Image of Enny's augmented cyborg hands, one holding a metal canister with wires coming out of it. The wires are wrapped around the fingers of her other hand, one held between her index and thumb that's frayed at the end. [https://i.vgy.me/tyJ5nF.png]
"I'm not saying your species is like, totally incompetent..."
As Chlorophi babbled, they continued tapping away at their tablet, the strokes of their pen swirling and scraping along the plastic in a frantic, delirious dance. Enevelen sat with them, attempting to ignore the distracting sound as the two overlooked a vast expanse from a dirt pathway hugging the mountainous rock. The cliff was very high, and despite its comfortable bed-like structure, over the ledge was a frightening drop into a large, flat ocean. Enevelen sat a few feet from the plant, her rifle lain adjacent along the ground and her aching bones leaning into the wall of the mountain. In her hands, she held a garbled bushel of wires trailing away from a black metal casing. It was a section of her rifle which she had deactivated and detached to allow her to inspect the electronics within. Something had shorted out, possibly multiple somethings, but she wasn't sure what exactly. She tested the wires individually by wrapping several around her fingers and prodding them against one another for sparks and frays. Her silicon and metal hands were mildly conductive, allowing her fingers to be used as both conductors and ground when a wire was angled properly. The activity resembled the motions of crochet knitting.
It was a strange experience to pick apart her gun like this, the activity reminding her of the engineer picking at her own innards during routine maintenance. The gun's wiring she observed, resembled her own somewhat. It felt as if she was doing surgery on a disembodied limb.
"... I just mean like... humans have always had a weird... draw towards violence, right? Throughout history it's like they just had this intense craving for conflict... territorial control, ideological differences, military coups, um..."
Chlorophi was having a very one-sided conversation with her as well, another wandering discussion about humanity and its faults. It was seemingly the plant's favorite subject.
"As an anthropologist, y'know, I've spent a lot of time learning about you guys, or, y'know, the human race I mean. I don't actually know if you consider yourself "human" anymore...? I know cyborgs and generally a lot of people with augmentations have differing opinions on that, it was the mid-twenty-first century or so when you started that whole discussion... Which I totally understand of course. Not only do you wanna like, differentiate yourself from the crowd I guess, being a species very proud of your individuality but, I know you also did have the big philosophical debate for centuries of just like... What is humanity? Are cyborgs still human? Is the ship of Thelonious still the same after you replace all the pieces? Y'know. So there's a precedent for the discussion, I mean."
"That's the ship of Theseus," Enevelen mumbled, still picking away at her weapon. One of the wires in her hands sparked as she touched it to another. A bad wire.
"OH, you're right, I'm sorry. I'm getting my humans mixed up again (laughs) Well, okay, I guess it's just interesting to me that you guys had this whole discussion about this already, and us plants, y'know, we've only been truly self-aware and sentient for about... what? Fifty years? Maybe longer? I don't know. Though I know some would argue even before the mutations we were sentient.... It's just always so crazy to me that these big existential panics I keep having while trying to process both yours and our conceptions of... the 'self,' I guess, y'know, it's like you've proactively had all these conversations already. It's just strange because y'know, we're like leapfrogging off of you guys as a species I guess. We're on our way up, collecting all this data that you've sort of laid out, y'know... You've got it all ready for us. I guess. It's exciting. I guess I just.."
Chlo stopped writing on their tablet, their body sitting upright and turning towards Enevelen.
"I guess I wanted to know how it didn't keep you all from... well, I don't want to sound rude, but, to be blunt... considering all those centuries of self-study and self-awareness, I guess I'm just surprised at how quickly you all destroyed yourselves.... and considering how much you've advanced technologically a this point, you'd think you'd have like, identified and ironed out your flaws by now? I guess? I mean-"
Chlorophi quickly turned back down towards their tablet as if to avoid Enevelen's gaze. Enny, however, hadn't looked up from her gun once, and had kept mostly quiet during the conversation. Without any response, she continued fiddling away with the wires.
"Well, okay, I don't meant to phrase it so condescendingly, y'know, seems like a lot of you are... doing okay... to some extent. Even with a much smaller population, you're all living about as efficiently as you did in your mid-twentieth century peak as a world culture, I guess. Or at least, that's my arbitrary view of... when things seemed to be their best. I hear a lot about the nineteen-fifties being ideal for you guys. Is that right? I think you mentioned that to me at some point."
Enny continued to tweak at her gun, but paused briefly to formulate a response.
"I'm not good at small talk, Chlo. I think I've told you that."
Chlo nodded, hiding their hands down between their thighs. Despite their very mechanical-looking form, they had an almost child-like way of carrying themselves. It was very strange to Enny. She wondered if all mutant plants behaved this way when operating a robot body.
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"I'm... the nineteen-fifties were not good, that's a myth I think," Enny mumbled. "I wasn't born until the early twenty-first century, for context, but all the adults from when I was... I guess a teenager... they all had some decade they idolized, or they had some delusion that the current decade was good, that things were good, I guess."
Enny looked up from her gun.
"None of them were good. None of them were ever good."
Chlo nodded in solemn understanding.
"They were... all bad, then."
Enny nodded in agreement. "I... yes. That's what I meant by 'none of them were good.'"
Chlo spent a few minutes scribbling away at their tablet, seeming to jot this phrase down in as many possible interpretations as their tomato plant brain could conceive.
Enny continued, "I think... you're partially right. We um. We did destroy ourselves." She paced herself, as she was not used to articulating these kinds of thoughts to anyone else directly. "I think though, that if you follow our path, which may be... inevitable, as your species grows, and develops different factions... as the plant race starts claiming land and resources... you'll inevitably go down the same route as us. At least, the end result will be similar, I mean."
Chlo nodded, continuing to jot down information as they did so.
"I don't necessarily think... that you'll all end up EXACTLY where we are now... with this awful erm, I guess, this whole 'blood economy' thing, or the Shoeboxes, which for the record I don't find either of those to be very 'efficient' ways of life... but I wouldn't be surprised if plants eventually started having... wars, famine... maybe you'll even fix up the Earth, sure... but then afterward your elites will just wreck it again as you give them more and more control."
"Oh, we'll never do that," Chlo said, excitedly. "We don't have a hierarchy like the humans did. We're all just in the same plot together, and some of us go out and do more than others. As it is now, no one's in charge. We don't work that way."
Enny scoffed at the response. "You think so? Alright."
"I do! We're a very agreeable species! We barely ever argue with each other, except for when we need to like, plan out survival strategies and stuff. We're like a hive mind, y'know. We're all kinda just thinking the same thing by default."
Enny didn't reply, but kept poking away at the wires in her gun.
"That's our benefit, and like, y'know, it may be pretty early to say this, but I think that's why we're eventually going to replace cyborgs as the dominant and most populous species on the planet. Probably."
Enny held back a laugh.
"It's true! I mean, we have terraforming technology that we're developing, y'know, we get along with every other major species here, the cyborgs, the Shoeboxes, the Canadian Geese too. We've got a lot going for us."
"I hate those fucking geese," Enevelen grumbled under her breath. "They're impossible to get rid of, I swear."
Chlo continued. "But yeah! Like, we're going to make the Earth all green and beautiful again... We'll have the mutant plants living with the non-mutant, y'know, we'll clean up the oceans... We'll do all that... I know we've got a super small population right now but you can tell from my body, like, we're already figuring out your augmentation technology to some extent, yeah? We're getting there."
"You're not there yet though," Enny interjected. "Not yet. Maybe never."
"No, but like, that's what I'm saying. I think it's just inevitable. We're a highly intelligent species, capable of growth and adaptation, and very quick growth at that, and like, we're already doing so well. We've had no 'flop eras' like humanity had. They had so many flop eras. They killed themselves over and over, blew themselves up so many times in aimless pursuits of power..."
"I'm in full agreement," replied Enny.
"...But like, yeah, I don't see cyborgs as being the kind of species capable of adaptation or, anything like that. Is that rude to say? At this point? So many of you don't have any self-awareness either. You just work and work and work... you do your whole self-betterment routine, it's all auto-pilot... fitter, happier, more productive... y'know, it's like you're just routines, just your jobs. You wrap your whole identities around it, y'know? You just become machines. I don't think machines can be a species, really."
Enny shook her head. "You say that like plants won't have to get jobs."
"No! Okay, listen, we will have to work. You're right. We'll have to do a lot to get anywhere near our own anthropocenic age, and that's totally true if we want it to be anything like the scale that your species had. It will take a lot of effort, and a lot of it won't go anywhere, I'll admit. But. A lot of your aimless jobs are just 'cus the elites of your society just want to make money, y'know, and we don't care about stuff like that. We don't have elites, we don't have currency. That's why we're gonna get there, and maybe even surpass you humans."
Chlorophi accented this phrase with a metal finger pointed towards Enny's face, which the cyborg glanced up to observe. It was funny she noted, how much the behavior resembled that of her own species.
"I don't identify as human anymore, I think most of us don't," Enevelen replied. "...and honestly? I'm not sure I ever did."
Chlo sat, staring at her. "Right, yeah..."
"I forget if you asked that earlier, if I considered myself to be human. I think during my time in the Foundation's military, y'know, I actually wanted to be a machine. I wanted to be useful, and um... loyal. I guess."
"Oh interesting," replied the plant. Enny couldn't read what expression their body was making.
"We all definitely have a lot of... misanthropy... y'know, we hate them for running away into the Shoeboxes, leaving the world to rot. Letting it get this bad and then just abandoning us to pick up the pieces. So. None of us want to associate with the label, especially considering how much they changed us as people... to fight for their wars, to serve them better, to do all the things augmentations were meant for... none of us would call ourselves 'human' because we're not them. We used to be, probably, but not anymore."
"So do you consider yourselves machines?"
"Yes. Well. Um... maybe? In a technical sense I guess. We're like nuts and bolts sure but, y'know we think. We feel. I wouldn't consider myself a machine, I still hold tight to my consciousness despite my work, like you were saying, um. I know a lot of people have just... given up on that... but the majority and myself I think we're all... still there. Still capable of... um..."
Enny shook her head. She stared down at her gun. The tangled wires had become more of a mess than they had been before. Any frays she had attempted to repair just seemed to birth new ones deeper into the knot. She sighed in disappointment.
"I don't think I'm enjoying this conversation. Let's change the subject."