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. Those who couldn’t ignore it, because they stumbled upon it’s intrusive presence in their daily activity, simply refused to talk about it, or acknowledge its presence, and went on about their daily lives, overseeing the operations of the hybrid bio-machinery, which, for what it was worth, increased its output again, by another twenty percent.

As projected, the plant bloomed abundantly, and the harvest of petals was so heavy with iron and tin that it weighed the nets down, like a veritable miraculous catch. The sheer quantity of metal that required processing pushed the foundry project to the front burner. The design team worked around the clock to produce and coordinate the plans for it and the next few months passed in a flurry of construction activity, frustration over having to deal with the plant in places one couldn’t anticipate it would go and concern that the storage facilities were vastly undersized for the anticipated production.

Jack and Richard decided to lay low for a while, now that Jack’s cousin’s project had already been submitted to the science fair, awaiting evaluation.

“How was your day, hon?” Carol asked Tom at the dinner table, as it was the family custom.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” the latter replied sharply, then, realizing that he had been inexplicably harsh, turned towards the children for help. “Any news about your science project, Ricky? You haven’t mentioned it lately,” he asked his eldest son, who flinched at the sound of the reviled diminutive.

“Not yet, dad. There are a lot of projects in the competition, they’re not going to finish evaluating them until the beginning of summer,” he said.

“That was quite something, what you did there! What was it, anyway? It looked like a mechanical jellyfish!” he enticed his son to talk about one of his favorite subjects, thus avoiding the fact that the last thing in the universe he wanted to remember during family dinner was that stupid plant, which seemed to be mocking him, was always in his face.

Richard started talking about the bio-similar engine he had supposedly been designing, with a lot less enthusiasm than anticipated. The description of the device’s components and function was actually correct, for the most part, but the thought of dear Brenda living its altered purpose somewhere in the entrails of the giant plant haunted him. Fortunately for him his sister interrupted him to ask their father when they were going to get the puppy he promised.

Tom reached for this unexpected rescue rope like it was salvation itself, and the rest of dinner was dedicated to the qualities and defects of the various dog breeds, details regarding their care and feeding, and assigning dog responsibilities to all the family members, on a carefully put together schedule meant to grace the refrigerator door. When the dog discussion was exhausted he turned to his next best hope, Carol, who always had something to say, usually touching upon light, cheerful and inconsequential subjects, guaranteed not to give anybody indigestion.

Carol gracefully obliged, regaling the family with a spellbinding story about the way they had changed items from one side of the grocery store to the other, move which made the flow through the isles while shopping a little more logical, but took some getting used to. She then gave a detailed account of what seasonal items they did or did not have available, and mentioned she saw Mrs. Jenkins, who was also out food shopping, but the latter was way on the other side of the store and didn’t see her when she waved. Carol carefully kept out of the narrative the fact that she had ran into three or four acquaintances while shopping, all of whom were none too eager to complain about the plant, the wall, the pipe manifold that wasn’t, the unfairness of life and in a more general context, the end of time.

After dinner, Tom encouraged Richard to go out and meet with his friends, concerned by his son’s recent lack of interest in socializing, so the latter, to keep things running smoothly inside the family unit, decided to go to the malt shop, where he hoped might run into Jack.

Jack wasn’t there, but the malt shop was packed full with other kids from school, so Richard stuck around anyway, in the hope of getting a fresh scoop on the plant’s latest exploits.

“I swear to you, Jane, that it’s God’s honest truth! That plant went through the wall like it wasn’t there!” the malt shop owner leaned towards her interlocutor, who gasped, shocked. Richard made an effort not to roll his eyes at the old news, and did his best to hide his disappointment with the fact that the entire evening portended to be a bust.

“You do know what happened to the other one, right?” her partner of conversation commented, making Jack cock his ears.

“No, I don’t!” the malt shop’s owner drew closer, thrilled to find out something she didn’t already know. To be totally honest, she had told the story of the plant and the wall so many times, even she couldn’t fake excitement over it anymore.

“It seems that it built itself a shell, like a little shelter, completely transparent, to keep out of the weather,” the second lady said. “How did it made glass, you tell me?” she turned to the malt shop owner, to enjoy the stunned look on her face. To out gossip the master was not an easy feat, and an aspiration she had had for years.

“No!” the malt shop owner replied, in disbelief. “Get out of here, that can’t be true!” she made sure to confirm the accuracy of her source.

“As I live and breathe, I saw it with my own two eyes!” the lady protested.

The malt shop owner evaluated the truthfulness of her words with a probing stare, and then, satisfied with the results, carefully stashed this delightful scoop on top of the pile of fresh news to spread.

“Now, that’s something worth getting out of the house for,” Richard thought, both awed and scared by the plant’s amazing abilities to adapt to its environment.

It became clear as day to him, and he wondered why he didn’t think about it before, that the plant and the pipe system, and whatever else this conjoined entity cared to put forth, formed a living being together, with needs and purpose, and most of all, a fierce survival instinct.

“Of course,” Richard thought, “if I had the ability to grow shelter around myself, that’s the first thing I would do, too!”

He immediately made plans to go see the transparent shell for himself, and was a little disappointed that of all times, Jack wasn’t there now, to share his news and plans with him. Richard finished his vanilla float and went home with a new pep in his step, which strengthened his father’s conviction that getting the boy to socialize more was doing him a world of good.

Between then and the next Saturday, Jack and Richard made arrangements to go visit plant number two and see its wonder shell. Spring was drawing near, and the little dwellers of the desert had started to get out of their winter burrows, a little hesitant and shivering in the crisp sunshine. The boys could see the transparent shell of the plant as soon as they turned onto the dirt trail that led to the hot springs, and it looked like it was floating over the swamp, creating its own micro-climate in which creatures big and small sought food and shelter from cold and danger. The critters moved around the plant undaunted by its metal leaves and stems, attracted by its warmth, protected from predators by its dense foliage inside which many of them had built nests and burrows to protect their young.

Inside this glass enclosure it wasn’t just the plant and its metal extensions who determined the actions of this new being, but all the birds, and mice, and swamp plants, and frogs, and water spiders, and dragonflies.

“Look at this, Snake! It’s like a greenhouse oasis!”

Jack stared at the strange hybrid entity, which was so blatantly teaming with life, and which looked quite content, thank you very much, despite the unpleasant smells that emanated from the muddy hot spring where its life began.

“It’s a living thing, Jack, the whole thing is a living thing!” Richard exclaimed, forgetting his resentment towards the monster that ate his beloved interface, and hoped that Brenda was reasonably happy synchronizing whatever she was synchronizing inside the plant’s metallic shell.

“A smart living thing,” Jack said, dancing around the concept of sentience, which was a little hard for him to swallow. “You don’t know where this plant is coming from, man. It may be an alien intelligence for all you know,” he revived his theories on extraterrestrials and their surreptitious intrusion on human lives, a concept Richard found strangely comforting for once, given the circumstances.

“If it is, it seems very protective of life,” Richard said, watching the little swarm of activity, eerily similar to an ant farm as seen through the transparent shell. “Have you ever thought about this, Jack? This plant increased production by what, close to sixty percent now? It yields raw material worth building a foundry, has cut the heating bills to nothing, and other than the fact that it is hot and slightly electrically charged, both things intrinsic to its nature, hasn’t done anybody any harm. Why do you think everybody is so hell-bent on destroying it?”

“How about the fact that it made having any control over the factory equipment and processes impracticable, went through a brick wall without putting a hole in it and it will probably expand into infinity and take over the earth?” Jack played devil’s advocate.

“It is a sentient living entity and we have the moral responsibility to allow it to develop in whatever way it sees fit,” Richard uttered the s word, to Jack’s great displeasure.

“It’s hardly sentient,” Jack said. “It’s just genetically programmed to look after itself.”

“By copying an entire branch of an industrial design that took people years to optimize,” Richard defended his argument.

“Parrots can talk, that doesn’t make them intelligent,” Jack debated.

“What about that time when it changed its mind and refused to go into the storage room?” his friend countered.

“Coincidence,” Jack replied. “What about the time when it headed straight through a brick wall into an environment that doesn’t support its development?”

“Maybe it realized it was able to mitigate that,” Richard countered.

“I don’t believe it knew that before it busted out,” Jack protested, frustrated. “You wouldn’t go out of the house in winter without a coat!”

“Actually, I might, you know, if the sun was shining and I’d never been outside before,” Richard defended the plant. “How would I know it’s cold?”

“This is a completely ridiculous argument,” Jack said.

“You brought it up, I’m just expanding your hypothesis,” his friend didn’t want to let go.

“It’s just a plant, dude! A scare the living out of me metal producing, glass domed, three hundred degrees of steam won’t kill it, can’t cut it with a power saw plant! There is no more intelligence inside it than there is in this one over here,” he pointed to a fragile dandelion sprout that had decided to brave the whims of weather very early, just to get a head start on the season.

“How about the way it welcomed Brenda?” Richard found another example.

“You designed Brenda to ‘talk’ to the plant!” Jack protested.

“I didn’t design the plant to incorporate it into its structure,” Richard said.

“Maybe it swallows everything you put in its path, like an ostrich!” Jack got frustrated.

“It didn’t swallow any of the people,” Richard offered.

“Yet,” Jack finally voiced his unspoken concern.

“Come on, Jack! If it wanted to harm us it would have done it by now! It’s been, what, six, seven months?” Richard argued, vexed that his friend would even think such a thing.

“Don’t come whining to me if you find yourself providing as a human extension to our leafy overlord here,” Jack mumbled under his breath. “At least then it will have real talking capabilities,” Jack got tired of defending his argument, but still didn’t want to let his friend have the last word.

The construction of the new foundry found itself in competition with the plant’s efforts to build itself a new enclosure, since the portion of it that was out of doors found itself exposed to the elements and rushed to remedy this unfavorable circumstance. As strange as it seems, the factory workers made it a point of pride to one up the prolific intruder, unwilling to be outdone on their own turf. Finishing ahead of the plant provided them with a small, but morally significant victory, which lessened a bit the sting of fighting a lesser life form that had the ability to replicate pipe structures.

Everybody was reluctant to venture into the plant’s dome at first, because many suggested that once inside the belly of the beast there was no way a person would ever come out, but as it is with all human endeavors, a gutsy few decided to risk taking fate into their own hands and debunked the superstition.

“You can add building shelter to its list of beneficial features,” Richard bragged.

“Wouldn’t it bother you to live in the dry land equivalent of a coral reef?” Jack asked. “There is no rhyme or reason to this structure, it’s so…” Jack turned his nose at it.

“Organic?” Richard laughed. “Not if I don’t have to lift a finger to obtain it,” he replied. “And I assure you, if you didn’t have a roof over your head, you wouldn’t care either.”

“I was going to say amorphous,” Jack didn’t relent.

Just in time for the foundry’s ribbon cutting, the plant bloomed again, as a peace offering to its inconvenienced human companions, to provide their new enterprise with fresh material for the beginning of production.

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