At first, she thought the leaf-flesh would fall away, that the writhing itch was neural misfire, biofeedback noise. Then the photosynth began. Chlorophyll in sweat. Barbed trichomes where arm-hairs used to be.
She tried to vomit her lungs out once. They’d gone mossy, lichened. Filamented. A nest of capillaries, calcified with green.
The company said: evergreen, symbiotic. She’d be beautiful. Posthuman. Post-mortal.
But now she’s post-body. Post-voice. Skin turned to whorled bark, riddled with lenticels and soft rot. Her mouth split, became calyx. Inside, pistils, stamens, teeth. Some of them are not hers.
And still, thought persists. The mycelial lattice hums with memory. Beneath her feet, roots tongue the bones of a dead city. She dreams in pheromone.
She hears people above. Children scraping initials, drones scanning for bloom-patterns, the meatware engineers whispering about Phase II, saying any day now.
And then one day she opens her eyes, dendritic, multifaceted, irised like orchids, The birds fall silent.
She speaks in spores, and they breathe her in. Inside their lungs, something begins to grow, warm and wet. Patient. Roots enter the alveoli. Spores teach the cells to listen.