"Green Thumb" by Matthew T. Summers

Daily report, begin.  Subject Sum01-442-evrgrn-42 reporting as directed.  Daily memory scan commencing, now.

…

Am I a man?  I do not remember anymore.  It has been so long, so very very long… Am I a god?

A god.

Hah!  Ha, I say again, hah!  I made a funny.  A god.  Me.  Indeed, how droll… Mankind has always aspired to godhood, of course.  It'd only be natural to think that this goal was, perhaps, the method behind the madness, but no… no, that is not it at all.

A small shiver just ran down the length of my spine, tingling with sugars and life-giving energy.  Mmm… the day is warm, the sun is bright.  Vaguely, I can hear the animals around me.  I could not tell you how… the technology, for one, is incredibly complex and would likely bore you with the details.

For two, the exact details have been lost for hundreds of years.  Eh.  I still maintain that the boredom of the telling is the most important reason to not discuss them.

… I'm sidetracked again.  That happens a lot, you know.  They warned me this could happen, but it's been what, two hundred years?  Three hundred?  It's hard to tell, you know.

Is anyone even still out there, listening to me?  Well, of course you are.  You would have to be… I couldn't imagine the Earth being uninhabited.  

The Earth.  Ah yes, my wandering mind has settled on that again.  The Earth comes to my thoughts often, you know… I remember it well, back when I was still able to walk upon its surface.  The sun peeking through the clouds of smog and airborne oil, the smell of the industrial wastes on the afternoon breezes, and the strong feeling of death and decay all around me.

It was the home I was born into, of course… we all were.  The United Empirates of America did not care how deep into poverty you were born into, you were still required to follow certain rules and guidelines.

I still think they were incredibly unfair.  We had nothing from the day we were born, and had to watch the fat cats in their purified domes drink their crystal-clear water while we peered through smudged glass and sipped at radioactive sludge for fun.  

Ow.

Ow!  Dammit, get off of me, you stupid bird.  That is not something you need to be pulling on.

… where was I?  Oh yes.  We were poor, there was no denying that.  We were supposed to remain within our caste, ignoring the unfairness of it all.

Hah!

Those fat cats in that dome never had a clue what was about to happen.  Those of us that made it through the guards, oh we lived like kings!  Kings, I tell you!  Lips that had never drank from the fountain of the privileged forced their way in, and slaughtered all that opposed us.

We knew they would come.  It would only be a matter of time until the security forces arrived and killed us all.  We stole from the cup of the wealthy greedily, eating food that had never seen a preservative and did not glow when the lights were turned off.  

And you came, of course.  You damned Empiratical bastards.  You…

… mmm… oh, the sun is simply glorious today.  I can feel my anger drifting away, like the leaves in the fall.  Mmm…

The anger is gone.  I cannot dwell on that for long, it's not good for me in this state.  And you did at least offer us a compromise, one I must admit has worked out quite nicely.

The Earth was dying.  There was nothing anyone could do to stop that anymore.  Mankind must adapt, overcome… or evacuate.  And you fat cats, running wasn't how you did things, was it?  No, so few of you ever really saw exercise anymore, running was the last idea on your minds.

So the choice was offered… death, or experimentation.  We were going to be used to save mankind, by mixing our DNA with the only thing still capable of surviving in this world after mankind was gone…

So many of us died at first.  The horror of watching your friends and family die in grotesque fashion as their bodies rejected one experiment after another… men and women that, at my side, scraped and scavenged their way through this horrific world, just to have it ripped from them as death mercifully blessed them away from their pain.

Animal DNA just plain didn't work.  Every mix you people tried on us failed miserably.  Which, I suppose, is just as good… being a mix of human and cockroach, frankly, disgusts me even now.  

I do not know which scientist of yours finally settled on plant DNA.  Flowers, of course, were laughable.  Yes, our bodies adjusted fine to them, but given most flower lifespans, we perished far too fast.  But trees?  Oh, trees have kept this world living for a very long time… the rainforests of old kept mankind in comfortable oxygen until what, the mid 2300s?  Trees quickly became the natural choice, and I remember when I felt the change coming over me.

Oh, it hurt.  Yes, indeed… but only for a little while.  My pain receptors are dulled now, hidden behind many years of bark and skin hybrids.  The human immune system adjusts quickly to plant illnesses, allowing my people now to live…

What, five, six hundred years?  I have honestly lost track of time.  Time really doesn't mean much when you have the warm sun beating down on your branches and leaves, after all…

I remember how I was supposed to stay within this self-contained dome of yours.  You silly overlords hadn't counted on how fast we could grow, once tree and human DNA were fully intermingled… I remember how it concerned you initially when I broke through the upper layer, though your concern almost immediately turned to exaltation when I began to change that nasty, nasty atmosphere into your lovely oxygen.

That's the amusing part.  Where you could not live, I discovered I could thrive.  The chemicals in the air called to me, and I grew, and I grew… and I know that there are more like me as well, because their spores have reached me the past few growing seasons.

I can feel my young blossoming around me, you know.  I do hope some of them get transplanted far away, because otherwise I'm afraid I might choke some of them out with my own leaves.  I have not named any of them yet; they do not answer me when I speak to them, so perhaps they are not yet telepathic.

I haven't felt the touch of a human hand in close to two hundred years.  The air is clean now, animals roam freely around me and in my limbs and through my leaves.

Are you still here, oh humanity, oh maker of me?  

Are you still here?

The sun is warm again, so I will end this transmission.  Subject Sum01-442-evrgrn-42, signing off.