Roots In Captivity

Never seen trees this green. That's what visitors always say. And they're right-- the chlorophyll levels are off the charts, growth rates exceeding all projections. Everything working exactly as designed. Sometimes I stand here and try to remember what wind sounds like through branches. The trees probably can't remember either.

Endless, perfect days under engineered suns. The scientists check their data and smile. All green lights across the board. I wonder if the trees can go insane. If somewhere in their rings they record the memory of real rain, real dirt, real danger. Or if after enough generations in glass, they forget they were ever meant for anything else. We built them a cathedral when all they wanted was sky. Now they grow toward LED arrays, their roots circling in containers designed by algorithms. Thriving by every metric we can measure. Dying by all the ones we can't.

What does survival mean when you've eliminated everything worth surviving?

[Created in 2023]