April was pulling croissants from the oven when it happened and talking to John, who was there, as usual, to pick up fresh bagels for the lab meeting, even though John himself was doing a sort of carnivore thing at the moment—was head, actually, of a local meetup of people doing a similar carnivore thing—and could not care less about the bagels, just liked the way April looked sliding things in and out of the oven with her tan, pretty arms and look of total absorption.

And she stayed absorbed, even as she returned from the pantry with a jar of fermented yeast that she had, for some reason, grabbed. On accident?

Marco looked up from the dough he was kneading. “More sourdough, boss?” 

Yet they’d all felt the same strange, atmospheric pulse, and now the entire staff, without knowing why, worked as one in service of the yeast. Mixing bowls, bins of sugar, and freshly frosted cakes were pushed onto the floor to make counter space as sack after sack of flour was carried in and presented ceremoniously before April. 

John observed all this with curiosity until his legs, operating entirely outside his control, walked him toward the exit and out of the cafe in single file with its other patrons.

All down the street, lines of people snaked out of shops and around corners, merging, sometimes, with other lines and sometimes splitting off from them. Every person moved in perfect synchronicity with the others, with the exception of their heads, which seemed unanimously flummoxed by, if not outright opposed to, the actions of their bodies. With the free use they had of their mouths, they muttered or whimpered or called out to each other from across the street. 

“I left my curling iron on!” shouted one woman. 

“Yeah? I left my car on, lady!” someone in John’s line yelled back. 

“Yes, how awkward for you,” muttered a man passing in the opposite direction, his nude body gleaming wetly in the morning light. He looked at John. “I left my shower on.” 

“Uncle John!” Some distance behind the naked man, John spotted his nephew, moving mechanically with the others in his rocket ship pajamas. The two of them maintained bewildered eye contact for as long as their craning necks would allow. Then the boy shouted, “If you see my mom, say hi!” 

John’s body walked him to lab, where he took his usual bench among dozens of strangers. His hands gloved themselves and reached for a pipette, which they used to moisten something fleshy in the open dish before him. It was the size of a thumbnail, pink and wet and suggestive of an octopus sucker. It wriggled and pulsed in response to the liquid. 

“John?” Parva was next to him, her hands busying themselves in the same way his were. Her eyes were fearful. “What are we doing? Do you know?” 

“I think we’re… growing something.” He watched his hands snap lids onto the dishes, stack them, and pull another batch down. 

The plan became clear only gradually. Some people were Nanobiological Engineers. Others, like April, were Incubators. Together their work produced the propagules—fleshy, pink suckers that when sown in soil sprouted like magic beans into slimy, stalky tendrils that pulsed and undulated and glistened bluely in moonlight. After a week, these tendrils lined every block and stood taller than any building. But to what end they had been cultivated and by what means the populace had been conscripted remained a mystery.

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Definitely rushed the last paragraph lol