@mc5punk 21 March 2025 more from that month

Short story: Germ of Insurrection

The sky was a festering wound of toxic clouds. Aisha walked between abandoned greenhouses, her left boot crunching on broken glass impregnated with acid rain. She had been growing the *Night Goddess* for three years in stolen trial capsules, feeding her roots with tears filtered through a home distiller. The plant fluoresced in violet tones at lunar contact, a bioluminescent spectrum that was hidden under rotten planks of the underground.  "Auxin levels are unstable—" Lira murmured, looking at the portable monitor whose readings were blinking red. His voice echoed in the vault they had built inside an ancient cistern —. If we accelerate the flowering process...  "We would destroy the alpha compound," Aisha cut in, adjusting the temperature controls with trembling fingers. We need exactly 42 days. Like the bones of the female body.  A crash shook the walls. They both held their breath until the drone buzzed away. Lira unfolded a holographic map on a table covered with spores.  "The North Shelter reported seven new forced sterilizations—" he pointed to bright areas in the 12th district. The Wardens are using thermal detectors at the monthly check-ups.  Aisha extracted a vial from her inner pocket. The golden liquid inside emanated rhythmic pulsations, like a suspended heart.  —This is not an antidote—" he said, holding it up to the dim light. It's a virus. It will be replicated through water, pollen grains, even the sweat of our palms. When you reach the central irrigation system...  A sharp knock on the iron door paralyzed them. The footsteps echoed like hammering on his vertebrae.  - Search Warrant 558-B! - roared a voice distorted by a megaphone-. You have twenty seconds to unlock the entrance.  Lira pushed Aisha towards a ventilation duct.  "Take the strain data," he spat in her ear as he ripped off her jacket to put it on backwards. I'll delay the scorpions.  The lab exploded into green flames when Aisha reached the escape tunnel. The heat singed his eyebrows, but he did not let go of the cryogenic briefcase glued to his chest. Among the smoking rubble, a hand with black-painted fingernails protruded under twisted beams.  *** In the Shadow Market, where surveillance algorithms could not decipher herbal medicine swaps by USB sticks, Aisha met Dr. Yumiko. The geneticist wore a nanoparticle necklace that erased her face from the recognition cameras.  "Your sample contains modified CRISPR sequences—" Yumiko analyzed with a quantum microscope. Do you know what will happen if you release this?  Through a dirty skylight, they saw a squad of Guards pass by dragging a barefoot young woman. Her belly was bleeding where her uterus had been removed without anesthesia.  —It will be the end of your fear regime," Aisha replied, injecting an experimental dose into her jugular vein. Or the beginning of our extinction.  *** On the night of the dispersion, 234 women ingested capsules with spores of the *Night Goddess*. Their bodies became walking incubators, secreting the fertilizer compound through sweat glands. When the Guardians raided the North Shelter, they found only empty flower pots and vine-covered walls emitting a low-frequency song.  - This is bioterrorism! - Captain Varek shouted during the mandatory global broadcast, crushing an outbreak with his armored boot. Any woman found with unauthorized genetic material will be...  His speech was interrupted by a rattle. The cameras caught how a stalk pierced her throat, blooming into a bell of iridescent nectar.  *** Years later, on the margins of the cities still fumigated, children play at hiding seeds in the cracks of the retaining walls. Grandmothers teach how to weave genetic codes into bioluminescent algae tapestries. And on every solstice, when the moon shines through the smog, millions of violet flowers pierce the asphalt to remember the promise engraved on Aisha's bones:  * "We will grow up where we are buried."* Source of the images. Image created with Starryai.