story Chapter 14

Richard wasn’t the only one who found a way to put the plant/machine hybrid to good use, and as bio-based gadgets ceased to be an oddity, the town was soon awash with them, and they all looked strangely alive, as if nature had decided to grace the planet with a whole new branch of species, all at once. As it happens when life challenges ingrained concepts about what things are possible, it only takes one instance to prove the contrary. The plant had broken the ineffable barrier between organic and inorganic, the four minute mile of life and matter, so to speak, and from that moment on, the rift between the two forever ceased to exist. 
It wasn’t climactic, it was barely noticeable, and just like always when life is evolving, it happened in silence.

The Plant - A Steampunk Story Chapter 13

At times like these he stopped thinking of this large living conglomerate in terms of good or bad. One doesn’t question whether the squirrels or the lions, or the grass of the plain, are good or bad, they just are, and so is the sun in the sky and the snow on the mountains. When you open your eyes to life and see them for the first time, you don’t judge whether they belong or whether you belong. The wholeness of being is a shared experience and it is laid down before you, to provide the fabric and the context of your life.

The Plant - A Steampunk Story Chapter 12

The plant reached the back wall and went through it, as if it didn’t encounter any resistance, as if the wall wasn’t there at all. It was very strange how the two systems crossed without interacting, like they belonged to parallel realities, or different time lines. There didn’t seem to be a wall cavity where  the hybrid pipe penetrated it, and through the vaguely translucent material of the new branch one could actually see that.
Nobody questioned the new development, for more reasons than one, but mostly because after having lived with this constantly changing story for a while, about the plant that wouldn’t go away, people got kind of tired of worrying about it all the time. Everybody acknowledged the wall penetration that wasn’t there and simply put it out of their mind, in order to ensure life as they knew it continued to make sense.

The Plant - A Steampunk Story Chapter 11

The Plant - A Steampunk Story Chapter 10

The story of how Richard built a synthetic biology interface between the plant and the machine paled in comparison with the tale his friend concocted for him to supplant it, tale that involved a never before heard of second cousin of his from out of town, the latter's life-long dream to participate in a science competition for school age children that didn't exist, the challenge of a theoretical engine that ran on bio-fuel, ample library time for writing down the research papers, and the justification for building a gizmo whose function nobody could possibly understand. 

The Plant - A Steampunk Story Chapter 9

Nobody managed to figure out how the vine got into the steam pipes, and even less on how it changed itself to survive in such a hostile environment, but the botanists finally managed to figure out what kind of plant it was. It seemed to be a distant relative of the Carolina Jessamine vine, poor man's rope, as they called it, at least that's what it started out as, before it mutated twice and shed its biological shell to evolve into a partly inorganic hybrid. 
Despite all the hype around external intervention, alien, divine or otherwise, the scientific basis of what had happened to facilitate the evolution the plant into what it was now was quite self-explanatory, which made the cascading sequence of consequences even more difficult to accept, because, in people's minds, nothing this straightforward should have been allowed to radically change life as they knew it. 

The Plant - A Steampunk Story Chapter 8

“We should, theoretically, be able to recover most of the metal,” the expert explained, without any emotional involvement. “The plant will, of course, have to be destroyed in the process.”
“That's great news!” another person from the audience exclaimed. “So, what portions of the equipment you think might not be salvageable?”
“I'm afraid I wasn't very clear in explaining the situation. It will be possible to recover most of the metals, separately, of course. All the alloys will have to be recomposed. Some of the material will be lost in the melting process, it's unavoidable,” the expert continued, with a calm that put chills through the bones of the audience.
“You mean like, this much iron, this much tin, this much vanadium? In separate little piles?” a voice of despair resonated from the back.
“Precisely!” the expert pointed out cheerfully, happy to have explained himself clearly, and oblivious to the audience's indignation.
“What are we going to do with all the equipment decomposed neatly into piles of separate metals? We need the working equipment, exactly the way we have it!” a reasonable voice protested. “Had it,” he corrected himself. “Whatever!” he gave up.
“The equipment will have to be rebuilt, of course,” the expert pointed out the obvious.
“So, what you're telling me is that this stupid plant has formed one solid block with the pipe distribution system?” the burly guy in the front exploded.
“It's not a solid block, it did however interact with it at molecular level,” the expert corrected him.
“What difference does it make! Do you mean to tell us we can't rip out the stupid plant without destroying all of our machinery? You can't be serious!” his partner of conversation grew more and more irate.

The Plant - A Steampunk Story Chapter 7

One thing was sure: Richard was terrible at hiding the truth, and the last drop of it was pulled out of his tormented psyche despite his efforts; it came out in painful, somewhat inarticulate blobs as Jack attacked the matter from all sides, placing strategic questions at the critical points of the story, to eliminate the possibility of any important details being left out. After he squeezed the whole truth out of his friend, like one would get the last glob of toothpaste from an almost empty tube, he seemed content with the results, and pondered deep in thought for a while. He had that preoccupied look on his face, the one he got when he was planning something, which was exactly what Richard dreaded.