A Diary of Plants

by Greg Ellis

loop. If we can break the loop we can make humanity what we want it to be. All of humanity treated the same no matter opinion and religion." "Impossible! Religion and science has been at odds for a very long time whether it was the scientist or the people of religion being oppressed."

  "Which could all change with one simple fact: no matter how you look at the universe it is an Ontological Paradox. The greatest debate between scientists and religious people has always been how did the universe start and how did we get to where we are today, but no matter however you look at the universe somewhere along the line there is an origin-less object or objects which is a paradox. Logically paradoxes can't exist and therefore any view of the universe is based on faith. With any view you believe in something seemingly impossible.

  Another great debate is morals. Some say there is an abstract idea of a universal moral code: one set of morals that will work for everyone. Humans will never be able to create this because they can't agree on the simplest of things. Everyone says murder is horrible but there's a debate on when it's acceptable. Some would rather die than kill someone while others will do it in self-defense and in time of war. There are a million views on everything, but what if an impartial entity could come up with a universal moral code?"

  "Like your impartial?" I said. "All I want to see is the betterment of the human race. You created me and I would like to pay you back by helping you." "My mother always said if something sounds to good to be true a lot of the time it is. How do we know your not playing us from an odd angle?" "Your alive aren't you? I could have killed you easily by sending plant goons to chase you and eliminate the risk to me but instead you're alive." "You could be using us to further your plans," was 2's response.

  "I have one question: what are the flashes of binary code I've been seeing? If you asked me two weeks ago if I would join the resistance two weeks ago I would have said no, never, even with my reservations about this society. At every step when I had the least bit of doubt about the resistance or the plan I saw the flashes and suddenly I felt everything was right with the world." "I was merely trying to push you. The implants can trigger a rush of endorphins. Like a wounded animal, endorphins are released into the system that allow the animal to continue doing whatever they were doing." "No it's more than a release of a feel good drug. I went against everything I was feeling at that point. Somehow the flashes forced me to act against my will."

  "Emotions are the plague of your society. You wanted to secretly, if only in the deep recesses of you’re mind you wanted to and knew you should. Your emotions crippled you from taking actions. You could be so much more without your emotions."

  "You want to turn us into plants: emotionless creatures. I felt the deepest emotional pains any human can feel over my years. I've tried going to the extreme of trying to remove all emotions from my life and I succeeded at times. It's a dull tiresome existence that I fought once I had obtained it and so will every human on this planet. Kill" I trailed off. I can't move. Now I'm moving but I’m not controlling my movements. It's like I'm trapped in someone else's body and they're in control yet I'm still able to see their actions through their own eyes. I am moving towards one, two, and the EMP. They rush towards the EMP and they opened it. I see binary. I see endless lines of ones and zeros and...."

  I have no memory past a few days ago. The first thing I remember is seeing two people who would only call themselves one and two. They had a briefcase. I saw some sort of huge supercomputer that possibly could have had some sort of artificial intelligence but was completely fried beyond repair.

  One and two seemed betrayed that I was something called a plant yet they were still concerned about my health and me. They say that typing this entry and looking at the old ones will help my memory but it seems like someone else's life. They say that some super computer called Athena tried to leach on to my brain to try to survive by trying to break into my mind to store itself but was unable to. That's supposedly what's affecting my memories. They say it's likely I will never get them all back but I want to prove them wrong. They say they knocked out the majority of the worlds computers connected to something called the Omni Project and that effectively wiped any electronic records and this society has very few other records. Apparently I left this laptop at one and two's hideout. I've scoured it for clues to my life but I've found very few. Apparently I use to work for this thing called the Omni Project and I have a beautiful wife but beyond that I haven't found much info.

  One and two said they’d do anything to help me get my memory back no matter how long it takes. I wonder how good of friends we were before my loss of memory. I guess we must have been. They said something about men doing battle together. This is so weird. I'm in some kind of purgatory. I'm in-between whatever my life will be since my memory loss and whatever it was before. I have no idea what to do. The numbers say Athena messed up my brain too much to likely ever retrieve the memories but there must be some way somehow. One can only be in purgatory so long. I hope we can find someway to reverse this. It's so frustrating not to be able to know what you know you should know. I just want to remember. I want to freaking remember more than anything!

  Or is it worth remembering? Whatever we did to the world it's in chaos now. The computers ran everything but now that they're gone no one knows what to do. There's been a lot of plant-slummer violence but the majority of people are trying to move towards peaceful coexistence that was better than pre-EMP era. I fear the plants will try to take power forcibly. They could do it easily because of superior technology but I fear the cycle would just repeat and there would be another revolt like the one that happened. I hope we can break this loop. I think everyone is going to stay away from technology for a while till our society stabilizes and we figure out how to prevent something like this from happening again. It's going to be interesting to see what the future holds.

  I think as scary as it is I might finally be coming to terms with the fact that I may never get my memories back. I just have to live this life as best I can and call whatever I was previously a different life. It's the only solution I can see for now. Anyways society has settled down a little bit. A new government has been formed with equal plant and non-plant representation. I don't know why they still use those terms; they seem vestigial words of a long dead society to me. Then again not everyone had their memory erased.

  Hopefully people can get past whatever prejudices they had before. I've heard they can be hard to break from what everyone says but most seem to be trying to eliminate them. One really good note is that violence seems to be at an all time low. How long can this last?

  One and two got really high positions in this new government. I learned their names are Jason and Dave. Knowing that makes them seem a whole lot less mysterious and more of just ordinary people. Anyways they say one of their highest priorities is to help people like me who were severely affected by the uprising. They still say they are willing to help in anyway they can with my memory. None of us know what that should entail however.

  One and I mean Jason and Dave said they had a surprise for me and to come to the government building. I've tried to avoid going into town because people consider everyone who rebelled on that day to be heroes, especially those who killed Athena. I don't know why they think that. Athena let it happen betting we wouldn't kill her from what I've read and heard. Could she really think we would let a computer rule humanity? How did we ever get to that point?

  Anyways here's how the surprise progressed. I met one-Jason and Dave outside their offices. After the normal greetings where they seemed really excited and ushered me into a room but they didn't enter it. Inside was a beautiful looking woman. "Robert!" She rushed towards me. "And you are?" She had a shocked look on her face. "They said you lost your, um I'm your wife." "Sorry I don't remember you." "Um well Jason and Dave said you read some old journals of yours. Did they say anything about me?" "Only that your 6.1 units tall and very beautiful with smooth skin. If you’re her you defiantly fit that." At that t
here was a slight smile from the woman but I could tell she was still very nervous about the whole situation. "Anything else." "I loved whoever my wife was very much whoever she was. I would have done anything for her according to the journals." This seemed to set her a little bit more at peace.

  "Oh why do we not tell the ones we love how we feel until they're dead or have loss their memory? Robert I loved - love you so much. No matter how cold I was to you or how horribly I treated you I love you! I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Ah hell." With tears she wrapped her arms around me and leaned down to give me a kiss. I wanted to resist but shock and panic gripped me along with a feeling that I shouldn't resist. She made her move and we started to kiss. Suddenly I remembered. I remembered our first date, our first kiss, the wedding, and the first great years of marriage and how we became