Jack’s thirst for the interesting and the unusual was never quenched, and since he was so good at making stuff up he decided to put his talents to good use and become a professional liar. A fiction writer, that is. He flirted with journalism for a little bit, but after his own unpalatable experience with revelations and consequences, he decided that this field really wasn’t for him. He did some travel, learned a lot from his journeys, and a few years later, when he had the means, just to put the frustrations of his youth behind him, he bought a piece of land and planted a dome on it, which became his retreat and occasional writing studio. Of course people thought that was odd, but then again, writers get a pass on being eccentric.

The jolly librarian moved heaven and earth to start a council for ecological preservation and have the plant declared a protected species. She used up all the good will and favor she had with the city hall to designate the wild domes area a nature preserve, and got the funds to maintain and expand the zone, which had grown significantly larger over time, with the promise that revenue from the stream of tourists would benefit the city as a whole.

Diane outgrew her youthful romantic drama, went to college and became an attorney. She rented a little space downtown, quite close to the science lab, actually, and put up her shingle there. She had quite a successful practice, to the pride and joy of her parents, who never ceased bragging about it.

Stacey joined the Navy, to the shock of her friends and acquaintances, who had always pictured her as a little live Barbie. She advanced through the ranks with honors and became a rear admiral. The only qualms Tom and Carol had with a career like that was that, for obvious reasons, it took her quite far from home, but they resigned themselves to see her over the holidays and visit whenever they could. Tom liked to joke that their daughter had turned him and his wife into real globetrotters, now in their old age.

As far as he was concerned, he worked at the factory/plant habitat/petal foundry until his mid sixties when he retired from it, just as he expected, comfortable enough to enjoy his golden years with Carol and tackle a few projects he had put off over the years, for lack of time.

Little Teddy was a bit of a troublemaker all throughout school, it seems that personality reveals itself early and his endless temper tantrums weren’t just the terrible twos. His father decided to guide him towards athletics, thinking that strenuous physical effort might burn off some of that extraneous energy. Teddy wavered between sports and several other fields, started college a couple of times and then, through a weird confluence of circumstances, got to try photography and loved it. He became a traveling photojournalist and contributed to a few reputable periodicals that Carol never failed to display on the coffee table, for all the guests to see.

The malt shop owner kept tending store way past her retirement age, out of concern that whoever it was that took over from her wouldn’t have the curiosity and communication skills to keep it the hub of news and social activity in town. She finally found a young apprentice, whom she taught her craft and entrusted with the rich history of the place, and she handed him the keys to the store, her heart finally at peace.

Mr. Feldman continued teaching at Jack and Richard’s school for many decades, guiding generation after generation of children through the wonders of science and the challenges of science fairs. He ended up teaching Diane’s children, too. All three of them.

Mrs. Jenkins went on spearheading her efforts to keep reality from interfering with the way she thought life should be, and continued being an outspoken advocate for the restoration of good old fashioned values. She had a small but faithful following of devotees.

Richard went to college to study mechanical engineering. He put together a few of his old projects, together with a few theoretical studies, presented them to the scientific committee and received a research grant to develop biologically based machines. Grace to his first successful attempts, the grant became permanent, and he funneled all of his efforts into becoming one of the pioneers of this new field. Over a decade, he set up the infrastructure for a department of bio-mechanics inside the school of engineering, department which he ended up running. He never stopped advocating for the ethical treatment of bio-based mechanical composites, and he treasured as the most important accomplishment of his life the fact that he managed to convince the scientific community to qualify them as life.

Naturally, the librarian told the boys’ parents and teachers the good news that Richard and Jack had singlehandedly made the second dome happen, very excited about the spirit of adventure the two had displayed and praising the innovative approach they took to create something so extraordinary. To her great surprise, but not Richard and Jack’s, who wished they could have moved to a parallel universe where people didn’t disapprove of the plant and anyone associated with it, the boy’s parents didn’t take lightly to the news that their son, whom they trusted to know what he was allowed to do and what he wasn’t and who was raised to never displease his elders in the slightest, was the main protagonist in the propagation of something they considered the annihilation of their values and way of life. Nothing, not the increased factory output, not the new foundry, not the plethora of new devices that clearly had made her life easier would ever convince Carol that the plant wasn’t evil, and by association, she considered anybody who interacted with it evil too. The fact that her son was one of ‘those people’ was a serious blow to her maternal fulfillment, and something she mourned going forward, making sure her grief weighed down heavier than a tombstone on the hearts of the other family members.

Tom was conflicted about the plant, since he kind of liked the fact that he didn’t have to break his back to provide and the future looked just a little safer and brighter than before, but then again, in his entire marriage he did everything in his power not to displease his wife, so he did what was expected of him and had a stern conversation with their son. That conversation was the last he and Richard had, because from that day forward he decided to give his son the silent treatment.

“Of all the crazy things you ever came up with, Jack, I, for once, can’t believe you’re making me do this!” Richard said, exhausted and sweating profusely in the unforgiving sunshine, as he tried to force his shovel through the obstinate dirt. They had been at it since the first rays of dawn, about five hours or so ago, and the meager area they had managed to till got lost in the vastness of land yet to be confronted.

“Shut up and dig, Snake, we only have a week to make this valley of tears look planted,” Jack mumbled through his teeth, just as exhausted as his friend and in a vile mood.

“What do you think people assume when they see us walk into the desert with a heavy bag and shovels?” Richard asked, panting from the effort but not slowing down the pace.

“What did you want us to carry our supplies in? Glass jars?” Jack asked.

“I’m just saying,” Richard gasped, struggling to dislodge a large rock from the middle of the border he was trying to define, a place from which the cursed thing refused to budge. “You know, if our parents wanted to devise a punishment for our creative truth telling, this would probably be it!”

“Don’t mess with karma, dude!” Jack said philosophically, suddenly distracted by the fact that digging got a lot easier than it had been so far, and upon further examination he noticed he was shoveling through soft silt. “This medium is completely worthless!” he cussed under his breath.

“Just mix it in with clay, I’m sure it’ll be fine!” Richard suggested, wiping his brow.

“And where do I get the clay?” Jack asked, and then, following Richard’s unspoken directions, retorted. “Since when are you the expert in plantings?”

“Since you made me study them. Hey!” Richard suddenly remembered. “Why is karma punishing me? It was your idea!”

“You unleashed Brenda upon plant land,” Jack justified himself.

“You made us break into the lab!” Richard protested.

“You sneaked into the factory and didn’t tell anybody about the plant!” Jack said.

Richard pondered it for a bit, then shrugged.

“Still,” he said. “Harsh!”

“So, what are we planting,” Jack asked, “before I collapse of heat exhaustion?”

“Succulents,” Richard said. “From over there,” he pointed somewhere in the distance, where one of the springs had created a little oasis of greenery.

“Oh, no, that’s great,” Jack kvetched, “as long as we don’t have to make several half mile trips to get them!”

“Would you rather have carried them from town?” Richard replied. “Besides, they’re native to this area, if we have one chance in a million to keep something growing here, they’re it,” he frowned.

“You know?” Jack said, filling the bag with clay to amend the silty soil. “Maybe this was not the best idea in the world.”

“Now you’re telling me!??” Richard burst with annoyance. He looked towards the dome and got instantly aggravated. “That stupid plant made a rain forest in the middle of this desert and we can’t even grow cacti!”

“Maybe we should have started by building a dome,” Jack commented sarcastically.

“That’s it!” Richard threw in the shovel. “I’m done! I’m not dying in this damned place! I’m going home!” he exclaimed, and then he felt both guilty and ridiculous about the protest and he headed towards the oasis in the distance to grab some plants.

“Hey!” Jack yelled from behind him. “What about the water source?”

“Details will take care of themselves, Jack! Look at the big picture!” Richard responded without turning around, suddenly irritated again.

The next day they stopped the planting to score a little watercourse through the petrified dirt and bring a shy trickle from the dome to the site. One couldn’t tell whether it was luck or science that made it so that the dome was uphill from the planting site and not too far from it, either, and the boys were, frankly, too tired for this sort of philosophical musings.

The environmental recovery area didn’t feature tree saplings, to Carol’s unspoken disappointment. Despite the limitations of climate and location, she had always envisioned the boys’ project as a new born evergreen forest. Carol didn’t show her lack of enthusiasm, and as always she encouraged her son to continue, a little confused about his sudden shift in interest from mechanics to botany and trying to convince herself that all of his work was for a good cause.

The planted acre had served its purpose, which was mainly to be anything other than the brimstone laden dome. There was no expectation on anyone’s part that it would be a smashing success. The plants didn’t prosper by any stretch of the imagination, but they didn’t die either, holding on for dear life under the heartless sun. Both spiky and succulents hesitated for quite a while, unsure whether to adjust to their new home or not, but nobody was the wiser about that, because their thick and shiny foliage looked frozen in time, hiding the drama underneath their skin.

“Have you ever thought about all the things we’ve done lately, all because of this blessed plant, dude?” Jack asked Richard later, while they were trying to comfort their aching bodies with their usual vanilla floats at the malt shop. “I don’t suppose you ever imagined being involved in propagating cacti.”

“Of course not. Those things are vicious!” Richard remembered with a frown. His hands were still stinging from the pricks and his face had acquired a healthy tan from being out in the sunshine all day. He pondered for a while, and then said. “Come to think of it, I never took any interest in plants, I always found them kind of boring.”

“Except one,” Jack laughed.

“Yeah,” Richard said, smiling. “In a way, I felt like I owed the plant one. You know, for Brenda.”

“Do you realize how lucky we are?” Jack said. “Most people spend entire lifetimes without ever encountering something so extraordinary. We are like the first ones who saw the light bulb.”

“Worth every fib, no doubt!” Richard agreed.

“Not everybody seems to agree with that,” Jack offered, after a brief pause. “As far as some of my mom’s colleagues are concerned, this situation is a nightmare, but it will surely pass, because even if life has become frightening and completely out of control, any moment now somebody will find a way to kill that stupid plant and return existence to normal, whatever that means. Quite a spectacular display of denial, especially coming from a profession specifically trained to expose and dismantle it. Even if somebody managed to kill that plant, you can’t unknow its existence, at least I can’t,” he said, looking down, kind of sad.

“Why would you want to?” Richard said, obstinately.

“I guess it’s in the human nature to fear anything you haven’t encountered before,” Jack said. “Heck, even I am reluctant to interact with your Brenda, even though I know you made it,” he said, lowering his voice. “That thing looks terrifying, dude! You have to do something about that.”

“My parents just like to pretend that the plant doesn’t exist,” Richard pointed out. “My sisters wouldn’t care if it grew out of their own heads, as long as it doesn’t interfere with their social agenda, and little Teddy, well, we’re not supposed to talk about the plant in front of little Teddy, because it gives him night terrors. It seems to be some sort of scary monster to him.”

“What about you?” Jack asked him directly, making him recoil from the unexpected question.

“What do you mean, me?” he asked.

“What comes to your mind when you think of the plant?” Jack eyes gleamed with curiosity, and Richard realized this was a question that preoccupied his friend for a long time.

He didn’t respond, trying to find the best explanation.

“Do you remember when we went to the zoo for the first time and fed a giraffe? It was so unbelievably tall, you don’t realize how large it really is until you’re really close. I was kind of scared of it, but excited, too, and I knew it was a giraffe, because we all saw pictures of them in our kindergarten books. This plant is just like the giraffe, only without any prior warning. I look at it, I touch it and feel that it’s hot, and still have trouble believing it’s real half the time.”

“I thought as much,” Jack said softly.

“Why?” Richard asked.

“Brenda. You wouldn’t have taken Brenda to the factory otherwise, at least not the you that I knew.” Jack replied. “You might have trouble coming to terms with the fact that it’s all real, dude, but I assure you that it is.”

“It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just…snow in July. Every fiber in your body tells you that it shouldn’t be there and you question whether your senses deceive you, but it’s not something that’s out of the realm of possibility. In fact, it even happened. It’s a very rare occurrence, but certainly not impossible.”

“It makes you uneasy,” Jack noticed.

“It’s the speed, it changes so fast! Last year it was a strange sprout that grew where it shouldn’t have and now it has it’s own microcosm. It improved on my design, Jack!” he complained to his friend. “And it’s only a plant!”

“Aren’t you the one who always says that biology is infinitely more complex than any machine man can design? The pan flutes just needed to protect themselves, and they grew shells, it’s not that unusual in the natural world.”

“For a living thing it isn’t! The pan flutes weren’t living things when I released them into the dome, and now they are.”

Jack shrugged, seemingly unaffected by the status of the pan flutes.

“How are you so calm?” Richard asked. “This doesn’t disturb you at all?”

“Of course it does, it’s just…I like interesting things. The plant is interesting,” Jack smiled.

In all the commotion associated with their strange activities, the boys completely forgot about the librarian and her fondness for the pan flutes. In all fairness, they didn’t give a second thought to her trips to the hot springs and were completely shocked when they almost ran into her as she exited the dome.

“Oh, what a surprise, boys?” she said, even more shocked than they were. “What are you doing here? Oh, wait, that’s right, your little environmental project. How is it going?” she said, cocking her head to see the fledgling garden over their shoulders. “Coming along, I see. Can I take a peek?” she asked, rushing down the hill without waiting for an answer.

Jack and Richard hurried behind her, relieved that they didn’t have to justify their presence there and running through things to point to and explain in their heads, but the librarian gave the xeric garden a quick tour and stopped to let the two in on a topic that really preoccupied her at the time.

“You know what I was thinking?” she said, completely oblivious to the fact that her water shoes, as well as a good part of her clothing, were covered in smelly muck. “How unfortunate that the plant happened to develop into this particular pool, if it weren’t for the smell, the inside of that dome would be paradise on earth. So, I’ve been thinking,” she said, looking around to make sure nobody else could hear her, “what if we help it along, in one of those other pools, one that doesn’t smell. Please don’t tell on me, but I managed to cut a piece of stem and planted it in that pond over there, I’m hoping it takes root,” she smiled proudly.

“It’s not going to root without metal!” Richard blurted before Jack had a chance to stop him.

“I kind of thought it was you,” the librarian kept smiling. Jack sighed in despair. “What a wonderful job you did with this dome, now that’s a real environmental wonder, right there!”

“Actually,” Jack sighed again, “we didn’t do that much, just planted the cutting with some scrap metal, the plant did the rest.”

“Yeah, that’s what I heard,” the librarian said. “It looks like the one at the factory did kind of the same thing. By the way, where did you get the cutting?” she asked, cracking up with laughter, watching the two squirm to make something up. “That’s ok, don’t answer that,” she said kindheartedly. “One thing bothers me, though. I understand the wildlife, and the cross breeding, but where did the little metal bugs come from?” she looked at Richard and Jack, who at the time were carefully examining the multicolored thread on their t-shirts. “No matter,” she said. “That dome the plant made, smell or no, it is a dream come true for a life scientist. I must confess that was a passion of mine in my youth, but I never had the opportunity to dedicate myself to it, at least not until now. “

The boys looked at each other.

“I bet if we plant this in another pool it will create a completely different environment, these domes are like angels, each one of them is a species in and of itself.”

The boys fumbled around, uncomfortable, trying to find a way to extricate themselves from the situation.

“You have been inside, right?” the librarian said. “Please tell me you have been inside!”

Richard nodded in agreement.

“Isn’t it something? Well, I have good news for you. Today I thought I saw a flying metal bug. How they keep their balance in flight with those tubes on their backs is beyond me!” the librarian said.

“How?” Richard asked, flabbergasted. “Did they grow wings?”

“No,” the librarian tried to remember. “It looks more like they are hovering. By the way, if you’re going inside the dome, don’t try to collect any plants or insects. It seems to be very protective of its components,” she mentioned as she was leaving. “Nice garden, you might want to try some sedums.”

Richard and Jack watched her leave, wondering how exactly did she find that out, and what specimens was she trying to collect, and between the fearsome smell, the digging out in the middle of the desert, the strange encounter with the librarian, Carol’s unreasonable hope for a coniferous forest and the constantly changing environment inside the dome, their minds got drained of all thought and feeling like a wrung cloth.

“Well, at least we don’t have to worry about her telling our parents,” Richard commented as he saw her disappear behind the bend.

“What in the world would make you think that?” Jack brought him back to reality. “In fact, that’s probably the first thing she is going to do. Oh, well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, we had a good run,” he resigned himself to fate.

“Don’t you just wish we were her? She doesn’t have to make stuff up to get inside the dome!” Richard coveted bitterly.

“Yeah, but she can’t fit through the fence,” Jack smiled, reminding his friend of the advantages of not being a grown-up yet.

The pan flutes played second fiddle for the time being, with Jack and Richard involved in the construction of a new Brenda and filling up the forms required to enroll it into the science fair. All the while, Richard’s parents and sisters walked around him on eggshells, making sure he wasn’t disturbed, bringing him his favorite foods and providing any assistance he happened to need.

The new Brenda was finished, packed and shipped, in a wave of anticipation and enthusiasm. This was the third Brenda already, if one didn’t count the oldest prototype, and it had become more and more sophisticated, since Richard felt the need to add features with every iteration.

The one thing that didn’t change was the device’s distinctive jellyfish configuration, and every time he thought about that, Richard was grateful that the plant swallowed Brenda One, who would have been a dead give-away of their trespassing and meddling in things that didn’t concern them. He sometimes thought about his secret weekend universe, the one where everything was in its place, the one he didn’t have to share with anyone, and he felt guilty about wanting to keep this little mechanical kingdom of his from Jack, who seemed to love it as much as he did.

Things used to be so much simpler back then, before the Brendas and the pan flutes, even though he had to admit the aforementioned gadgets were running circles around anything else Richard had built. As far as the pan flutes were concerned, if there is one truth to nature, it is that it abhors pointlessness, so the plant had found an use for the creepy little buggers: they organized themselves into some sort of beehive, inside which they melted the blossoms the plant was blooming especially for them into a little metallic maze where they retreated at night. The design of the metal structure was unbelievably intricate, but in the way nature designs, not man, no two compartments alike, but all bearing a resemblance that didn’t leave any room for doubt that they served the same purpose. It was wild, and intentional at the same time, and Richard couldn’t help but be in awe of the ingenuity of the little creatures.

Of course, because they were not based in biology, like Brenda, but pure mechanical devices, the pan flutes didn’t mind the high temperatures the plant generated when it didn’t have to protect living things, but even so, he had to wonder how they managed to generate enough energy to melt steel, and since Richard didn’t see how they could heat up to a few thousand Kelvins without melting themselves, he assumed they must have incorporated the plant’s electrolytic properties and were molding the metal by putting it in flux.

They hummed to each other, to point out the good locations to pick falling blossoms, and worked so diligently at tidying up their metal sculpture of a home they seemed to have been designed specifically for this purpose. The mystery was solved a few hours later, when Richard noticed a real beehive hanging from an end vine close to the top of the dome.

“It’s amazing!” Jack exclaimed. “This thing assimilates the properties of everything it comes in contact with! I can’t believe it infused the pan flutes with bee behavior!”

“We really need to go inside the dome, Jack!” Richard said, amazed at the pan flutes’ transformation.

“Did you hear a single word I said?” Jack shook him. “This thing adopts the qualities of everything that goes inside it! At best we’re going to have obsessive pan flutes that like to build little machines, at worst we’re going to build ourselves an anthill and insist on living inside it!”

“Or a burrow,” Richard said, following the logic. “It would make more sense, size wise.” He stopped for a second, to contemplate the possibility. “I hope I don’t inherit the behaviors of a water rodent, I’d rather not get inside that swamp, it really stinks!”

He managed to convince Jack, though, after constantly arguing his point, and reminding him a million times that the librarian seemed to have made it out ok.

“I wonder,” Jack postulated, “if there isn’t a little tree frog in there, chasing pan flutes and wearing rain boots!”

“Only one way to find out,” Richard smiled.

“But I can smell the swamp from here,” Jack complained with a disgusted look on his face. “I’m sure getting closer is not going to make it better,” he used the last argument in his arsenal.

“You know we’re going, right?” Richard ended the debate.

“Unfortunately,” Jack sighed.

The next weekend they started out bright and early, donning rain clogs on a sunny morning and grunting under the weight of the bags they carried. Richard wanted to make sure they had plenty of means to record and immortalize whatever they found inside the dome, and pads of paper to jot down a few notes if they had to. Between those, the bottles of water, the snacks and a change of clothes the bags were heavier than lead.

“At least it’s not scrap metal,” Jack mumbled under his breath.

“We’re almost there,” Richard picked up the pace, to reach the dome that was already visible as they passed the bend.

Richard didn’t wait for Jack, he dropped his bag and headed straight inside the dome, seemingly unaffected by the dreadful odor. Jack could see him walk around, careful as if stepping on eggshells, his countenance warped by the strange refraction through the uneven glass.

“You have to come in, Jack!” Richard said. “This is amazing!”

Jack hesitated at the natural entrance of the dome, through which he could already see a little self-contained world that was too beautiful for the wretched smell it exuded. The stench of the swamp blended with the powerful fragrances of several water plants, and amplified by the heat and humidity was almost impossible to bear, but this smelly greenhouse universe was teaming with life. A swarm of blue and brown butterflies fluttered overhead, reigning over a land of water dwelling creatures, and the chirping of the tree frogs, mixed with the songs of the birds and the weird harmonic tones of the pan flutes drowned the noises coming from outside. Jack gathered the courage to step into this other world, one that had its own sounds, and its own surreal images, and, unfortunately, its own smell. Distracted by his strange surroundings, he stepped into the shallow water and was startled by the soft squish his clogs made in the wet swamp grass.

“I guess it was a good idea to wear the clogs, right?” Richard said, with a beaming smile.

“This place is awesome!” Jack couldn’t help exclaiming. “Granted, the smell can choke a horse, but still awesome!” he looked around, amazed. “Is that a tree?” he frowned to make sure his eyes didn’t deceive him.

About half of the way up to the top of the dome, a tree had taken root on a thick branch of the vine. The roots didn’t seem to fit inside the vine altogether, and were sticking out through the bottom, like those of a pot bound house plant.

“I guess one of the water rats brought in an acorn,” Richard explained, naturally.

“You think it would let us climb to the top?” Jack asked, suddenly very interested, more of the plant than of his friend. “I wonder what else is up there?”

“Didn’t you say it wasn’t safe to come in here? Now you want to go even deeper?”

Richard protested, but his friend had already started climbing the thick vine, whose metal based shell was cooling down a path through scorching foliage, trying to keep up with him. Jack disappeared from sight, his presence still made manifest by a shuffling of leaves. The birds flew out of his way, dumping a scattering of hot blossoms on top of Richard’s head.

“Jack!” the latter yelled, rushing for cover. The pan flutes chimed in harmony, matching the tone of his voice.

“Up here!” Jack said, sticking his head out of the foliage. He was almost at the top of the dome, where the smaller, more flexible vines gave in visibly under his weight. “Come on, dude! Don’t chicken out on me now, you don’t know what you’re missing! I found a nest with eggs,” Jack laughed at him.

“What kind of eggs?” Richard asked.

“I don’t know, they’re purple,” Jack answered.

“There are no purple eggs!” Richard corrected him.

“Maybe the pan flutes laid them,” Jack offered generously.

“Don’t be a jerk, Jack!” Richard retorted.

“Come up, see for yourself!” Jack said, once again invisible inside a sea of metal leaves.

With every step up the vine, a different view presented itself, the floor, the under story, the canopy, the emergent layer. The foliage color changed from layer to layer, and so did the light levels, the temperatures, the variety of wild life. For all practical purposes, the plant had built its own universe, and its small self-contained world inside the real one was surreal and beautiful.

“I would never leave here!” Richard said, almost against his will.

“Aha! Now you know how it does it! I would be surprised if this sneaky plant didn’t ooze some sort of pheromone to keep us all smitten! No, seriously, dude! I think we should get out of here if we don’t want to start building a nest on that branch,” Jack pointed to a particular portion of the vine, where a nest with three purple eggs could be seen.

“You weren’t joking!” Richard said, surprised.

“I assure you I am a much more serious person than you think, my friend,” Jack protested, thoughtful. “Now, let’s get out of here, and try not to slip on that vine on your way down, it just dawned on me that climbing trees in wet clogs isn’t the smartest thing in the world.”

“What on earth is that dreadful smell!” Carol acknowledged her son’s presence way before he made his way through the door. “Good grief! Go! Change! Shower!” she urged Richard, who was only too happy to oblige.

“What are you rebuilding there, Ricky,” she questioned, using the despised diminutive for good measure. “I understand those are wetlands, but it reeks like a sewer!”

“The bacteria in the hot springs,” Richard apologized. “It’s the sulfur.”

“How can anything survive in that smell!” Carol remembered the stench and instinctively held her breath. “Surely, you don’t expect to remediate that! How are things going, anyway? You promised to take us see how your project is progressing, but, judging by that smell, you’re still ways off of showing results.”

Richard didn’t answer.

“How long do you think that project of yours will take?” Carol asked, worried that the horrid miasma was going to grace their home on a regular basis now.

“I really don’t know, mom,” Richard mumbled under his voice, and for once in the last year, he was telling the truth.

“Well,” Jack spoke philosophically a few hours later, nursing his vanilla float with a lack of interest that worried Richard, “I guess it wasn’t the aliens.”

“I will never take you seriously again,” Richard pouted. He was preparing to offer Jack a shoulder to cry on, only to find himself at the receiving end of his friend’s sharp tongue. “One of these days, Jack…” he said again, and as always he left the affirmation open ended.

“Oh, come on! Admit it! I had you!” Jack cracked up.

“Sometimes I wish it were the aliens,” Richard mumbled, still upset.

“Me too,” Jack volunteered eagerly. “Well, we can’t always get what we want, can we?”

“You know, my mom asked when she and dad can see the project,” Richard pointed out the obvious flaw in Jack’s plan.

“Can you believe some crazy person ventured inside that dome?” the malt shop owner whispered to one of her customers, in a conspiratory tone.

“I heard it smells like the dickens!” the lady replied. “Why would anybody want to go in there? And how do you know?” she remembered the obvious question.

“One of the hot spring bathers walked by the dome and saw foot prints inside,” the malt shop owner said, and then continued in a whisper. “Some say there are weird lights inside it, you can see them through the glass at night,” she shook her head while polishing the teaspoons. “I’m telling you, whoever got in there, they’re up to no good!”

“Who would go in that God forsaken area at night?” the lady said, sipping her coffee.

“Precisely,” the malt shop owner replied.

Richard wanted to say something, but Jack signaled to him to keep quiet, so they could listen to the unfolding conversation.

“They are not like you and I, those people,” she continued, wise and distraught. “Hear my words, there are horrible things going on inside that dome, unnatural things. I heard,” she said in a very low tone of voice, approaching her customer to whisper in her ear, “that if you are close enough, you can sometimes hear strange chanting from inside, and see shadows moving. I’m telling you, it is a shelter for perdition, what else could it be with that smell?” She turned around to put the teaspoons in the silverware drawer, and then continued, knowingly. “How can a place that smells like sulfur can be anything but evil?”

“I guess that pretty much covers it,” Jack commented to his friend. “It appears we ventured into…hhm,…uncharted territory, so to speak. I guess it wouldn’t be wise to mention this to anybody, you know, brimstone and all.”

Richard nodded, convinced by the pertinent argument, only to remember the little conundrum Jack’s cover story placed them in, with respect to what they were going to tell their parents.

“So, what should I tell my mother? Please don’t make me plant an acre of desert, just to give us a cover!” he looked pleadingly in Jack’s eyes.

“We, Snake! We are going to plant an acre of desert. Teamwork, my friend,” he smiled encouragingly, patting Richard on the shoulder.

“But I don’t know anything about plants! My mom would make me in two seconds! She’s a green thumb!” Richard protested, wretched.

“Then you should hit the books immediately, we don’t have a lot of time,” Jack suggested.

“Where do you want me to get the plants, and the tools,” Richard couldn’t believe his ears.

“Details, my friend!” Jack said.

“What about a source of water? You can’t grow anything without water, that’s why stuff didn’t grow there in the first place!” Richard continued complaining.

“Xeriscape, Jack. You always get lost in the minutia. Get the big picture and the details will take care of themselves,” Jack said, very convinced.

“No, they won’t!” Richard said. “When did the details ever take care of themselves?”

“Anyway,” Jack changed the subject. “Go home, get some sleep, we’re going to need to be well rested. Planting the desert is a lot of work!”

The rumor about new metallic creatures roaming around in the swamp dome brought agitation and endless discussions in the community. The general hypothesis was that the life entity, or whatever you wanted to call the plant-pipe-dome-wildlife combination, had somehow evolved to create its own species, a thought both worrisome and blasphemous for many of the city’s inhabitants.

Richard’s family members, who had never been anywhere near the swamp dome, and who gathered all the information about the mechanical critters through hearsay, never connected the terrifying description of the crawling pan flutes to the innocent looking weather vane their son had designed. They had been around for enough of Richard’s contraptions to cease finding them scary looking, especially after the two versions of Brenda.

Besides, with the plant taking over the pipe manifold and all the consequences thereof, whatever Richard managed to build in his spare time didn’t get the benefit of their full attention.

On top of everything, Diane had had an argument with her boyfriend and the entire household was on call to bring her comfort foods and listen to her wildly swerving stories. Stacey had enrolled in a dancing class and was driving everybody crazy with the constant tapping, which went up the stairwell like through a resonating chamber, to find its way straight into Richard’s room, amplified.

Little Teddy was finally exiting his terrible twos, to the relief, albeit unspoken, of the entire family. Carol wouldn’t have anybody say a single bad word about the little boy, who, as she often liked to mention, didn’t know any better.

So, there they were, in the middle of the daily family drama, discussing the tiny invaders, who were a lot more worrisome to the city folk than the plant because they had no roots, while the family dog ran around, completely out of control, spilling his bowl of food and overturning furniture in his wake.

“Wouldn’t you know it? They never found out how the plant spread to the hot springs area to begin with,” Carol commented as she sliced the pound cake, distributing it evenly between the dessert plates. “I know nothing good could come out of that, that place is completely forsaken. I guess we’re lucky it evolved those ridiculous looking crawling creatures and not something really dangerous.”

“You don’t know that! You don’t know they’re not dangerous!” Tom said. “Who knows what else is slithering inside that dome, nobody ever got inside it to do a real survey, it might be crawling with metal alligators, for all we know.”

“You think somebody could have done this on purpose?” Carol asked, incredulous.

“Done what?” Tom asked.

“You know, the plant, and everything else around it. Do you think somebody planted it?” Carol continued her thought.

“How else would it have gotten there?” Tom argued.

“I don’t know,” Carol suggested, “maybe the wind carried its seeds, or something.”

“It’s not very likely that it can propagate by seed,” Tom contradicted her, going over the information they kept churning over in the town halls lately.

“Sure it can!” Carol said, very sure of herself. “Anything can propagate by seed, that’s why the plants make seed, it wouldn’t make any sense otherwise.” She paused for a second, and then she realized that she was sick and tired about having that dreadful plant and all the other things associated with it run their dinner conversation every single night. “Enough about the plant!” she said, effectively ending the subject, and then turned towards Richard. “How was school today, honey? Did you and Jack talk to your science teacher about enrolling Brenda in the science fair?”

“Not yet, mom. The teacher is still trying to decide which science fair would be most appropriate,” Richard replied, with his mouth full, determined to linger on this precarious subject as little as possible.

“I haven’t seen Jack lately, not since he came to ask us if you could help him with that wildlife restoration project. How thoughtful of him to include you, dear! This is exactly the kind of activity your father and I would love to see you more involved in, rather than watch you spend all of your time putting together those gizmos of yours, you know? Get out, experience nature, breathe in fresh air, do something wholesome like bringing the native habitat back to balance,” she said. “Not that we don’t appreciate your scientific curiosity, it’s just…we worry sometimes. No boy your age should spend so much time alone,” she smiled encouragingly at his son, who almost choked on the pound cake. Tom nodded in agreement, which made it clear to Richard that his parents had given a lot of thought to his and Jack’s latest commitment. “So, how is it going? Have you planted a lot of little tree saplings?”

Richard made an extreme effort not fall back in shock at Jack’s latest reality embellishment, which, technically speaking, was not even a lie: they were working to preserve wildlife, if only in its hybrid mechanical form, and the project did involve being outdoors in the wetlands, in the company of his friend.

‘So that’s what the scoundrel told my parents! I was wondering how he managed to get us a free pass, no questions asked,’ he thought. He gave credit to Jack’s endless reserves of creativity and then said out loud. “Not a lot of them yet, we’re still trying to evaluate the impact of introducing a new species into the habitat, we worry that it might bring about some unforeseen outcomes.”

“That sounds like such an interesting project,” Carol continued the conversation. “When do you think we will be able to see it? I can hardly wait, you know how I love nature!”

“Uuhhm, I think it’s going to be a while, mom. We’re in the incipient stage of the project, there is not much to see yet,” Richard tried to change the subject. “Besides, the swamp is not that user friendly, which is why we decided to restore its natural settings to begin with.”

“Oh, yes, I understand. In fact, Jack told us that the area you’re trying to restore is somewhere outside of town, near the hot springs,” Carol went on. “Be careful, Richard, with all the things that are going on over there. I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with you boys spending a lot of time in the area all by yourselves,” she started to say, and then she encountered Tom’s exasperated look and changed the subject. “I know, I know, I’m being overprotective! You boys go and have fun! Besides, a three mile walk every day will do you a world of good!” she flashed her son an optimistic smile.

After dinner, Jack and Richard met at the library, to go over their plans for the following day. The library was surprisingly empty, maybe due to the fact that people were congregating in other venues, more suitable for talking.

“So, I hear that we’re doing ecological restoration,” Richard said. “How nice of us to lend a helping hand to mother nature!”

“Replanting the wetlands, that’s what I said,” Jack corrected him.

“It’s not a lie,” Richard noticed.

“No, it’s not. I didn’t specify what we were going to plant,” Jack explained.

“One of these days, Jack…” Richard sighed.

He stopped. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed the jovial librarian walking straight towards them, all smiles and looking like she was hiding something under her jacket.

“Oh, boy!” Jack prepared himself. “Watch out, dude! She’s headed here!”

The librarian stopped in front of the table the two were seated at, with a mysterious smile and excited by the big surprise.

“You would never guess what I have here!” she pointed to the tiny bump inside her jacket, looking around surreptitiously, to make sure nobody else saw or heard her.

Her concern was really unnecessary, since they were the only people inside that wing of the library. The librarian took out the pan flute from inside her jacket and placed it on the table. It wasn’t the original, Richard noticed immediately, because it had the same hand crafted finish as the new pipe distribution branch. Also, the little mechanical creature had grown a transparent shell around its complicated assembly of gears, pistons and rods, no doubt to protect them from dust and moisture. Richard wished he had thought of that when he designed the prototype.

The pan flute walked hesitantly on the shiny surface, its many legs quivering with apprehension towards the new environment, and then chimed harmoniously in a major scale, as if to ask what it was doing there.

“Isn’t this the cutest thing you’ve ever seen in your life?” the librarian couldn’t contain her excitement. “And to think that thing from the swamp is capable of generating something like this! We really should pay more attention to that dome, it seems to hide endless treasure inside!”

“How did you manage to get one out of the dome?” Jack couldn’t help himself.

“Oh, I just stepped inside and grabbed it,” the librarian said, as if it was nothing. “The smell is not to be taken lightly, but you get used to it, eventually. It is a swamp, you know…” she excused herself, as if the stench was her fault.

“Is it safe in there?” Richard managed to mumble.

“Well,” the librarian said, “you have to go prepared, the leaches can be a menace. Nothing a pair of rain boots can’t handle, though.” She stopped and looked lovingly at the pan flute again. “I wonder what this little guy uses for energy!”

“I’m sure it’s solar powered,” Richard said, too unimpressed and sure of himself not to arouse suspicion.

“And how are you so sure?” the librarian gave him a probing look. Richard pointed to a little black surface inside the shell.

“Aah, the cells, of course,” the good lady seemed satisfied with the finding. “Although you have to ask yourself where in the world did the dome find the information on how to produce solar shingles. Surely it couldn’t have come up with it all by itself, somebody must have thrown one inside at some point.”

Richard and Jack looked at each other, not knowing how to extricate themselves from this discussion, which had all the perilous unpredictability of an avalanche. The librarian was just getting ready to go back to her tasks, to Jack’s great relief, when Richard rekindled the conversation, managing to aggravate his friend.

“So, what are you doing with it?” the boy asked, unperturbed by the fact that he was reopening the Pandora’s box his friend had tried so hard to close.

“I’m not sure. It doesn’t seem to do much, it just chimes and moves around, but it’s very entertaining. It makes for a great pet. If I want it to go to sleep, I just cover it with a blanket. You should see it roam around under it for a little bit, before settling down! It drives the cats crazy!” the librarian was excited to share.

“Doesn’t the chiming bother you?” Richard continued the questioning, despite the fact that Jack’s very sharp elbows were already poking a hole in his ribs.

“No, I got used to it. Actually, I’m trying to teach it to sing. Watch this!” she said, and started whistling a little jingle. The pan flute responded in a somewhat guttural tone, a little flat. “I can’t get enough of it!” the librarian exclaimed, eyes glowing with excitement.

“Does it…” Richard was preparing an entire selection of questions, when he was interrupted by Jack, who had completely lost his patience with this blunder wagon waiting to overturn.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Jack said, putting sufficient urgency in his request to make it believable. “Richard, did you forget our science club starts in ten minutes? We barely have enough time to make it there, that is if we’re running.”

Richard tried to dodge his friend’s diversion, but the latter grabbed his arm and his backpack and pushed him towards the door, walking backwards and excusing himself to the librarian.

“I wish we could stay, that little guy is so great, maybe some other time!” he said, dragging Richard out the door despite sustained resistance from the latter. “Have you lost it completely?!” Jack scolded his friend as soon as they were out of earshot. “Were you planning to show her the blueprints and the operation manual next? Do you know how hard I have to work to keep us out of trouble? What do you think she was going to do, present you with a medal? You act like a baby, dude!”

“Did you hear she went inside the dome?” Richard replied, completely ignoring his friend’s misgivings.

“You mean the putrid stinking swamp? Environmental remediation indeed!” Jack mumbled under his breath.

“Don’t knock what you don’t understand, you’re not a frog,” Richard tried to present to him the benefits of swamp living as seen through the eyes of an amphibian species.

“Yet!” Jack replied, exasperated. “I often worry that your next project will turn me into one!”

“I don’t have the necessary capabilities,” Richard teased. “Well, at least now we know why the dome is protecting the pan flutes. If the librarian found them endearing, the plant probably did too, on an instinctive, primal level.”

“You should have brought it a Brenda,” Jack said. “Brenda is not endearing, she looks like the thing that eats you at the end of a horror movie, only smaller!”

Richard wanted to protest the offense against his dear jellyfish, but Jack waved his hand with annoyance before giving him a chance to reply.

“We’re late again, dude! My persuasive abilities can only stretch so far! Who’s going to believe we’re planting tree saplings at this time of day?” Jack pointed out that it was already too dark for horticultural pursuits.

“You’ll think of something,” Richard said, confident in his friend’s coaxing abilities.

“So, what now? Do we wait for the pan flutes to multiply and take over the world?” Jack asked, as he was preparing to head towards his home.

“I don’t think there are a lot of people crazy enough to enter that death trap of a dome and bring them out, but I’m sure a few of them will. It seems the little monsters make great pets!” Richard cracked up.

“And you don’t think they’d come out all by themselves,” Jack doubted his friend’s theory.

“Not any more than your toes would decide to split and wander around all by themselves,” Richard replied, very sure of himself.

“So, our librarian went inside the belly of the beast, so to speak. Visiting the entrails of a living entity,” Jack couldn’t help retch. “Don’t you think we should tell her, dude?” he asked pitifully, his face all scrunched up at the thought of walking through products of digestion.

“Who’s the baby now?” Richard retorted. “Besides, I think the putrid smell was reasonably self-explanatory. Why don’t you mind spending time inside the other dome? People go there for lunch!”

“I don’t think I’ll ever eat again,” Jack commented, with a forlorn look in his eyes.

The meetings at the town hall were so common that one could almost randomly stop by and find oneself right in a middle of one. The scientific team decided to stick around for a while, partly in response to the town folks’ insistent requests for continuous updates, and partly because they were so excited to study this new embodiment of life, any other project felt dull in comparison.

Jack and Richard arrived somewhere in the middle of the current meeting, but they were so familiar with the subject matter by now that they were always able to fill in the details, so they found a couple of seats somewhere in the back and made themselves comfortable.

“So you are saying that…” somebody from the first row was making sure they understood the biologist correctly.

“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.

“No, no!” the biologist realized he had touched the third rail of the communal subconscious fear. “Not like that!” he tried to reassure everybody. “It creates its own micro-climate, and everything inside it is a part of a coherent living organism. It adjusts itself to the warmth generated by the birds and plants,” he continued.

“And humans,” a morose person pressed the point that displeased everyone.

“And humans,” the biologist smiled. “It compensates for the heat transfered through metal and through glass, and for the energy generated by the movement of electrons. Did you know that the areas where birds are nesting have dropped their temperatures to a cozy ninety six degrees? It’s like a zoned climate system, with separate temperature controls.”

“And if the birds leave?” the first person asked.

“Than it goes back to getting hotter than the fires of Gehenna! How sweet of it to adjust its temperature for squirrels and mice, but it crisps us every chance it gets!” the morose man commented.

“Actually, it doesn’t get above one hundred and twenty degrees anymore. At least not in the active work zones.”

“I don’t believe it!” the man replied.

“It also increased the ventilation rate and the oxygen content in populated areas. It feels almost…purposeful,” the biologist spoke. “I hesitate to call this intelligence, but it is certainly cohesive in demeanor and intent.”

“See?” Richard whispered to Jack, excited. “I told you it steered clear of the storage room!”

“You don’t believe that!” Jack contradicted him. “It went straight through a wall and you’re telling me that it avoided an open space on purpose!”

“What makes you think it didn’t notice the wall?” Richard said.

“Why would it want to go out into inclement weather?” Jack doubted.

“Maybe it was curious,” Richard replied.

“Get out of here!” Jack leaned back into his chair. “I think your love for this plant is making you crazy, dude! It’s just a plant!” he exclaimed.

“Sure it is, Jack! Sure it is!” Richard smiled back at him.

“Also,” the biologist continued the account of his latest research, “we noticed that it adjusted the percentages in the metal alloy of its petals to closely match the composition of our extrusion profiles. Our team concluded this is too specific for a random occurrence.”

“Great! Now it’s mixing our alloys for us. What’s next? It messes with our breakfast?” the morose man replied.

“One more thing,” the biologist said. “It seems to be very protective of all of its living components. I wouldn’t, for instance, try to remove any of the sparrows. I know some of you have complained about the…hhm…bird ‘accidents’ that happen on occasion.”

“Why don’t you call a spade a spade, sir! It’s bird poop dropping on our heads,” the morose man replied.

“I understand,” the biologist said. “Maybe we can take some protective measures, to mitigate that.”

“Oh, come on!” the other man exclaimed, exasperated.

“Well, that’s all we have for now, we’ll continue our research and keep you posted if there are any new developments,” the biologist smiled to the audience.

Jack and Richard headed home, and since it was a nice warm evening at the end of spring, they decided to take the longer route and enjoy the weather. The route wandered through a couple of side streets and then merged into a larger road, through a commercial area, edged by little shops. Along the sides of the pedestrian alleys, the late blooming trees were shedding their last petals, sprinkling the walkways with fragrant clutter.

“What do you think would happen to all the blossoms if they were allowed to fall to the ground?” Richard asked Jack, suddenly.

“I really don’t know,” Jack thought for a second.

“See, ‘cause if it were a normal plant, the petals would wilt and eventually turn into humus, but metal doesn’t decompose, at least not for a long time. I guess the plant would be smothered by it if we didn’t remove it,” he said.

“What’s your point?” Jack said.

“Do you remember how in the beginning it wouldn’t bloom?” Richard replied. “We even thought it wasn’t able to produce flowers or fruit.”

“So?” Jack said.

“So, after we stretched the nets it started blooming twice a year.”

“I don’t understand,” Jack said.

“Don’t you see, Jack?” Richard stared at his friend, in disbelief. “It…adopted us!”

“Huh?” Jack blurted.

“It, ahm, evaluated the components of its environment and adjusted its development guided by our continued presence in it,” Richard said, laughing. “We’re just like the sparrows, my friend, only bigger,” he started laughing.

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that, dude! Aren’t we supposed to be smarter than it is? It’s just a plant!” Jack frowned.

“How many times did we say that by now and were wrong every time? I think we all take ourselves a little too seriously. We’re not better than the world we live in, we’re just capable of understanding some of it, is all.”

“So, what are you saying, that if we stretch more nets it will bloom three times a year instead of two?” Jack extrapolated.

“Probably, but that’s not the point. I am wondering what else the plant does now simply because we were there?” Richard said.

“What do you mean?” Jack said.

“What if it decided to make itself tools because we make tools, or to build shelter, or to protect another living thing?” Richard said, suddenly realizing that his own ardent desire to keep the plant from harm, his curiosity to see how it would evolve and interact with its surroundings, had infused the evolution of this very strange composite living entity. He was instantly humbled by this thought, and felt unworthy of the privilege.

“It’s you!” Jack exclaimed, shocked by the sudden understanding. “It is just like you!”

“Not entirely,” Richard tried to joke, to lessen the tension of the moment. “I, for instance, don’t release droppings on people’s heads. It is a little like me, though, isn’t it?” he asked his friend, smiling from ear to ear with all the eager pride of a new parent.

“I’m hurt,” Jack teased. “I can’t recognize anything of mine in it, not even a little bit!”

“Don’t worry, Jack! When it starts poking fun at me, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

The thought didn’t leave Richard, and the more his mind dwelled on the adaptability of this environment, the more he saw its future potential, so he decided to do a little experiment. He didn’t tell Jack, who would have tried to talk him out of it, but spent a lot of time, as summer approached, observing the new plant habitat, the one at the hot springs, monitoring its growth patterns, its wildlife, its temperature changes. After that he went home and spent a lot of time in his room, building. His parents and sisters stopped by, on occasion, and asked a few questions about the new device, but they were used to Richard’s gizmos, so they didn’t study it too closely.

When it was finished, the little knot of gears spun conscientiously, making weird noises through a cluster of pipes. The entire device wasn’t bigger than a fist, and it moved about on a multitude of little mechanical legs, like a giant bug carrying a pan flute.

Richard took the little mechanical creature to the hot spring habitat, released it inside the glass dome and left. A few weeks later, he came back to find the dome populated by little walking pan flutes, chugging along on their tiny mechanical legs and humming eerily in the faintest breeze. He turned on his heels and ran all the way to the town, to tell Jack, who dropped everything he was doing and accompanied him back to the dome, to see the creatures with his own eyes.

“What exactly is that?” Jack stared in disbelief at a group of metal creatures who were congregating on a hot leaf. The plant didn’t bother to lower its temperature for them, which gave Richard an idea of the range of temperature the little creatures could tolerate. He quickly recorded the finding in his notebook. “Are you taking notes? Don’t tell me you had something to do with this!” he shook his head.

“I had an idea, I just wanted to see if the plant discriminates between useful and worthless ideas, and unfortunately, it doesn’t. That can be both a good thing and a bad thing,” he explained, still filled with the excitement of his successful experiment.

“How is that?” Jack asked.

“The good thing is that we can make it manufacture anything we want, of course it is not very precise yet, but I’m sure it will evolve to become as precise as we need it to be.” Richard said, and then he continued. “The bad thing is that we can make it manufacture anything we want. It’s ironic, isn’t it?” he smiled, a little sad. “Our beacon of freedom here can overcome any barriers, but can’t stop itself from replicating rubbish.”

“What do the little bugs do?” Jack asked, touched by his friend’s distress.

“That’s just it! I designed this little machine to be absolutely worthless. It doesn’t do anything, it just moves around and makes noise. Now we have a whole species of it,” Richard said.

“Setting aside the fact that what you did was incredibly reckless, I’m not going to go into details why,” Jack stared at his friend, who nodded in agreement, “I’m not entirely sure you are right about that. You are not this new living thing, you don’t know what it considers valuable and what it tosses out. Garbage is in the eyes of the beholder,” Jack tried to comfort his friend.

“What could possibly be the benefit of a glut of little creatures that do nothing other than move about and sound weird! For all intents and purposes, they’re giant cockroaches!” Richard blurted out, on the verge of tears.

“You put too much faith in the judgment of a plant,” Jack tempered him. “It’s a plant!”

“Would you stop with the it’s a plant already? Why does everybody keep saying that!” Richard jumped to his feet and started walking around the dome, really upset.

“Besides, bugs serve a very important role in the natural equilibrium of living things, I’m sure the plant found a purpose for them. And they sound nice, if you manage to get over the weirdness factor,” Jack said.

“One of this days some idiot will throw a bag of trash in the dome and we’ll all be overrun by refuse,” Richard said.

“Nobody will throw trash in the plant habitat!” Jack protested.

“Whatever gave you the impression that this is not the kind of thing that could happen?” Richard commented.

“I’m sure the plant will figure it out eventually,” Jack said unconvinced.

“The plastic alone,” Richard continued his lament.

“There is no overflowing of trash in the other dome,” Jack finally found something to bring consolation to his friend. “I’m sure people must have left trash in there at some point!”

Richard postponed his lamentation until a later date, when he could ascertain that it was indeed pertinent to their actual situation.

“So, what did you tell your family this stuff was?” Jack couldn’t help be amused by the little creatures, who wandered about their brand new home, given to a swarm of activities that didn’t make any sense.

“I told them it was an automated weather vane,” Richard sniffled.

“And they believed you?” Jack laughed at the oddity of the concept.

“That’s the problem with useless machines, Jack! You can make them look like they could do anything, they just need to look complex enough.”

“I kind of like the little buggers, they seem harmless,” Jack looked at the pan flute creatures again, and the latter rewarded him by harmonizing in the flow of the air conditioning, into something that sounded like countless wind chimes.

“So, what now?” he asked his friend.

“I don’t know,” Richard said. “We go to the other dome, see if it replicated trash, monitor the pan flutes to make sure they don’t spread all over town to torment us all, start figuring out if we can make the dome build something useful,” Richard started enumerating.

“What about them?” Jack pointed towards the pan flutes. “I’m sure somebody will notice them eventually.”

“In this mess?” Richard pointed to the abundance of leaves, and the birds, field mice, frogs and a million other things that were crawling, jumping and flying their way through them. “I really don’t think so, Jack. Would you have noticed them if I didn’t tell you?” he tried to reinforce his argument.

“Duh! They’re everywhere! And they’re moving! They’re kind of hard to miss!” Jack gestured feverishly.

“What are you, a cat?” Richard downplayed his concern.

“Isn’t Mrs. Jenkins’ patrol still roaming around?” Jack mentioned. “Somebody is bound to notice them, for sure. If they think the plant generated them all by itself, they are going to freak out.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it, between the smell and the heat, this is not the place that draws people near. I doubt anybody will stick around long enough to notice them,” Richard reassured him.

They made their way back home, quietly, and spanned the three miles so quickly they didn’t realize when they were almost home. Jack spent the entire time thinking about an entire city overrun by pan flutes, and wished he could kick Richard for not having a second of hesitation before implementing any of his scientific experiments, while Richard mentally put together a prototype for something he had wanted to build for a very long time, too absorbed in its details to pay attention to his friend’s mood.

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.

Richard had made his choice the first time he had laid eyes on the defiant sprout that it was something worth protecting, so his heart wasn’t conflicted over the unreasonable changes that it had imposed on life as he knew it. Come to think of it, he was probably the only person in town that didn’t see the plant as a harbinger of the apocalypse.

The fact that he had helped it along and unwittingly facilitated its integration into every single aspect of life in the city was something that he liked to keep to himself, not that he was ashamed of it, or anything, but he wasn’t very sure that his loved ones would appreciate it.

“I so miss all that time when life was peaceful, and easy, you know?” Carol liked to complain to her friends, over the phone. “Before that plant dropped in from God knows where and ruined our lives,” she sighed, placing another basket of laundry in front of the Biologix self-sorting washer.

The machine went to work, diligently, assessing the clothes by color, level of dinginess and set in stains and separating them into neat piles.

“Remember?” Carol told her friend, “how uncomplicated things used to be?”

She stopped talking, to give her friend a chance to reply and at the same time she muted the phone to remind the environmental controls that Tom had complained the living room was too hot the night before and to point out to Brenda that the hot water temperature was set at 125 degrees, when she really would have preferred 120.

“I know, me too, right? It’s just this stupid plant, May, driving us all crazy!” Carol replied to her friend’s comment, coming from the other end of the line. “Want to meet later, grab a cup of coffee?” she ended the conversation, smiling politely, even though she was aware that her friend couldn’t see her through the phone.

“It’s like they’re obsessed, obsessed, I tell you!” Richard couldn’t help venting frustration as soon as he met with Jack later at the malt shop. “I can’t picture a single annoyance that they wouldn’t find a way to blame on the plant! Sometimes I wish it were that omnipresent, at least they’d have a real reason to whine about it!”

“Knock on wood, dude!” Jack shuddered. “Do you know my mom’s patient base grew significantly since last year? Apparently that plant of yours drives a lot of people nuts.”

“You’re spending way too much time with your mother, man,” Richard scolded him. “Where is the Jack that didn’t hesitate to break an entering?”

“Breaking an entering is one thing, having a plant automatically adjust the sound levels in your room is another,” he revealed the source of the latest inconvenience he attributed to biologically derived machines. “Do you know that my mother replaced my old music player with this new one that looks like it’s going to crawl into my ear and eat my brains, only because she was concerned about the level of decibels I feel comfortable with? I can’t turn up the sound on the new player, it just self-adjusts to a vibration level it finds acceptable,” he pointed out the irony of the situation. “She just got me a device that adjusts the settings to accommodate its own needs, not mine! And she’s happy with that, because she didn’t like the music running through my eardrums at a hundred decibels. But she never ceases to complain about how the biological machines are destroying life as we know it. Go figure!”

“Why don’t you let me take a look at it,” Richard offered. “Maybe I can adjust it for you.”

“That’s just it, you can’t! The music player is alive, it will wilt if subjected to a broader range of vibrations, if you adjust it for the decibel level it’s going to break down,” Jack explained.

“Not to be a pest, dude, but why would you want to be subjected to a noise level that can kill a plant?” Richard tried to defend his argument.

“Because I’m not a plant!” Jack protested. “I’m not going to contract powdery mildew either!”

“Maybe it’s because the device is made of regular plant cells, maybe if we could make it out of the transgenic ones,” Richard got an idea.

“NO!” Jack jumped, terrified. “You’re not unleashing plantzilla on me, Snake! Not in my own home!”

“It was just a thought,” Richard backed down. “Maybe we could try a sturdier plant for the material?” he offered an alternative.

“Forget it, man, I was just trying to make a point,” Jack waved, irritated, trying to put an end to the subject. “So, what else is new?”

“I got an A in bio,” Richard mentioned.

“No! Really?” Jack commented, mentally adding the latest A to the rest of Richard’s list.

“What can I say,” his friend replied, offended by his lack of interest. “My life is really not that exciting.”

“Now why do I find that so hard to believe?” Jack gave him a probing stare. “You know I envy you, Snake? You love everything you do, those weird gizmos, the darned plant! You don’t spin your wheels like the rest of us, complaining to your handheld Plantech dictation device about the dissociative effect of biologically derived machines on society,” he confessed.

“I don’t own a Plantech,” Richard corrected him.

“That’s not the point!” Jack snapped. “If you had one you’d probably use it to bring frozen plant sections with you to study on vacation!” he tried to explain his point of view. “Everybody is trying to get away from this giant sweeping wave, you’re just running straight into it!”

“There is nothing wrong with biologically based machines!” Richard protested.

“Of course not, that’s just the problem,” Jack tried to explain. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with them, and yet, our lives will never be the same.”

“And why is that bad?” Richard asked, with an innocent look on his face that felt like ice through Jack’s veins.

“See, that’s what I’m talking about, you’re running into the wave again,” Jack pointed at him, almost belligerent, “you must be the only one who can’t see it!”

“Maybe I like the wave,” Richard retorted.

“Oh, I don’t doubt that you do!” Jack stared, frowning.

“It introduces a whole new level of intricacy to constructed devices that we wouldn’t have a prayer of building, not in our lifetimes!” Richard argued his point.

“Which scares me witless, you introduce a new set of variables into a closed system that you don’t have the means to control and you just hope to God that it adjusts itself before devouring us whole,” Jack mumbled, frustrated.

“You can’t control your own bodily functions either, and yet you still trust them to function normally! What you’re saying is that you’d prefer to be able to control your digestive tract!” Richard said. “Heck, if we worried about this stuff all the time, none of us would ever be able to poop again!”

“Just because I can’t control my autonomous bodily functions, that doesn’t mean…” Jack started, and then he stopped to think. “You know what? If I had the choice to control my autonomous bodily functions, I’d very much like to,” he declared, defiantly.

“You have some serious control issues, dude,” Richard barely managed to stifle a giggle.

“How can you be so comfortable with a thing that ate an entire pipe distribution manifold and spit it out with alterations and enhancements to accommodate its own needs! That’s not a machine, dude! That’s a living thing!”

“Most certainly!” Richard replied, excited. “Which is exactly why I don’t want it hurt in any way!”

“I just want it as far away from me as humanly possible,” Jack insisted, stubborn.

“Why?” Richard asked again, in a voice that sounded almost hurt.

“Because I can’t make it do what I want!” Jack blurted, almost against his will.

“There is a whole host of things you can’t make do what you want, Jack, most of them destructive. Don’t be angry at the one that is actually beneficial,” Richard said, in a soft tone of voice, almost a whisper.

Richard couldn’t understand what was wrong with grown-ups. He sometimes felt like they waited for him to get interested in something, just to enjoy the privilege of forbidding him to pursue it. Tom and Carol concluded that their son was spending way too much time buried in his books and tinkering with his gadgets, and they decided to enroll him in as many extracurricular activities they could manage to cram into his schedule. They required full involvement and were time intensive, but most importantly, they all had one thing in common: they consisted of activities that at best were indifferent to Richard, and at worst he simply couldn’t stand. They included, for instance, track and field, local field trips with historical themes and glass making seminars.

Despite his natural aversion towards strenuous physical activity, Richard hoped that there may be at least some benefit to all that running and jumping, that hopefully he might get to build up his physique a little bit and stop looking like a string bean, not realizing that nature, in its transcendent wisdom, decided to keep him that way, in spite of all efforts, so that he would continue to be able to slip through the fence.

At the end of the day, between running around in circles, handling hot glass and filling up flash quizzes with extraneous details about historical artifacts, Richard was usually too tired to dig into his books, but he did it anyway, the best he could, just to keep the things he loved from getting lost in the fray.

He wished he could make more Brendas, but there just wasn’t enough time, between his school projects and his other scheduled activities, and since many of the real enterprises in the city took up the challenge of creating biology based devices, somebody always made his dream gadget before he even had a chance to really think about it.

Considering the fact that one’s path is charted by the day to day activities, Richard had to come to terms with the fact that his life stopped being about his own interests and hobbies, and became about the things he had to do, but didn’t necessarily enjoy, and in those moments he rooted for the plant even more, for its annoying resilience, for its refusal to submit, and most of all for the fact that, to quote his best friend, people couldn’t make it do what they wanted.

He loved it because it had managed to make its way up the chimney and through the wall, and because you couldn’t cut it with shears; he loved it because it defied every rule of man and nature, and succeeded in its task. He loved it because it had made its own micro-climate, and because it bloomed indoors. He loved the plant, because, in his mind, it represented freedom.

That afternoon he had just finished a five mile run, and he was in his room, getting ready for yet another activity, when he heard the familiar rapping of pebbles on the window.

“Jack, thank heavens! If I have to catalog another stone spearhead from the Neolithic period I’m going to lose my mind! Please get me out of here, I beg of you! I’m supposed to get ready for this old pottery exhibit, is there any way you could use your creative skills and get me out of it?” Richard besought.

“Your wish is my command,” Jack mock-curtseyed.

He climbed out of the window and went to the front of the house, to have an animated conversation with Tom and Carol. Richard didn’t get to hear what his friend told his parents, but the latter were very eager to make sure that their son was able to accompany Jack to wherever he was supposedly going.

“What on earth did you tell them?” he asked, amazed at the spectacular change in his very rigid schedule.

“A magician never reveals his tricks!” Jack said, serious.

“Must have been quite a story, I gather,” Richard tried to tease the truth out of him.

“What do I always say?” Jack smiled, “a good story is all about emotions, Snake!”

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Fancy a trip to the factory, to see how the plant is doing?” Jack asked.

“Right now?” Richard said.

“Do you have someplace better to be? Wanna stop by that museum, see the old pottery exhibit?” his friend asked, very serious.

“Please don’t even joke about that!” Jack shuddered.

Upon their arrival at the factory, Richard didn’t even notice the changes, because he was just too happy to run around his old hunting ground, moving from pressure valves to vacuum pumps, eager to take in the familiar image and reconnect with the place that inspired all his love for design. The plant had reached maturity and was extending thick ropes covered in flowers and berries over the nets stretched overhead. Richard’s heart melted instantly at the sight of this deceptively strong lattice of criss-crossing vines, whose metallic foliage gleamed in the light.

“How can you not love it?” he exclaimed, trying to persuade his friend that the plant was a gift to their generation, and that it opened the door to whole new industry and still unknown innovations in the future.

“I guess it grows on you,” Jack said. “Did you see the glass dome?”

“Interesting how it didn’t need a kiln that burns at fifteen hundred degrees,” Richard noticed, his knowledge still fresh from his glass blowing classes.

“In all fairness, the plant itself is hot all the time,” Jack replied.

“This is like a little greenhouse!” Richard exclaimed, excited by the sight of the glass dome. “I can’t believe I missed so much of its development!”

He looked at all the major components, and also at the new branches that the plant had built for itself, and he noted, satisfied with the progress of his beloved:

“Well, I guess it doesn’t need us anymore!”

“I’m sure that’s exactly what everybody is worried about,” Jack mumbled, mostly to himself.

The construction of Brenda two didn’t go as fast as Richard had hoped, in part because, strangely enough, designing a complete breakthrough in engine technology was really hard, and in part because, despite their continued promises to give him space to work, his parents and sisters couldn’t help themselves and their curiosity about the project’s development.

When his family finally left him alone, Jack climbed through the window to help, managing to distract Richard so much with his constantly wandering chatter that he usually ended up abandoning the portion of work he had scheduled for the day and spent all the time listening to his friend’s latest finds of fresh gossip.

Brenda two looked almost exactly like its older sister, if only a little smaller, but having to adapt the look of the old prototype to accommodate the functions of the new one presented an additional challenge that Richard could gladly have done without. From a design standpoint the structure and general aspect of the new prototype made absolutely no sense, and because of that when the big day finally arrived the boy showed up in the kitchen with an object that related to plumbing just as much as rope pertains to needlework.

“I’ll be darned!” his father exclaimed at the sight of the smaller and overly designed mechanical jellyfish. “To be completely honest with you, I didn’t think you were going to pull this off. I know you weren’t designing a water heater, Ricky, but now that you actually made one, let’s see how it works, shall we?” he drew closer, looking forward to the demonstration. The rest of the family joined him, barely leaving Richard enough room to move around.

Richard tapped the jellyfish on its head to make it release its grasp on his fingers and placed it on the long goose neck sprayer, right on top of the bend. Brenda dutifully attached itself to the spout, its display turning every color in the rainbow in a swirl of pastel pudding hues.

“How on earth does this work?” his father couldn’t stop laughing, unsure if that was because Brenda looked absolutely hilarious, or because he was excited and emotional about his son’s innovative spirit.

Richard waved a few passes over the surface of the display, brushing off the color with his palms and making it shift from rose to aqua and every nuance in between.

“I assume rose stands for hot and aqua for cold,” Tom said. “A bit involved for a water heater, don’t you think? Although nothing to sneeze at, that’s for sure,” he commented, all the while thinking that constraints often yielded the greatest discoveries and extremely proud of his son, even though he had a bit of a moral quandary showing it at this time, all lies considered. “You should enter this in the science fair for real this time,” he suggested. “Why didn’t you tell us about it?”

Richard was instantly grateful to Jack and his constant pestering to get their story straight, and he eagerly produced the latest and greatest version of their joint scenario, version which was guaranteed to satisfy both the curiosity and the pride of the family members.

Upon finishing the demonstration, Richard tapped Brenda gently on the head and the colorful jellyfish released the spout from its transparent tentacles.

“You mean you can attach this to any pipe anywhere?” Tom’s pride at his son’s inventiveness went up a peg or two.

“Yes,” Richard said, relieved that his many hours of stress sweating over Brenda two at least earned him a reprieve from uncomfortable questions.

“You know, in better days I would take this to the factory and show it off, but now I have no untouched pipe branch to demonstrate it on, the darn plant is managing all the environmental controls now, it would be redundant. I can’t stand the darn thing, it makes me feel superfluous,” he frowned. “The system balances itself, and keeps within the tolerance range, even if I wanted to control it myself, it wouldn’t allow me. To think that I’ve been replaced by a plant, it’s so embarrassing!”

“It’s no worse than automated controls,” Richard felt the need to defend the good work Brenda number one was so evidently doing, hidden from view inside the plant’s vascular system. He wondered what the jellyfish looked like right now, and if the plant warped it in some way, to adapt it to its needs.

“I don’t like it one bit, it’s like the factory is going to manage itself soon, we’re just there to enjoy the view. I guess we’re lucky we’re still needed, that fiendish plant is keeping us all on our toes, you never know what you’ll run into from one day to the next. Did I tell you it built itself a secondary system, ready to take over in case anything goes wrong with the main? I’m not comfortable handing over the controls to a plant! It’s a plant!” Tom suddenly recalled the source of his frustration.

“I’m sure its inner workings are infinitely more intricate than any piece of machinery anybody can devise,” Richard protested, to his father’s great surprise.

“What do you mean?” his father asked.

Tom looked at his son, a little surprised by the youth’s excitement over something that so far had engendered nothing but tension and discontent in the grown-ups. He hesitated for a second, to evaluate whether his own feelings about the current situation were reasonable, and after recalling that he and his team members had to cut a tunnel through the hot foliage last week in order to be able move from a section to another, he concluded that his irritation was completely warranted.

Later that day, Richard and Jack met at the malt shop to celebrate their narrow escape from perpetual detention with two vanilla floats.

“To tell you the truth, this stuff is getting kind of tiresome, man,” Jack complained. “I love making up a good story as much as the next guy, but it’s exhausting having to come up with fresh excuses every day to keep up with the darn plant! Any day now that lovely librarian is going to run into our parents at the least convenient moment and volunteer the story of the floating stem, and we’re going to have to invent ourselves a fairy godmother for that one!”

“The demonstration went very well, thank you for asking!” Richard replied, staring at his friend with reproach.

“Sorry, Snake! I didn’t mean to snub the jellyfish,” he slurped his beverage with a thoughtful look on his face. “So, I take it that Brenda two was adequate to the task,” he questioned.

“How is it that nobody cares about a machine made almost entirely of modified plant cells?” Richard asked, revolted.

“That’s your gig, why should anybody care? Do you care how the hydrophore regulates the water pressure on the second floor of your home? You just turn on the tap and expect water to come out,” Jack argued.

“Maybe if I cared more I would find a way to make that stack quieter, that would save me a lot of sleep,” Richard retorted.

“Maybe it would,” Jack agreed.

“Any news from the factory?” Richard asked him.

“Same old, same old. The output went up again, the foundry turns up steel profiles around the clock and everybody blames the plant for destroying their lives,” Jack said, without grasping the irony of the statement, which, taken out of context, would have been evident.

“That’s because biological systems are a lot more efficient than mechanical ones,” Richard noted.

“Whatever,” Jack devoted his attention to the remainder of his vanilla float.

“What’s wrong, Jack?” Richard asked. He knew his friend well and he couldn’t help notice how much his mood had changed lately. He seemed quieter, withdrawn, very unlike himself.

“Nothing, it’s just…” Jack hesitated. “Ever since this stupid plant appeared in our lives, we’ve been doing nothing but babysit it. It’s like nobody has a life anymore, maybe our parents are right, you know?”

“What would you be doing instead?” Richard asked.

“I don’t know, hang out, play some ball, catch up with gossip,” Jack started recalling his old habits.

“But we do that now, don’t we?” Richard asked.

“Yes, we do. And somehow we manage to make it all about the stupid plant! It’s just a plant!” he protested.

“Well,” Richard frowned, moved by his friend’s distress, “so what do you want to do about it?”

“You know, sometimes you sound just like my mother,” Jack replied. Jack’s mother was a psychologist, and the main reason Jack had developed his spectacular ability to make up the most unlikely stories right off the cuff, at will. He surprised himself sometimes, when the glut of fictitious events came to him so easily he almost believed half of them. “You don’t want me to reassure you too that I’m ok, do you? It’s, like, extra work on top of the upset.”

“I’m not saying this to rattle you, but I thought about this for a long time, for all the time since the plant appeared, in fact, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what anybody could possibly have done about this situation that we haven’t already tried. I don’t want to wake up every morning just to fight the new day. There are so many things about this change that are really good, actually.”

“Oh, yeah?” Jack challenged. “Like what?”

“Like Brenda,” Richard brought the conversation back to his favorite conversation topic. “I wouldn’t have thought to build a Brenda if it wasn’t for the plant,” he said, smiling.

Jack stared at him with a conflicted look in his eyes and didn’t say anything for a while.

“Not everybody is a tinkerer, Snake.”

“So,” Richard continued, in a small voice that sounded rather miserable. “Would you rather the plant was never here?”

“No, see, that’s just the thing,” Jack replied, frustrated, “‘cause then I remember how it used to be around here before this pest invaded. Death by boredom!” He smiled to a memory. “Remember how we broke into the lab? Those were the days!”

“They would have been a lot worse days if we ever got caught,” Richard noted.

“But we didn’t, right? We didn’t! Admit it, that was fun!” Jack said, excited, and Richard, who was infinitely less of a thrill seeker than his friend, nodded in agreement, just to make him happy. He still woke up in a cold sweat at times, dreaming that he went to prison, was repudiated by his family and friends and deprived of his future. “On occasion,” he said.

“I guess we owe the plant for that,” Jack had to admit. “Life has been an adventure ever since.”

“What’s the problem then?” Richard asked.

“I can’t put my finger on it, it’s like being kind of pregnant, you don’t know whether to quit smoking or start shopping for bikinis. Hypothetically speaking, of course,” Jack frowned.

“I’m sure you can put that concern out of your mind, that’s one thing you won’t have to worry about,” Richard laughed.

“That’s just it! I can’t be sure about that either. Nothing is out of the realm of possibility anymore,” Jack replied, half-serious. “And here we are, talking about the plant again.”

“We can talk about anything else you’d like,” Richard tried to appease him.

“No, we really can’t. It’s like this thing grew extensions into our brains too, it sneaks its way into our every thought!” Jack contradicted him. “I dare you to go ten minutes without mentioning the plant, you’ll see you can’t do it!”

Richard tried to kindle another conversation, but tried as he might, he could only come up with details about Brenda.

“Oh, what’s the point! Go ahead, brag about your jellyfish, I know you want to!” Jack conceded the argument, as if he had read his friend’s thoughts.

Richard took the rare opportunity his friend afforded him to give Jack an ear full of Brenda two’s features and capabilities.

“Is it really made of plant cells?” Jack couldn’t believe it.

“Yes, it is,” Richard said. “Of course, they’re all altered somehow to accommodate the design, but they’re real plant cells.”

“I always thought you made those, you know, in a dish,” Jack hesitated.

“I couldn’t possibly! I can’t duplicate such a level of complexity!”

As smitten as Richard was with the plant’s surreal qualities, he had to admit that Jack had a point. In less than a year, quietly but irrevocably, the plant had set roots not only inside the factory assets, which it adapted to its own needs, but in a broader sense, into the very life of the city, into people’s thoughts, finding its way into their old customs, weaving its strands into their daily conversations around the kitchen table, reshaping their experiences. Even the image of the town, as seen from the Belvedere point, was different, in a way not easy to define, a way enhanced, maybe, by the fact that the plant had clambered its way up the factory chimneys and was now sticking out of them, like a bud in a vase, surrounded by swirls of fog.

Everything had changed, in a subtle, but irreversible manner, and Richard knew that Jack was right, that their world will never be the same. In the continuous flow of events, he hadn’t had time to ask himself whether that was for better or for worse, and if he ever stopped to think about it, he would have had to admit that it was a mixture of both. Just like life, the plant had brought the bitter with the sweet, excitement in frustration, birth in the middle of chaos. All things considered, it was literally a hot mess, but what a creative mess that was, and what commanding potential emerged out of it!

The fact that a small whim of fate, one mutation out of the many that get rejected every day, set events in motion on such a life altering path was still surreal to Richard, and when reality bore down too hard on him he usually went back to his room and found some new gadget to put together, gadget which, in accordance with the times, looked more and more like a living thing and less like a mechanical device with each passing day.

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.

Everything would have gone well for Jack and Richard, as much as one could expect under the circumstances, if it weren’t for the parents’ and the teachers’ curiosity. Come summer, everybody was on pins and needles to learn the results of the science fair, where, they had no doubt, the boys’ project was certain to grab the interest of the evaluating committee.

After unsuccessful attempts to get the pertinent information from Jack, Mrs. Jenkins decided to take the matter into her own hands and reach out to the various science fairs, in the hope of surprising the two by sharing with everybody their outstanding results. When her phone inquiries turned out nothing, she thought that the school principal might have a better grasp of the ins and outs of these competitions, and she asked him for assistance. The principal researched all the science fairs in the area himself, but none of them happened to feature any bio-engines at the time, so, a little puzzled by the conflicting information, he called Jack’s mother, to find out the name of his cousin.

Jack’s mother wasn’t able to shed any light on his query, due to the fact that Jack didn’t have any cousins that she knew of, and this was the first time she’d ever seen her son show interest in a science fair, since the boy seemed to be drawn to artistic endeavors, rather than technical ones.

The principal then called Carol, who knew even less about the details of the project. She had shown great interest in its development right from the very beginning, but her interest was more from the standpoint of maternal pride, as a great piece of news to be shared with friends and neighbors.

By the time the boys got back from school, both of their houses were on full alert. Carol sent Richard to his room until his father returned from work, unwilling to deal with whatever it was that made Richard get in trouble at school.

The boy went to his room, almost relieved to have a couple of hours to himself, to cook up an explanation before he had to face the music. He used his time wisely, revising his story, and worrying that he would not be able to coordinate it with Jack if the need arose. When his father finally got home, the tiredness of a long day was amplified by the fact that he now had to discipline his son. Dinner was a lot quieter than usual, with both father and son searching for a way to avoid the mandatory conversation.

“Your mother tells me that the school principal called,” his father finally started, wishing he were anywhere else instead. “He mentioned there was no science fair in the whole district,” he said, softly, and continued after a long pause. “What on earth are you two up to, Richard?” he asked, uncomfortable, swallowing his words.

“I’m going to strangle Jack,” Richard thought. “It’s just as simple as that.” He couldn’t come up with any reasonable explanation for the web of truth enhancements, so he looked around, in search of inspiration.

“I hear Jack’s mother never heard of that cousin of his, on account of the fact that he doesn’t exist,” Tom continued, unable to stifle his sarcasm. Richard’s gaze was still sweeping the room and his mind grabbed hold of the first image his eyes came upon, which was the tankless water heater.

“We wanted it to be a surprise, we didn’t know whether it would work, so we didn’t want to let anybody know before we tested it,” Richard replied in an embarrassed mumble, looking at his plate.

“Didn’t know if what would work?” his father’s questioning continued.

“The bio-engine. We wanted to make a chlorophyll enabled solar heater,” he blurted the first words that came to his mind. His father gave him a long, probing look.

It was quite obvious that he didn’t believe a single word Richard had said, but he wanted to demonstrate to his son that lies never lead a person to a good place, and he was willing to allow the deception to continue to the inevitable point where the fibs imploded onto themselves.

“Ok,” he said. “Now we all know about it, so you no longer need to hide your work. Why don’t you bring your prototype here and show us how it works?” he suggested.

“That one was a first draft,” Richard improvised on the spot, with a sudden appreciation for Jack’s talent to make up stuff on cue and somewhat relieved that some of his friend’s useful skill seemed to have rubbed off on him. “It’s not working-working,” he continued. “We were in the process of refining the concept,” he said, and his father interrupted him with an impatient hand gesture.

“We know, we all saw the little jellyfish. That was an almost finished gadget, was it not?”

“Which broke, unfortunately,” Richard didn’t skip a beat, “Jack and I dropped it on accident just as we were about to test it for the first time.”

“That’s regrettable,” his father kept him on the hook, “after all that hard work you guys put into it! What was it, five, six weeks?”

“Two months,” Richard corrected him.

“I hope you get a new working prototype soon, we’re all very curious about how it works.” Richard nodded with his mouth full, grateful that the meal of the day, venison stew, required extra time for chewing.

“Sure, dad,” he finally said when they reached dessert.

“It shouldn’t take you very long now, that you already have it all figured out,” his dad put some pressure on the expected timing of the delivery. “Two weeks? Three, tops?” Richard nodded, so he wouldn’t have to answer.

“One thing I don’t understand, though,” Carol stumped him, just when he thought he had safely delayed the reckoning for his elusive activities for at least another week. “Why did you have to make up a cousin for Jack?” she looked at her son, as if searching for his former innocence.

The thought of strangling his friend occurred to Richard again, and at the same time he wished the latter was there, because he surely would have come up with something half-believable. For lack of an answer, he shrugged his shoulders and dove into the seven layer cake with surprising enthusiasm.

“Just don’t keep us all on tenterhooks,” his father insisted, to make clear to Richard that the event will not die down without an adequate explanation. “I, for one, want to hear all the technical details.”

Later, at the library, Jack and Richard buried themselves in a mountain of technical documentation that nobody could understand, in order to carve for themselves a half hour of uninterrupted dialog and assess the magnitude of their kerfuffle.

“Are you crazy?” Jack snapped. “Why on earth would you tell your father we were making a chlorophyll enabled…” he forgot the rest of the designation.

“Solar heater,” Richard completed it. “I didn’t know what to say, ok? I panicked! This is the first thing that came to mind!” he whimpered.

“That gizmo better look a lot like Brenda, ‘cause we don’t have the time to design a new device from scratch. Can you adapt the jellyfish to look like it heats water?” Jack inquired.

“Well, technically speaking, it has to be able to heat water, I don’t think dad will give me a pass for a device that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to, not after two whole months of tinkering and two previous prototypes,” his friend replied.

“You mean to tell me that you are going to have to attach a real Brenda to the hot water pipe in your kitchen?” Jack asked, incensed by the mere contemplation of this possibility.

“Relax, Jack! This doesn’t have anything to do with the plant. It’s not going to grow, meld, incorporate, or do anything weird. We need to design an instantaneous water heater that looks like Brenda, that’s all. It shouldn’t be too hard!” Richard replied, confident of his engineering prowess.

“I wish I were there with you during that conversation, you come up with the most ridiculous fibs, dude!” Jack highlighted his own creative skills while shaking his head with disappointment at the same time.

“Oh, yeah?” Richard challenged him. “And what exactly would you have said?”

“I would have approached the subject from an emotional angle, first of all,” Jack started expertly and then remembered. ”What did you tell him about my cousin?”

“Nothing!” Richard confessed. “I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.”

“Oh, man! This is a disaster!” Jack frowned. “Just give me a few minutes to compose myself, I’ll try to figure out a way to get this chestnut out of the fire, but you’re stretching my limits, man!”

They spent some time in silence, with only the shuffling of pages and thumping of books between them.

“You know?” Richard couldn’t help himself. “Maybe this is not the best place in the world to retreat to in order to come up with a scenario, not with that jolly librarian on our case constantly.”

“As compared to what?” Jack replied. “Your house? The malt shop? School? At least this place is quiet enough for us to be able to think!” he frowned, irked by the interruption.

Richard spent the next couple of weeks trying to reconfigure Brenda to function as a water heater, a task that, as it is often the case, proved to be significantly more difficult in practice than its theory originally assumed. At the end of this time period, however, an updated version of Brenda was born, a little smaller than the first one, but just as strange looking.

“I still can’t look at those tentacles, Snake!” Jack gave the mechanical jellyfish a dirty look. “No offense to Brenda!” he corrected himself.

“Priorities, Jack!” Richard scolded him. “If I don’t come up with a Brenda heater by the end of this week there will be hell to pay!”

“How is it coming?” Jack asked, eyeing the device with intense curiosity.

“Never you mind!” Richard retorted. “Did you come up with an explanation about your non-existent cousin?”

“Of course I did!” Jack replied, vexed that his friend could even suspect otherwise. “It was because of the science fair regulations, which required the teams to consist of at least three people, and we didn’t have a third, so we made one up.”

“But the science fair is no longer in the picture, remember?” Richard pointed out.

“Pay attention, Richard! Doesn’t matter what is or isn’t right now, it made sense inside the original premise, the one we have to explain! This thing is harder to keep track of than a soap opera. What was next? Aah, yes, the surprise,” he remembered. “Why did we want to keep it a surprise?” he asked Richard, who again was caught unawares.

“You never think these things through,” Jack chastised him, shaking his head again. “We wanted to keep it a surprise because everybody is bothered by the plant and since our device is kind of based on plant biology, we worried that it might make people uncomfortable,” he explained, as if describing the proper set-up of a scene from a movie.

Jack approached the synthetic jellyfish again.

“I’m not sure I’d trust this thing with the hot water pipe, what if it sinks its hooks in it and refuses to let go?” he said.

“It’s just programmed to grab hold of anything that looks like a tube. See?” he demonstrated, slightly touching the quivering tentacles with one of his fingers. Brenda grabbed onto it eagerly, to Jack’s dismay.

“Wow, dude, don’t do this to me, I don’t want to see this thing chew your finger off!” he flinched.

“She’s a sweetheart,” Richard defended his synthetic pet, “totally harmless.”

“How does she let go of it?” Jack asked, and watched as his friend tapped Brenda on the head, prompting the mechanical jellyfish to release his finger.

“I don’t know about the utility of this object, but it sure is entertaining,” Jack giggled. “Are you sure it needs to be a water heater? We could turn it into a toy,” he suggested, but his friend ignored him and immersed himself in his work.

In the meantime, back at the factory, some of the workers slowly started populating the plant’s bio-dome with light furniture and tropical plants, which attracted birds and small wildlife to create a little garden for winter weary people.

The dome was large enough now to be noticeable from the Belvedere point, and, if one were to adhere to Richard’s smoke hissing dragon metaphor, one would have noticed that the dragon had grown a little chubby.

From the height and distance of the observation deck this organic addition to the factory assets looked like a strange Noah’s Ark, upside down and gleaming in the sunshine, filled with life to protect, indifferent to opinions and human priorities, the ultimate triumph of nature, benevolent and gleeful in its will to survive.

In the few moments he afforded himself for relaxation, with the deadline of his project looming, Richard sometimes liked to walk to the look out point, watch the city that bustled with life in the valley below and wonder how things might have turned out differently if he didn’t, in a manner of speaking, help bring this new life into the world, however strange and unsettling it was.

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 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.