Part 1: Photosynthetic Dream
Elara wakes from a vivid dream of breathing plants and finds condensation forming intricate spiral patterns on her lab's glass. She's drawn to a new vine specimen labeled X-19 that seems to lean toward her.
The glass of the botanic lab pulsed with faint heat — the kind that clung to skin more than it radiated from surfaces. Dr. Elara Voss hovered just outside the decontamination corridor, breathing through her nose, trying to shake the last remnants of the dream.
It hadn't been the usual flash-memory loop. This one had weight. A rootless depth.
In it, she had walked barefoot through waist-high grass that pulsed like a lung. Every blade shifted in rhythm with her breath, swaying not with the wind, but with the inhale-exhale loop of her chest. She remembered crouching down, putting her hands into the soil, and watching it curl around her fingers like something alive.
When she blinked herself back to reality, she found the condensation on the inside of the greenhouse dome had formed faint spiral whorls. Perfect Fibonacci sequences, layered and delicate as if traced by some gentle intelligence.
She stepped into the lab.
It was quiet here — always was. Most colonists avoided the greenhouse wing. The air was too humid, too "Earthy," they joked, too full of strange smells that weren't part of the Dome's calibrated olfactory palette. But to Elara, it was the only place that felt honest.
She passed through a corridor of hanging xenovines, moving carefully so their tendrils didn't brush her skin. Their filaments were reactive — some coiled back shyly at contact, others would grab and hold for a moment like curious children. She preferred not to test which was which.
Near the back of the chamber was the new specimen: X-19.
It hadn't been logged officially — just one of those "background growths" that popped up when new soil samples from outside were brought in. It had taken root in a corner unit and flourished in ways the rest of the imported flora hadn't. No visible pollinators, no seed pods, no identifiable growth stages. Just steady expansion.
Elara had noticed it three days ago, leaning against the back wall like a collapsed marionette — vines limp, pale green, leaves closed like fists. Since then, it had grown nearly twenty centimeters, and now coiled upright like a spine made of moss.
She sat on the lab stool opposite it, unzipped her journal case, and pulled out her thermal scanner.
The plant's surface temperature was two degrees higher than ambient.
Strange. She hadn't turned the lights on yet.
She activated the air sampler. The CO2 levels near the plant spiked by 11% while she exhaled, then fell when she paused.
She held her breath.
The plant didn't move.
She exhaled again — long and slow.
It shivered.
Elara leaned closer. The central vine twitched, subtle but unmistakable — a flutter like the breath of someone pretending to sleep. She reached out and placed the scanner beside its stalk, careful not to make direct contact.
The movement ceased.
She sat back.
The central vine pulsed again, once — and then once more.
It was syncing with her.
Her heart ticked against her ribs like a warning. She reset the scanner, checked her oxygen mix — 20.9%. Normal. No unusual gas traces.
She whispered, "What are you doing?"
The plant moved again.
She blinked.
It leaned — barely — toward her voice.
She didn't move, didn't breathe. She waited.
The scanner flickered. Not the display — the hardware. A brief flick of static shimmered across the surface of the instrument. A second pulse followed — not in the scanner, but in the lights overhead.
A dome-wide flicker.
She stood up, fast. The motion startled the plant. Its leaves curled slightly inward.
No wind. No fans active.
Still, something about the posture — about the symmetry — made her skin feel too tight against her bones.
"Okay," she said quietly, half to the plant, half to herself. "I'm going to call this... coordinated phototropism."
But it wasn't light the plant was responding to. Not entirely. It was her.
As she backed out of the lab, she glanced once more through the condensation-speckled glass. X-19 remained still, seemingly innocent again. Its coiling stalk curved lazily upward, leaf clusters relaxed.
But when she turned to leave, she thought she saw it shift — one leaf rotating just slightly.
Facing her retreating back.
End of Part 1:Photosynthetic Dream