Chapter 8: Future

40XX, London, England

Over half a miles worth of foot slammed down onto shimmering chrome. Another foot followed. Clover finished stepping through the rift and sealed it behind her.

Before her was an endless expanse of chrome and silver and steel. There wasn’t a single blade of grass in sight, let alone a tree. She was confident she was the first green thing these people had seen in countless years. These humans of the future had optimized their existence and packed themselves densely into near-equally dense spires of shiny metal. Not a smidge of the Earth was wasted, and they harvested most of the planet’s energy with all sorts of machines and power plants.

Her first steps had claimed tens of thousands of lives, and their souls joined the others to be solidified in that ‘amber’ as all spirits now were. Their knowledge flooded her.

What she learned was so marvelous she couldn’t help but speak aloud. “No way. I must see this for myself, with my own eyes.”

Clover channeled her power and grew. She had been saving up this height for some time. She didn’t stop till she was tens of miles in height and she saw the curvature of the Earth. With her sight, she even saw over the English channel into the next country full of endless chrome and gray.

That was what the world was now: cities. Every square inch of the planet was habituated by humans. They ate from processed food that had ingredients from vats, not fields. Long chrome bridges spanned the continents like ropes. Some were for cars, most were for high-speed trains of people and goods. Even at a divine vantage point she couldn’t spot the tiniest bit of flora: or any life, really, other than the humans and this techno moss they thrived in.

She spoke, using her sorcery to spread her words across the globe. The minor gesticulations that accompanied rumbled the Earth with her shifting weight.

“You poor things, you’ve never even seen a real flower have you? Only pictures and videos are left of them here. And the fashion: full body suits. What a downgrade. I’ve seen more constricting outfits though, believe me.”

She laughed, and the thoom shook snow off mountains.

“Don’t you worry, I’ll show you all the splendors of nature: my nature. Consider it a blessing before you join the other spirits within me.”

Clover looked down at her feet. They rested miles long over much of what used to be called London. Now? It was part of the endless Earth City that knew no borders but the sky and the stars. She wiggled her toes and felt thousands more souls add to her power.

Her legs shifted, vibrating at vast speeds. They unfurled, though not to gore and viscera but to a fantastical array of vines and petals. From the waist down her body turned to this: a twisting throng of stems and roots. Green and red, the limbs dug into the land beneath her.

The main isle of the United Kingdom erupted. That was to be the primary rooting location of hers. Settling into it cost billions of lives. It was a bounty of spirits she supped up with eager ease. The thickly barked roots of hers almost looked safe once they settled, and hundreds ran to them for shelter. Foolish, as a single touch against the bark sucked them in as more nutrients.

Once rooted, her body shifted again. She formed downwards facing petals with an open hem at the front. It was much like a dress-skirt save it didn’t cover her front at all, and only came half-way down the mass of vines and roots her ‘legs’ had become. Her upper-body remained bare, but four monolithic petals sprouted from her back. They were as the wings of a fae in shape and colored bright red with hints of pink.

“I know your satellites can see me as am I now. Am I not gorgeous? Are my colors not beautiful to you? Ah, just now I absorbed a soul who saw. As predicted, I am divine in my splendor.”

“And my power~”

She spread her arms wide as if offering the planet a gift. Vines shot out from the throng beneath her waist and from the coils about her arms. She spread her tentacle-like stems far and wide. They slammed into the epicenters of cities. Where Paris used to be now had a thick, pulsing vine digging into its center. The impact into the dense super-city another 10 million souls: all hers.

She could grow these vines much quicker than her entire body, and soon they spanned to what used to be Spain and Poland. Soon after that, and she reached as far as Russia with these appendages then farther still.

Vines slithered into the inter-continental transport tunnels. Their sheer bulk mashed everything inside before they coiled around and burst apart the great passageways. Through these, she reached the America region as that was easier than burrowing into the salt waters of the ocean.

Billions of souls flew into her at a time. Once she had her reach onto every landmass, she spoke.

“Behold. My green. My glory. Gaze and experience the wonderful creations of my body: more beautiful and splendid than any flower of old.”

The ground erupted in green from her vines. They were fields of grass, wild flowers and three-leafed clovers at first. Some of the people were curious. Amid the quakes, the jumpsuited humans willingly stepped towards the encroaching greenery they’d only seen on tele-screens. One step on the grass was all it took for the green blades to wrap around their gray shoes and hold them tight. The strength the plants had was beyond compare. The grass shifted and made strange fleshy sounds as it swallowed them down and out of sight.

The further one got from the city-sized vines the more macabre the plants got. Pastel colors turned to duller shades of red and black. The petals grow as thick and hard as flesh. Soon they grew teeth and got more active at consuming the city and the people within. Their blossoms swallowed down thousands at a time as effortlessly as any maw. As she was physically connected to all her creations, every mouthful fed Clover directly, and her cataclysmic coos filled the air.

All her roots and stems shimmied. The planet rumbled with even their minute movements. Other vines joined them, bursting from the ground to form arcs taller and thicker than any monument humans had made. More vines branched off of those, and then more vines from those in a near-endless fractal of the things. They latched onto humans and drunk them dry, leaving them dead husks much as those partygoers were two universes ago. That was back when she was just a frail little human. Now, she drank down humans by the billions.

Plants loomed above the miles-tall super apartment complexes that dotted the world. They thrust their forms upon the structures to swallow them in one gulp. Entire blocks of buildings, miles in radius, fell via sinkholes into the maws of pitcher-plant like flesh-flora. From there, they splashed into golden digestive fluids that were lakes in diameter.

All the planet’s souls flooded into her. Innumerable rivers of blue glow. She gazed down as the last bit of chrome was swallowed by her green and her red and her plant-flesh. She watched with awe at her might and her very presence.

Clover drunk the vitality from whatever was deep below the now dead human civilization. Whatever nutrients and warmth filled the smothered Earth were now hers. Her titanic body shivered, she indulged herself with more growth, and her head passed well into the mesosphere.

The sun reached her well here. Unhindered by the ozone, its warmth and energy reached her near full. Like the sun, she brimmed with power and energy.

“Such a view.” she said, speaking so the souls in her body could hear. All their thoughts were shared with her, all their pasts made bare. It was all useless as before. Nothing humans had was of value other than their spirits and the pleasures of their suffering. Still, they were hers now, forever.

She paused. The thought pleased her. She laughed into the void of space. All the while, her roots and vines sucked the planet up. She had reached the point where even inorganic matter could be imbibed and ingested. As such, the city remnants were absorbed without issue.

“This feeling, this power. It’s sublime. Divine...”

Clover used her power to see herself from a distance. She looked much like some great god. Her flowery form was a symbol of life. She controlled all of this planet: she was all of this. She was god of this Eden of hers as well as the garden itself.

The bark of her roots was no longer needed, so she shook that off and made all her lower body loose with limber vines and stems. She now floated in space, flying freely. With a thought, she grew past the size of the planet she just consumed.

Her fingers pinched up the moon. The moon of all things! It was less than a marble now. She didn’t even eat it with her mouth: she sprouted a vine from her finger to wrap it up and engulf it down.

“Ah yes, the other planets.” she mused, remembering the other universes she graced.

Clover tore open two rifts, each the size of what Earth used to be. Soon as the rifts were open, billions of souls flooded into her, from them she learnt what happened.

She checked back in on where she came from: her home Earth in her home universe. The entire planet teemed with those dandelion-like tufts of hers. It was fuzzy and white. All life had been infected by her plant zombies. There was no where else for them to spread, so with the bodies as fertilizer they simply grew all over its land surface.

“Interesting.” she said, before she stuffed her world-rending hand into the planet’s core and drained it dry. The white tufts turned brown and withered as she took back what was hers.

That other planet she visited was teeming with her plant-flesh life. Even the ocean was coated in algae: red and green. The surface of the planet flourished with her greenery and flesh-plants. Horrifying and beautiful. She drunk in the diversity of the growths she left behind.

“Marvelous~” she quipped, before sticking her vines into that planet and turning it to yet another husk. Her celestial form twitched at such a delicious influx.

“Two more planets, yet only 10 or so billion more souls.” she chuckled to herself. “Only that many souls. Oh how my perspectives have shifted~”

She stared at her hands and looked down again at her divine form. She snapped her fingers and made a lightning storm in space, wide as half-an-Earth, simply because she could. Another snap dissolved it in an instant.

‘I can’t give this up.’ she thought. ‘I won’t merely be a vessel for some greater being. I will be the greatest being. I will be the god of all.’

‘Though I will fulfill my bargain.’

“Hudraloth.” she spoke. “Let’s bring you into reality.”

Her mind reached out to the dividing veil. It sliced like butter to her power.