For some unfathomable reason, I seem to be the target of all sorts of terrorist activities. I don’t know what it is that makes people want to launch crazy attempts to blast me and my property to bits every few days or so, but I know that they won’t stop until I’m dead. I tried relocating, but they still managed to follow. This is the eighth time I’ve moved, and I’ve used six completely different identities and altered my genetic makeup and everything, and still they’re after me. I just can’t get rid of them.
Yesterday was the worst day of my life. Four — four — attacks in one day! I still can’t believe it. Those people will stop at nothing. They sent their hideous cybernetic creations at me, one after another, and when it was over, they left a giant stinking pile of metal, plastic, and unidentifiable substances in my front yard, right in the middle of my mind garden.
There it is now, giving off indescribable odors, a disgrace to the whole community. As I step out of my house and the morning sunlight falls on me, I can see my neighbors looking out of their windows, shaking their heads in disbelief. They’ve already seen things like this before, ever since I moved here. Avoiding their stares, I make my way across the yard to my mind garden, holding my breath. The hideous conglomerate dome made from the remains of the four robots fused together awaits, its component parts clearly visible, artificial arms here and there reaching out to pull me in. I stop at the edge of the mind garden and gaze upon the mess.
Good morning, Eia, the plants of my mind garden greet me in unison, their sentient minds sending radio signals to my brain to be interpreted by the nanomachines there.
Silently, I return the greeting, sending my thoughts back to them. I don’t dare make a sound; I don’t want my neighbors to think I’m talking to the plants. I can see them now in my peripheral vision, staring at the remains of yesterday’s four attacks. They don’t know about my mind garden, about the sentient minds inside my ordinary-looking plants. They don’t understand the complexity of the network of sentient thought residing within my mind garden.
I turn to look back at my house, at the damage wrought by the four robots. Here and there, I can see holes, some small, some large. The top right corner of my house is gone completely; the interior lies exposed to the elements. I can see the hall beyond the space where one of the bedrooms used to be. Almost all of my windows are broken; enormous sections of wall have been obliterated. The door swings back and forth before falling off its hinges.
I live underground, where it’s safer. I only retain the part aboveground so that my house doesn’t stand out from the rest of the neighborhood, even though the terrorists have made that kind of pointless.
The nanomachines and repairbots have begun restoring my house to its former conditions, synthesizing new sections of wall where giant holes now look out at the neighborhood around us. I watch as repairbots appear and disappear in the hallways, scurrying about, trying to put my house back together.
My mind garden calls to me, so I turn to it. The steaming heap of mechanical garbage lies there, an unwelcome addition to my garden. My plants scream out in silent calls for help. Around me, I see repairbots appearing, rising slowly out of the ground as they’re manufactured on the spot by nanomachines.
Help us, Eia, my oak tree, towering over the other plants, says as the repairbots move through my mind garden. The source of danger is nearby.
What source of danger? I ask. The remains of the four robots? My repairbots are disposing of that right now.
No, it says. The place where the robots came from. It is nearby.
I realize that I have always assumed that the terrorists have launched their attacks from far away, surreptitiously sneaking their robots and molecular disassemblers into the neighborhood. But how close are they really?
Across the street from us, my oak tree says. The source of danger is there.
I look across the street at the house newly assembled by nanomachines. Its pyramidal structure makes it stand out a bit in this neighborhood, but there are other houses that look even more out of place. My neighbors across the street moved in only two days ago, and now I realize that the terrorist’s base of operations is only a few meters away from where I am.
Are you sure? I ask my oak tree.
All of us can detect signs of terrorist activity in this area. The signals are strongest across the street.
It’s right, Eia, one of my flowers agrees, and another one says, I can feel it, too.
All of the other flowers speak up, and the influx of messages floods my mind. I try to tell them to speak one at a time, but my message is lost in the confusion.
I look across the street. Ever since they moved in, I’ve never seen my neighbors outside their house. I don’t even remember what they look like. I don’t think they were even there when the moving truck came and the bots unloaded it. Peculiar objects came out of that truck. I saw strange shapes underneath the opaque layer of plastic wrapped around them. I wonder what my neighbors have brought with them.
We are not safe, my oak tree tells me.
As I turn to go back inside, I take one last look at the house across the street.
It is time to fight back.
* * *
I eat my breakfast in silence, as usual. The flower on the table doesn’t speak to me while I’m eating. Even though it has a mind of its own, it doesn’t usually speak for itself. It likes to serve as my link to the mind garden while I’m inside my house, underground.
As I eat my cereal, the flower shakes violently.
What is it? I ask.
Help! it says.
I put down my spoon. What’s the problem?
We are under attack.
Another attack? After the four I had to endure yesterday? This is definitely getting out of hand. I look up at the screen on the wall, which turns on as I send a message to it with my mind. As the image appears, I can see my front yard and my mind garden. A giant green blob waits on the sidewalk, part of its mass oozing onto the street. Slowly, it moves forward, encroaching upon my property, shooting globs of goo out of its multiple mouths.
I slam my fist down on the table. “This is getting annoying!” I say, to no one in particular. “Let me talk to it,” I tell my house computer, and it opens up the connection, sending me a message to let me know that.
”All right, whoever you are, I’ve had enough of this!” I say.
The blob stops moving. It looks around, searching for the source of my voice.
”Stop right there and go back to where you come from,” I say. “And don’t come back. We don’t want you here.”
I can see the blob looking around, confused. In its translucent interior, particles of various sizes float back and forth, held in by the membrane comprising its surface. It turns back to face the house and then oozes forward, its artificial facial features remaining in the same relative positions. It works its way onto the lawn and approaches my mind garden.
”Stop right there!” I shout.
On the screen, the blob looks up at the sound of my voice but nevertheless continues onward, trampling the sentient flowers underneath it as it crosses my mind garden.
Help! my plants call.
I dash out of the room and up the stairs, knocking over furniture as I navigate through the hall to the door, which the repairbots have reattached to its hinges. I yank it open.
Outside, the blob has already oozed about a fourth of the way through the mind garden. The silent screams of the plants surge and reverberate in my mind.
”You!” I point at the blob. It stares at me and then, impudently, tramples another flower. The plant’s dying call strikes through my head. I react with rage.
”You! What are you doing here, you bloated blob of pond scum?”
It stops, and its artificial eyes swing through its cytoplasm to cast its mocking gaze on me.
”I’ve had enough of this!” I shout, and I make my way through my mind garden to confront it. I step in front of it, blocking its path. Placing my hand on its elastic membrane, I push with all my strength, and the blob starts to roll back, revealing several crushed flowers underneath it. I try not to look at their pitiful remains as I continue to push the blob out of my mind garden.
Confused, the blob looks around, its artificial eyes oozing back and forth. It gazes at me and starts to resist my push. Then it coughs up a giant ball of green goo and spits it in the air. The goo flies across my front yard and lands on my roof, where it breaks apart into smaller globules that start to eat away at my house. I can see holes forming in the roof where the holes left by the robots yesterday have just now been removed by my nanomachines and repairbots.
I turn back to the blob. “What did you do that for?”
But the blob doesn’t reply. Instead, it starts pushing me back into the mind garden. I lean forward and throw my weight against it, and it rolls back the other way. Then it sends another giant green ball of goo into my house, this time crashing through one of the windows.
The gooey projectiles have taken a lot out of the blob’s mass, and I can see that it’s shrunken considerably. Pushing it back is a bit easier now.
It shoots another glob of goo, bigger than both of the previous ones combined, into my roof, and the force it used to propel the glob, along with my pushing, sends it flying into the street. I nearly fall down myself.
I see a car approaching a few blocks away. The blob, now significantly reduced to about half my size, seems to notice it, too, and it tries to get itself out of the street, oozing slowly across the asphalt. It moves about half a meter before the car runs over it, swerving out of its lane just to run the thing over. Good riddance.
As the car speeds off into the distance, I turn to look back at my house, but I’m unprepared for what I see. The globs of goo have leveled my house completely, and nothing remains aboveground. I stare in shock and bewilderment.
As I march across the yard to the remains of my house, the plants of my mind garden send messages to me, calling for help, asking me what I’ll do next, blabbering unintelligibly. I ignore all of them.
Apparently, the blob’s globs of goo have left the underground portion of my house intact. It’s strange to see the staircase leading downstairs in plain view, with nothing above it. As I make my way downstairs, I think about what I’ll do next. I have to do something about those insane terrorists across the street, once and for all. That blob was the last straw.
* * *
On the screen, I can see the pyramidal house of my neighbors looming above me as I navigate the tiny inconspicuous robot across the street and up the driveway. It has an invisibility shield in place around it, nanomachines picking up and giving off light in exact locations and directions, maintaining the illusion of invisibility. The robot crosses the driveway and starts up the steps to the front porch. It attaches itself to the door and melts its way inside, leaving the door intact after it passes through.
Inside, the robot stops and takes in the view. Now I understand why the terrorists built the house in the shape of a pyramid. There’s really only one room inside the house, and it extends from the point of the pyramid above to the vast underground space below. The robot sits at the top of a set of stairs descending to the floor. On the screen, I can see a giant telescope in front of the robot, pointed at the sky. Apparently, this serves as some kind of observatory. Below, the pyramid extends underground, its triangular base covered with all sorts of laboratory equipment. I can see vats where the blob and the robots and all the other things they’ve used to attack me must have been synthesized.
So the terrorists are really a bunch of mad scientists. Really, I should have expected this. No one would keep attacking me but a group of mad scientists, right? Then again, I don’t see anybody around — only a glowing blue orb at the center of the room, hovering above the ground.
I send the robot down the stairs, carefully taking one step at a time. When it reaches the bottom, I move it across the floor toward the orb.
The sphere glows with a deep midnight blue, dimly lighting up the surroundings. As the robot approaches, it glows even more brightly. I freeze. Has it detected the robot’s presence?
Cautiously, I move the robot forward again, but now the orb surges with ethereal radiance. It starts to speak, making a direct connection with my mind, bypassing the robot completely.
Who are you? it says. Why have you trespassed on my property?
Stunned, I don’t reply.
There must be a reason why you have come here.
I came because your blob destroyed my house and several plants in my garden.
Is that so? I apologize.
Why did you do it?
I detected the presence of strange minds. I must destroy them. The minds intrude upon my privacy. Their presence prevents me from living a free life. I must eradicate them. They must exist no longer.
My . . . my plants?
Your plants?
My plants are sentient. They are capable of abstract thought, and they are able to learn.
Your . . . plants. Yes, their minds must be destroyed. They are a plague upon society.
But they are my plants. You can’t do that.
Do you really think you own them? Sentient beings are not the property of other sentient beings.
I’m sorry. I guess I’ve thought of them that way.
But they are truly not your property. They must be destroyed.
But sentient beings have a right to live. You can’t just destroy them like that.
But I am a sentient being. Their existence prevents me from living. Their mind patterns disturb the complex network of space-time that I require to survive. I cannot live with them. They must be destroyed.
There must be some other way —
There is no other way. I cannot live with them.
But there has to be a way. You and the mind garden must find a way to live in harmony. You cannot destroy them.
Then find another way for me to survive. I am dying. Their presence slowly draws the substance from my being. Soon I will die. Find another way for me to live, or I will destroy the minds.
* * *
I’m sorry, but I have to go now, I say to the plants as I get in my car. Your presence endangers my life.
Stay with us, the oak tree says.
Don’t go, Eia! the flowers plead in unison.
The bushes remain silent. I’ve always suspected they weren’t really sentient, but I’ll never know for sure.
This is the only way, I say. Your existence perturbs the space time continuum, which in turn causes our neighbor to slowly die. The farther I am from you, the less sentience you have. Your sentience is programmed to be inversely related to the distance between you and me. If I leave you and go far away, your sentience will approach the level of sentience that normal, unmodified plants have.
Don’t leave us! the flowers say, but the wise oak tree remains silent, understanding.
I’m sorry, but this is the only way, I say. Trust me, it’ll be better for all of us. You won’t have to suffer from any more giant blobs attacking you.
I take one last look at all of them, and then I drive away down the road, away from the remains of my house, away from the sentient orb across the street, away from all the blobs and robots sent to attack my property, away from my mind garden.
Finally, I’ll have some peace.
Copyright © 2003 by The Invincible Spud