Green Street
by Eric Suhem
Lydia watched
the leaves of shrubs and vegetables rustle and
shake in the cool holiday air on Green Street. A
bored passenger threw a cell phone out of a
speeding car, and it tumbled along the pavement
into the shrubs, which moved forward quickly to
gobble it up. Soon somebody else threw his pager
out into the street, and the shrub vines
maneuvered from their sidewalk vicinity to snatch
the pager with their green appendages, pulling it
into their stem world. A force within the
shrubbery began to manipulate the many discarded
cell phones and electronic devices, creating a
network of advocacy for the plants. Technology
was truly being used in a Green way, and the
plants liked it.
Lydia, who
lived at 121 Green Street, was a true adherent to
the tech industry, and she was impressed by how
quickly the plants had managed to implant and
integrate the discarded electronic communications
devices into the ground’s fabric, putting a
buzzing sound of technological progress into the
soil, though she had concerns about how the
plants would be using this new networking
capability. A menacing, mechanized hiss was
coming from some of the shrubs, a hiss that
seemed to promise retribution.
However, there
was no time to worry about that, as it was the
holiday season, and Lydia embarked on her yearly
tradition of passing out fruitcake to the
neighbors. Her third stop was 535 Green Street,
where she found Walter standing in a dirt hole,
watering himself with a hose. “I’ve
grown 4 inches in the last 2 hours!” Walter
declared. “I want to become a plant!”
“Is Wilma home?” asked Lydia. “Yes,
yes, she’s inside attending to the lichen,
said Walter distractedly, adjusting the hose
nozzle. Wilma and Walter were both botanists.
Upon answering the door, Wilma immediately
whispered in Lydia’s ear, “The fern is
very excited to see you, but the oleander is
quite pensive about your motives!” Lydia
looked inside to see an oleander in the corner,
shaking violently, leaves flying into the air,
electronic beeps emerging from its stems. Lydia
soldiered on, pulling another fruitcake from her
purse. “Happy holi,” she began, only to
see the nearby Venus flytrap snatch the cake,
engulfing it hungrily. The flytrap was focusing
on the squirrel meat inside the fruitcake. Lydia
considered the squirrel meat to be her secret
ingredient, what made the fruitcake ‘a
Lydia’. “You see,” hissed Wilma,
“The plants will be taking over soon. Once
they take over our house, they will move swiftly
along Green Street, reclaiming what is theirs!”
Lydia left the
house, passing by Walter, who was continuing to
spray water on himself in the yard. She saw
tangled vines growing in their garden, spreading
into the street, reaching out to the neighborhood,
amidst electronic beeps and clicks, sucking up
economic sedans and SUVs in their tentacles.
Lydia returned to her house at 121 Green Street
and signed on to the plants’ new networking
application ShrubBook, where the Venus flytrap
had electronically spread word to the other
plants about her enjoyable fruitcake. Lydia
believed that this would allow her house to be
spared, but the encroaching greenery had other
ideas.
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