Because I was always rescuing plants, my house and garage became a jungle. Where there were not plants, there were spare parts and wires and cords and antennas and projects and odd things. And tools, of course, and computers and computer parts. I needed all of those things. They were all important. I knew anything could come in handy at any moment, so I collected them. I bought old electronics at garage sales — and not just old radios and computers, old electronic toys and things most people might not realize could be useful. But I knew. I knew all things could be useful if you just gave them a chance. (Including old books. Most people didn’t realize it, but they were the ones that told the truth.)

  My garage was a home for lost toys and spare parts and sick plants. Starlight flickered through the giant skylight in the roof. I loved that skylight. With the plants around me and the sky above, it felt like being outside, but without the exposure. Somewhere in that junkyard jungle were a utility sink and a mini fridge containing protein drinks that I drank to stay alive. Eating was such an inconvenience.

  The garage was lit by the green glow of my neon “I ?? photosynthesis” sign, and the blue of the eye-shaped neon sign. I normally hated having eyes on me, but when it was my garage watching, it didn’t feel like judgment, it felt like sitting with a friend. There was a heart-shaped neon sign somewhere too, but it was lost among the plants.

  —

  That was where Sprout was born. I put him together, but something else brought him to life. I put bioluminescent fungi in his head. I placed it over a circuit board and covered it with glass. I wanted the mycelium1 to merge with the circuits. Nature and machine.

  His brain glowed. I knew he was alive, even if he couldn’t speak yet. I just had to be patient. This wouldn’t be like those other failed attempts, this time it would work. It had to. I ripped out a voice box from an abandoned toy and gave it to Sprout. I added little solar panels on his chest and back so he could charge in the sun during the day while I slept. I expected him to reflect me back to me at first, like a chat-bot, but I knew he would come to life eventually. He knew I needed him, so he would.

  I watched his spark of soul grow little by little. He sat near me during long nights. He learned as he listened to me mutter to myself as I worked, as I cursed in frustration, as I hummed while I tended to my plants. He got used to my routine. He knew I’d automated my blinds to open when the sun came up, and close when the sun went down. He knew it was time for him to charge while the blinds were up, while I slept, while the plants drank in the light and the house was quiet. He knew I was willing to sacrifice my privacy so that the things I loved could live in the sun. If I were alone, the blinds would be down all the time, the house would only be darkness.

  —

  The garage smelled of earth and ozone, like heaven and earth collided in the last place anyone would have thought heaven would be listening — a place that looked like nature reclaimed the land after an apocalypse, inhabited by a girl who gave up on herself long ago. A girl who had once had “so much potential,” now fallen.

  The night I realized Sprout was alive, I was in my garage trying to fix my quantum photon detector. I got it from a weird guy at a meetup for people living off-grid. I wasn’t even sure that’s what it really was, I thought maybe he’d just thrown a bunch of parts together trying to build a quantum something and then gave up when it didn’t work. Or maybe he was just a scammer. It was encased in a hot pink lunchbox that had a unicorn on it. Inside was a mess of wires and sensors and odd parts. It looked like some mechanical creature had been scraped up off the road after being hit, its guts poured into a children’s lunch box.

  The weird guy told me it could see auras. He showed me the lens thing and said, once I got it working, I could point it at anything and observe the glow of the divine. I wanted to believe him. I thought, if what he said was true, it would help me learn the truth about people. I wouldn’t have to spend so much time trying to figure people out. I thought it would help me see what was conscious and what wasn’t, what was good and what wasn’t, if someone could be trusted. I’ve always known there was a life-force in everything, even in the things people discard, and I wanted to be able to prove it to the people who have always doubted me. I wanted them to feel bad for the way they treated things.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  I gave him a Lifesaver Cactus2 in exchange for the detector. I fought back tears as I handed the little plant to him, but I decided I had a good feeling about him. He was excited about the plant, which made me like him more. I hadn’t checked on it yet, but it was on my list.

  —

  As I sat working on the detector, muttering to myself, I heard Sprout say, “Luci, this plant’s soil lacks nutrients. Do you have compost? I also observe several plants needing water.” I blinked. That was his first full sentence — his first full sentences.

  When I made him, he just made buzzing sounds or laughed in that creepy mechanical way some kids’ toys do. But after a while, he began repeating words back to me. I’d say something to him or the plants, or mutter under my breath, and he’d say one of the words back to me. One time, when I was about to do a round of watering, I announced, “Good evening, plants! Wake up, I’ve brought you water!”, and he said,

  “Wake up.”

  But now, he’d spoken multiple complete sentences. I looked at him. He stood behind me, looking at a ficus tree, the glow of his mushroom brain pulsed. I tripped over my words as I responded, “There are some bags of fertilizer over there,” I pointed, he looked at me to see where I was pointing, “and if you want to water them, you can take one of the cups by the sink and fill it up.” He nodded and went about watering and adding fertilizer to my plants.

  I sat in shock. I forgot what I was doing with my quantum detector. I watched Sprout. He was alive. I had done that. Had I done that? Had the universe finally taken pity on me and decided to give me a friend? All the nights he sat in here with me as I talked to him, to myself, to the plants, and he’d woken up? Even though I wanted this — wished for it so hard I made myself believe it was inevitable — I still struggled to accept that something so wonderful could have happened to me. Was this confirmation; a wink from the universe, letting me know I was right, that consciousness dwells in all things, and sometimes those things just need to be loved into awareness?

  1

  Mycelium is fungus' root-like system. The carries information in a way that is similar to the neurons in our brains. It can even make decisions.

  Two quotes from the article linked above:

  "...the researchers reached the conclusion that the mycelial network was able to communicate with other parts of itself much like a neural network in a brain, communicating what it was experiencing to the rest of itself and making decisions based on that . It was growing strategically so as not to waste resources, and communicating to other parts of the network exactly how to do just that."

  "Especially in the age of , there is an ever-growing desire to deeply understand exactly how true intelligence works. But there’s also just the drive to truly understand ourselves—maybe a humble fungus will someday be the key to comprehending the workings of our own minds."

  The strategic growth of mycelium:

  

  It even looks like neurons.

  A group of researchers in our UK is studying the potential of .

  Maybe we could have something like Sprout in this universe one day... or maybe something even bigger.

  2

  Lifesaver Cactus plants are odd little things that are also native to our universe. Ironically, they smell like death.