Forward: How can we judge what is not ours? To own a piece of humanity that is not ours to give…The human lifestyle is just a parody of Adam and Eve; however, we give it a little more spunk.
They are advertised everywhere. I have seen them, these predatory beings that roam our Earth. They do not have debility like we do. They are strong. With the thirst of carnivores, they consume sunlight, licking droplets of gold from tainted lips. I can see can through them, and the unequivocal impression I always get is: Alien. Indefinable. Sodden with science and lies. If I can’t control the cringe that tingles throughout my entire body, I might die. To stay human is to stay mortal. It is the year 2100. Food is scarce, water is scarcer. Mankind no longer has the supplies to survive. We don’t have the technology to make an epic voyage to another planet, though many assumed we would be capable by now. We live in sectors, underground provinces managed by the government and military. The closer to the core our home, the better. The skies rain vicious currents of acid almost every day. A few species have evolved to withstand the pain, even benefit from it. Humans are not one of them. We always evolve last.
Society has come up with one potential, ridiculously expensive escape: Plant mutations. I have seen them. Their stunning sight often ruminates in my mind when I’m not careful: Green specks of chlorophyll replacing skin, wandering eyes always looking up at the sun. What kind of crazy zealot would be obsessed enough to make them? As often found in our civilization, it’s the rich ones. The ones who, rather than have people become vegetarians, turn us into vegetation. They have the money to dream, while the only maxim that finds me is, “I see and say nothing.” Queen Elizabeth had the right idea. Besides, what can an adolescent like me say that would influence the inevitable fact: There are people on this planet who can photosynthesize. Obviously this is not natural. It started out more of a nostrum, a “special surgery” allowing indigent people with asthma to live normally. Then it grew, becoming rampant and uncontrolled. And now it has us all, but me.
When the knell sounds at last, and the dead are dumped into pits as if they had the plague, I will watch. I will watch and I will see everything. It will not be because I am doughty, for I have never been some courageous knight in shining armor. And it will not be because I have been exculpated from all my devilish sins. It will be because…I will become one of them too.
At first the side effects amused us, and we waved away the scientists’ warnings about becoming celibate and losing our past lives. We were the second wave of “participants,” the college kids that had high GPA’s but low bank accounts. I did not want children, and I had no past life to lose. The surgery was painless. I barely felt a thing as they cut open my chest and slipped the tiny seedling into my lungs. A nurse with auburn hair smiled down at me while I gapped at the blood that was gently spilling onto the ashy sheets.
“Would you like to name him?” she asked, the fulsome words dripping off her overdone lips. Did I want to name the plant that would use my own flesh to flourish and grow, eventually devouring me. . .The question had a tantamount affect to my mother asking me if I liked girls or boys, but this time I didn’t care for the response.
“Last.” I replied, the irony twitching my mouth into a smile. “Last Life, as this is the last time I plan to live.” She gave me a look and smiled politely, then appeared to scribble on her incredibly white clip-board. Gobbledygook, I’m sure.
I was put on an IV, in hopes that the new chemicals would transform my lungs into an arable place for Last Life to live. Then I was drugged, dreaming misty slips of a world where people were abetted to become genetically mutated plants.
I awoke much later, the concept of time now as foreign to me as due dates once were. I sensed the sunlight glistening on my face and hungrily breathed it in. I felt as if I had been lit up inside, a candle in a Japanese paper lantern. Alive, I slipped from the bed into warm, fuzzy shoes. Light guided me everywhere, and I followed its signals until I reached a pond. Suddenly, ravenous thirst filled me, and I gulped the cool, crisp H2O with fervent relish. After wiping my mouth with the back of my hand I had a startled thought. My eyes were still closed. Impossible. Inconceivable. No way. The realization left a hiatus in my blissful trance, and my body shook. Struggling, I recalled from the very depths of my mind the weakened muscles that used to so effortlessly open my eyes to day, to the light that even in darkness I was now somehow able to see. Painfully, I opened one hazel orb and then the other. The edges of my vision blurred, and my head ached when I tried to look at something far off. Resolute, I turned to the liquid pool in front of me and leaned down, searching comfort in my own reflection.
A scream parted my lips, and a FACE starred back at me in horror. Where tan skin used to cling nicely to my bones, clear, liquid gelatin swirled in its place. I gazed, fascinated, as for the first time I watched my inner organs at work. I saw my heart pumping, pale-white blood flowing, intestines pulsing as I breathed. I watched my stomach throb, my brain swivel, and my lungs tense in . . . And I saw him. Last Life. He was still here. No more a tiny seedling, but a mini plant, shimmering with my life’s blood in his veins. Aghast, I saw the experiment for what it really was. Us subjects, we impoverished people with nothing left to lose, had been mutated. Mutated and converted and transformed into monsters. A creature that breathed CO2, sucked in sunlight, gorged on water, and gleamed green chlorophyll. I was a fucking plant.
My ears had just begun to work, though other than my own breathing I heard nothing. I tried, fiercely I fought to see the world around me, but mirages, weak memories and illusions from my human life engulfed me. I was in a dream with no waking out of. I was in a mind that burned with starvation but couldn’t consume except for sunlight. I was in a body controlled by a plant. I was me.
