Parthenogenesis

It was already evening, and the time you had remaining to get to your destination narrowed with every step you took on the green earth beneath your heavy legs.

In the distance, the bright lights of your destination beckoned, but you could scarcely remember what that destination was anymore. You didn't remember what it looked like, and you only had the vaguest idea of why you were going. Your left arm held the only clue. Your right arm was useless, stiff, and deadened, already looking like the arms of those who had fallen before you on the same path.

In your right hand, however, was the reason for each profoundly demanding step. It was a locket, something that you knew had value to you, but you didn't know exactly why. Its silver was a dull green, reflecting the atmosphere of the planet. Everything looked green now, and you wondered what the sky must have looked like before this all happened. You could not recall it.

The locket was shaped like a heart, but your mind softly remembered that it was not shaped like the real heart inside your changing body. The locket had the most intricate, delicate details, flowers and leaves, natural things that must have once been desirable to people. It was almost ironic now.

You stopped, pausing outside the remains of a house to catch your labored breath. It was hardly recognizable anymore, fully-formed trees growing out of it and vines covering every inch of the bricks. The same thing had happened to your house, to the once-paved streets of your neighborhood, but you could not remember why. There was a forgotten cause for all of this, but you only knew that you had to get to those artificial lights before nightfall. You knew salvation was waiting there.

You coughed, the scent of flowers overwhelming you. This was the last stage of the transfiguration, and you knew you had very little time left to complete your journey. You were almost shocked that you hadn't passed other people also making their way toward that light in the distance. You realized that if you had, you might not have recognized their forms as people anymore.

Despite your emotions devolving as you continued your journey, you still felt your plight in your rigid bones and numb extremities. This was the right thing to do; you remembered that as though it was interwoven in the stiff fibers of your being.

Had you done this before?

You trudged through thick, new undergrowth, the sudden sharp recollection of what was beneath that undergrowth making your heart constrict as though it was being entwined in vines. That wasn't a symptom, right? Maybe it was. It sounded like it was.

You abruptly tripped over the wildly uneven ground, your changing body not equipped for the rough terrain with its slowness and heaviness. Your dull eyes flashed with fear as you realized the locket had escaped your grasp and tumbled into the greenery. Where was it? New panic filled your chest as you searched for any sign of the silver trinket, and you rolled over to see a blueish light that triggered something in your declining mind.

A flickering life-size image of a perfect creature met your hazy vision, and it sat up, looking around as though confused. You suddenly recognized that this was the projection of a small child, and its sweet face looked familiar in a way that tugged at your slowing heart. You watched it for a moment as you gathered your remaining strength to move.

The projection spoke with a tiny voice, and you could not help your soft smile. The expression formed on your rapidly-toughening face as the child questioned you with gentle curiosity, "Why are you on the ground? I think that you look like you can get up. Why are you crying? Why does your arm look like that?"

With newfound resolve, you reached over, scooping up the open locket and disturbing the projection that was emerging from its tarnished shell. The child babbled on with familial calmness, and you gently closed the locket, tucking the child back into the protective silver.

You could not place who the child was in your murky mind, but you did remember what else was in the locket. It was the complete genetic diary and personality of that human child, a tiny template containing everything needed for a human to be human. You did not remember how it got in the locket, and you did not remember if it was your own child. You couldn't even remember your own name, let alone if you'd ever had a child, but it might as well have been your own offspring. You felt an almost parental drive to get it to the ship and keep it safe.

A ship. That was what the light was. That was what you were heading toward. You remembered your original mission: get the locket to that ship before darkness fell.

With the sky so dark green and your eyes failing, you could not identify what nightfall looked like. Despite this, you carried on anyway, undeterred by your spells of confusion. You just needed to remember to carry the locket in your functioning hand and keep moving forward. The lights grew brighter as you approached them, reassuring you that you were almost done with what you sought to do.

You came to a clearing in the trees and brush. You stoically made your way across the increasingly uneven terrain, recognizing the sprouting, root-like shapes sunken into the soil as fallen people who had succumbed to the illness. You remembered it now, the failed attempt at terraforming the once-dead planet, the way it also transformed the people living there.

It turned skin to bark and lungs to enclosed biospheres for sprouting tiny spores and seeds. The blood in your veins was turning to chlorophyllic liquid that would nourish the soil of the earth and the encompassing flora that you were soon to become.

You sighed with relief as you saw the shining, inorganic ship not far from you, and you were met with the scent of flowers and of young greenery embracing you as you fell to the ground. You were no longer able to sustain the human-like motions of walking and breathing, of thinking rational thoughts.

The shouts of people with lungs not weighed down by internal ecosystems filled the clearing, the noise of the commotion ringing clearly in your ears despite your other senses failing. Why could you still hear as though you were still you?

A white-covered hand carefully took the locket from your gnarled, wooden one. The creature that crouched beside you had thin legs and defined, lean appendages covered by a protective suit. A smiling face shielded by glass met your gaze, and you suddenly knew that you had once looked beautifully human too. Your skin had once been soft, your body flexible, and your vision not clouded by the green in your blood.

The human spoke to you softly, reminding you of the kindness of the child in your locket, "You are safe now. We will give you another chance to live soon, I promise." The human sweetly showed you the locket for the last time as your vision faded into green nothingness, and you recalled that this was not the first time you had done this.

Within that locket was everything you were, your genetic code, your personality, created by an original version of you long ago. Another you would be grown from the locket and given another life on another planet, hopefully with more successful terraforming. This was not the first time you had ensured your survival in this manner, and you wondered if it would be the last. You, your progeny, were safe for now, insured in the hands of other replications of ancient humans.

You could no longer move, and the remains of your human mind gave away further to the soil, but it seemed your ears remained as the humans walked away, crunching through the new undergrowth of your fallen people.

They spoke of returning to a far-away station in the stars. They wondered if enough genetic heirlooms had been accounted for, and they pondered on the plants and the planet, all things that you could no longer grasp. The ship roared and took off, the mighty sounds of the machine falling onto the clearing and the new greenery there as the planet was finally left uninhabited by anything human.

Though you no longer could quite process it, your last memory was of how you were once told of how plants grow better when they were told kind things, but there was nobody left on the planet to speak to its many remaining ears.

Your mind fell further into the earth until there was nothing left to experience but the sound of the peaceful wind through the trees. Your leaves fluttered with the moving air as twilight passed into darkness.