Something Almost New

We were sure the plants were isolated where they were. With all communications being done wirelessly we had few worries about the plants consuming our control systems. They didn't take long to consume and recreate the new technology we put in there. The sensors and optics came back online shortly after they were consumed. The only thing we didn't anticipate was them evolving so much farther that they would start to consume the conduits that brought the power to them. Once we realized they were consuming and replacing the solar arrays it was already too late. We had imagined that the raw flow of power would prove too much for any life to enter the system, however it appears the plants were purposely evolving to gain new ground in different systems. We noticed what had happened and realized our folly when our systems suddenly showed that our power output was increasing at a rate that was impossible given the technology we had constructed. When we went to investigate what was going on we already had a pretty good idea, but we had to see it for ourselves. Sure enough, when we pulled down one of the panels to inspect it the thing had been consumed and was now an organic piece of technology.

We knew we couldn't stop it anymore, it would only be an hour before it began consuming the main control system. We disconnected what we didn't need and then let nature take its course. The process was quite interesting, we hadn't seen it consume something so completely yet, it had remained inside of other structures and so we only saw what the environment looked like after it had finished. As the plant life grew out through the seams in the console it wrapped around and enclosed the entire structure. Then after a bit of time and different fluctuations in our systems buds started to appear. They grew rapidly and when they opened they revealed the controls we needed to access the system. I made sure that Evan didn't touch the system, I had no idea if they could infect him as well and I didn't want to lose him.

It took some tweaking, the consumed system didn't function quite the same when it was reproduced and the images at first appeared blurry. Once I had those working properly I checked out all the controls, everything seemed in order and the system seemed much faster, almost as if it were now anticipating what I was wanting as I entered my commands. The more I tested on the system the more I was impressed with it, the plants really did make a good technological system and it was incredibly efficient in its use of resources. I began performing a few tweaks to the system that should allow Evan to interface with it a bit better using a remote connection when a message appeared in the projection before me. The message stated that the modification would be unnecessary, the system said that it would not infect Evan if he touched it.

After the initial shock was over about a message appearing from the system itself we decided to test it out using the wrist computer I had. We plugged it into the system and waited. After about an hour with nothing happening to the computer we disconnected it and then inquired of the system how it knew what we were trying to do. Its response was that it heard us talking about it earlier but had no idea at first what we were saying. After it had time to learn from the repository of information that was in the system it finally understood and responded. It also mentioned that if Evan had touched the system at first he would have been infected and consumed but now that it had knowledge it could control itself and only progress as needed. At this we decided to allow Evan to interact with the system. After some time it was clear that the plants were not going to grow beyond what they now had consumed and that the new entity that we were communicating with was indeed the plants brought to sentience. They were a hive mind, the different types of plants for the different functions in the ecosystem had a connection and were able to be controlled by this connection and now were able to communicate with us using it. But, based on my past experiences with a new alien entity created by our manipulations, I wasn't quite ready to completely trust it, and so I stood by as Evan continued learning from it and about it.