The Doomsday Conspiracy

The doctor performing the autopsy looked up as the men approached. “It’s fascinating,” he said. “A hand has been severed from one of the aliens. There’s no sign of blood, but there are what appear to be veins that contain a green liquid. Most of it has drained out.”

“A green liquid?” Janus asked.

“Yes.” The doctor hesitated. “We believe these creatures are a form of vegetable life.”

“A thinking vegetable? Are you serious?”

“Watch this.” The doctor picked up a watering can and sprinkled water over the arm of the alien with a missing hand. For a moment, nothing happened. And then suddenly at the end of the arm, green matter oozed out and slowly began to form a hand.

The two men stared, shocked. “Jesus! Are these things dead or not?”

“That’s an interesting question. These two figures are not alive in the human sense, but neither do they fit our definition of death. I would say they’re dormant.”

Janus was still staring at the newly formed hand.

“Many plants show various forms of intelligence.”

“Intelligence?”

“Oh, yes. There are plants that disguise themselves, protect themselves. At this moment, we’re doing some amazing experiments on plant life.”

Janus said, “I would like to see those experiments.”

“Certainly. I’ll be happy to arrange it.”

The huge greenhouse laboratory was in a complex of government buildings thirty miles outside of Washington, DC. Hanging on the wall was an inscription that read:

THE MAPLES AND FERNS ARE STILL UNCORRUPT,

YET, NO DOUBT, WHEN THEY COME TO CONSCIOUSNESS,

THEY, TOO, WILL CURSE AND SWEAR.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature, 1836

Professor Rachman, who was in charge of the complex, was an earnest gnome of a man, filled with enthusiasm for his profession. “It was Charles Darwin who was the first to perceive the ability of plants to think. Luther Burbank followed up by communicating with them.”

“You really believe that is possible?”

“We know it is. George Washington Carver communed with plants and they gave him hundreds of new products. Carver said, ‘When I touch a flower, I am touching Infinity. Flowers existed long before there were human beings on this earth, and they will continue to exist for millions of years after. Through the flower, I talk to Infinity’ …”

Janus looked around the enormous greenhouse they were standing in. It was filled with plants and exotic flowers that rainbowed the room. The mixture of perfumes was overpowering.

“Everything in this room is alive,” Professor Rachman said. “These plants can feel love, hate, pain, excitement … just as animals do. Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose proved that they respond to a tone of voice.”

“How does one prove something like that?” Janus asked.

“I will be happy to demonstrate.” Rachman walked over to a table covered with plants. Beside the table was a polygraph machine. Rachman lifted one of the electrodes and attached it to a plant. The needle on the face of the polygraph was at rest. “Watch,” he said.

He leaned closer to the plant and whispered, “I think you are very beautiful. You are more beautiful than all the other plants here …”

Janus watched the needle move ever so slightly.

Suddenly Professor Rachman screamed at the plant, “You are ugly! You are going to die! Do you hear me? You are going to die!”

The needle began to quiver, then it moved sharply upward.

“My God,” Janus said. “I can’t believe it.”

“What you see,” Rachman said, “is the equivalent of a human being screaming. National magazines have published articles about these experiments. One of the most interesting was a blind experiment conducted by six students. One of them, unknown to the others, was chosen to walk into a room with two plants, one of them wired to a polygraph. He completely destroyed the other plant. Later, one by one, the students were sent into the room to pass by the plants. When the innocent students walked in, the polygraph registered nothing. But the moment the guilty one appeared, the needle on the polygraph shot up.”

“That’s incredible.”

“But true. We’ve also learned that plants respond to different kinds of music.”

“Different kinds?”

“Yes. They did an experiment at Temple Buell College in Denver where healthy flowers were put in three separate glass cases. Acid rock music was piped into one case, soft East Indian sitar music was piped into the second case, and the third had no music. A CBS camera crew recorded the experiment, using time-lapse photography. At the end of two weeks, the flowers exposed to the rock music were dead, the group with no music was growing normally, and the ones that heard the sitar music had turned into beautiful blooms, with stems and flowers reaching toward the source of the sound. Walter Cronkite ran the film on his news show. If you wish to check it, it was on October 26, 1970.”

“Are you saying plants have an intelligence?”

“They breathe, and eat, and reproduce. They can feel pain, and they can utilize defences against their enemies. For example, ter-penes are used by certain plants to poison the soil around them and to discourage competitors. Other plants exude alkaloids to make them unpalatable to insects. We’ve proved that plants communicate with one another by pheromones.”

“Yes, I’ve heard of that,” Janus said.

“Some plants are meat eaters. The Venus flytrap, for example. Certain orchids look and smell like female bees, to decoy male bees. Others resemble female wasps to attract the males to visit them and pick up pollen. Another type of orchid has an aroma like rotting meat to coax carrion flies in the neighbourhood to come to them.”