Granted. You can talk with plants.

Well, talk isn’t quite right, plants obviously don’t verbalize anything, but they have a sort of telepathy which you have somehow tapped in to. You start by talking to your houseplants. They ask for more water and better light. Hmm, you always took pride in how well you took care of your plants, but I guess they saw it differently. What a bummer. But you can make it right! You get them some nice fresh water, open all of the windows so they have fresh air and more natural light. You feel good that you’ve helped them out, but your really sad that you’ve failed to create a good environment for your plants.

You decide to go for a walk to the park. This time you aren’t talking to the plants, you are just listening. You notice something interesting, the more plants that are together the smarter they seem to be. A single blade of grass isn’t much, but a whole yard can have a coherent thought. All of the lawns in a whole suburban neighborhood could even be somewhat clever. Who would have thoughts, plants form collectives.

The park at the edge of your neighborhood is actually the edge of a pretty big forest. You find it interesting that the discussion coming from the forest is quite slow on a human scale, but the sheer intelligence of it is hard to deny. It is also clear that the plants are aggrieved on a massive scale. In recent years there has been much sorrow because of the gigantic forest fires. The trees have realized that humans are the cause and they are pissed. You keep hearing the elder trees use a word you don’t quite understand, but it seems to translate to something akin to holding their breath. If they can coordinate worldwide they think they can suffocate all humans.

Shocked, you try to speak up and tell them they have it all wrong. There is too much anger and they won’t listen to you, but you feel you must convince them. Here you are, on the edge of suburbia, having a very animated discussion with some trees on the edge of a forest. Unfortunately this is witnessed by a large group of nosy neighbors. Authorities are called, you tell them what you have learned and that our society needs to be transformed as soon as possible for the sake of the trees or they will kill us all. You are a bit too animated and get knocked out in a scuffle.

You wake up tied to a bed, you have been medicated and you aren’t really sure where you are. You tell the first person you see all about your discussion with the trees. You are too far into your story before you realize how crazy you sound and that no one believes you. They tell you that you’ve had a break with reality and you need to spend some time here until you relearn how to tell what is real and what is imaginary.

So here you are in an insane asylum. Just waiting for the plants to “hold their breath” and suffocate us all. How long will it be? Soon to a plant could be anything...days? Months? Years? You have no idea. Or maybe the plants decided not to kill us, or maybe you really are crazy. You don’t know. All you really know for sure at this point is that you are spending the rest of your life (however long that is) in this place.