"I think if you insisted you might've died anyway but, uh, refusing to do what he told you to do because you were trying to save the plant would get you a lot of points with my brother."

"Aw. I'm even making friends with the in-laws. Look at me, now you're going to have to actually meet my parents."

He shudders again. "That sounds terrifying. I've never met the parents."

"Chin up, champ, you're immortal! Ish. Or something. Do I get to hear all of your secrets now, since I have successfully out-stubborned you."

He looks out the window. "You're not freaked out that Knives is my brother?"

"Mmmnnno? I'm freaked out about the murder, but I did also see how the Jeneorans were gun happy, so."

"Mm.

"Well, Knives is my brother. —uh, his name is Nai, I don't think he particularly cares about it either way but some other people call him Knives for the obvious reason."

"Nai entertains me more, I'll go with that. But yes, makes sense. Sooooooo. How'd that work. Did someone fuck a plant?"

"No. We just appeared fully formed as infants in the plants room of SEEDS ship 05."

"The ship itself? Before it crashed? Then. Was Nai the one who...?"

Oh goddammit he wished she hadn't made that inference.

"They called us independent plants, because we didn't need the tanks to survive like regular plants do. We weren't the first; there was a girl, before us, they called her Tesla. And they—"

Okay he's actually never told this to anyone before and he's not finding it very easy to.

".... did not see her as a person, probably, and wanted to do horrible unethical experiments upon her?"

"We found the room where they kept her, inside glass tanks. Her head was separated from her torso. Her eyes were separated from her head. We didn't find her left arm or her right leg.

"She was still alive."

"Oh. I'm. I'm sorry."

"Nai couldn't handle it. He was just... in shock, stopped responding or doing anything or even thinking, didn't wake up for days. I...

"...I tried to die. I tried to die very much."

"God. I'm sorry. And he just... I mean, I see the logic in it. The common theory was that it was some megalomaniac who wanted to build a world all by themselves with nothing but the plant ships intact, to build whatever they wanted, but. That. Also tracks."

"He had always been a bit more distant, had a harder time connecting with the humans, preferred to spend his time with other plants, or me. We can hear each other, in our heads. What we're feeling and thinking. We don't really need words to talk. And he's never been good with words, and talking to humans just felt—incomplete. To him.

"There was a woman named Rem, who raised us like a mother, to whatever extent that even makes sense when we went from infants to eight year olds over a year. I think he loved her, too. She tried so hard to be understood, to make sure he could talk to her.

"But after seeing Tesla he just... he shut down. Even from me, I didn't see what he was thinking until it was too late. He thought—still thinks—that all humans are awful."

"We can be real dicks, it's true. But that sounds... very lonely."

"They talk back. The plants. They're all... so nice. They are earnest, and innocent, and they really want to help. They see humans in need, they see they can help, and they trip over themselves to do that. They love humans, they love everyone.

"I don't think humans made them. I don't think they're artificial at all. I think you discovered them, somehow, and they found you and decided that the fact that you died was a screaming moral emergency that they had to fix.

"So I don't think he's lonely. He just got two new friends."

"... That's surprisingly cute. And also, furthermore, I am horrified. How, uh, peopley are the plants, Zash. Are they just. They are, aren't they, they're just people that we keep in little glass pods, god damn it."

"Not... exactly. I'm not sure. I don't think they're all here. In this dimension, I mean. They're not from here, and I think only a little bit of them comes over. They're simpler, in a way, in how they interact and think.

"But they're... definitely individuals. The water plant saw herself as the food plant's big sister—she stole that concept from humans.

"And you, uh, mentioned yourself, that they work best when networked. It's not just... sharing resources."

"It's presumably also talking to each other. Right. Okay. Are they all female pronouns or am I going to have to keep track of them all, because I will but I am going to be so bad at it."

"They're all female. They have collectively decided that since 'woman' is the gender that creates life in humans that's what they'll be."

"That's very cute."

"Some of the scientists on the SEEDS ship had a theory that Nai and I—and Tesla—were an attempt by the plants to talk back to humans. They can read your thoughts just fine, but they can't project, and they don't really understand. We can hear them, and understand your words, but we can't hear your thoughts—or only a little bit, with effort. And we can do..." He touches her shoulder and she can hear, very very faintly and distantly, in her mind, [this].