S
Serenity Williams
Guest
Original poster
((I give credit to Lorde's song Everybody Wants to Rule the World for helping me think of this!))
So this role-play would be about a post-apocolyptic, not very distant future where the human race was recently devasted by a major loss of plants and greenery as a result of over pollution and man's disregard for all life other than that which it recognizes as its own. Yet, when the last sapling in the world died, humans realized they'd made a grave mistake. Ecosystems collapsed and breathable air became a depleted resource. The government immediately issued oxygen rations, but people were panicking and heart rates were up. Several died that day and even more in the weeks that followed. A wave of alarm ran through countries as their populations continued to dwindle with each passing moment. Big business companies, as usual, found a way to monetize the situation by commercializing the sale of oxygen to the wealthy, cashing in on their fear of death. But even those that profited from the mass hysteria knew money would be useless if death was imminent so the affluent minority decided to take action, something the government was too busy with managing the people to do. They gathered and funded the human species' best and brightest scientists to collaborate in order to find a solution. Yet, for some reason, nothing seemed to work. Each experiment ended with the same unsatisfactory resultant, dead vegetation. The scientists could not only not figure out what the plants needed in order to fully bloom, they couldn't figure out how to even sustain a saplings's life for more than a two-day timespan. All of them simply wilted and died, and, soon, so did the last of humanity's hope.
But one day, a lone scientist working after-hours stumbled upon something revolutionary and soon his idea became practice. It took a few months, but slowly oxygen stopped being a rare commodity, ecosystems found their way to stabilization, and vegetables and fruits were considered blessings from whatever deity lay above. What was this solution, you ask? Well, the scientist discovered that all plants had developed one universal saltation (not sure if I'm using that word right but whatever) within their genetics. A saltation that caused the need for a plant to only be able to grow within the body of a living organism. The first choice was to use the bodies of animals, but there was dissent as people reflected on how the mistreatment of Mother Nature had been what had gotten them into this mess in the first place. So after few debates ( since time was ticking after all), yet all of them heated, the world governments decided that every new baby born that year and thereafter would have a genetically identical duplicate through use of cloning.
These clones would have a specific plant injected into them when they turned two. The plant, inhibited by a thick acid-resistent coating created by scientists, would lay dormant until the age of five when the last of the coating broke down and it would begin to slowly leech the nutrients from inside the clone. By the age of nineteen, the clone would become incapacitated as the blooming plant began to grow out openings such as ears, eyes, mouths, etc. At this age, the clone is "rooted" a term used to describe when a clone is put in and hooked up to a tank filled with a specialized vat of plasma that the clone's body absorbs and, consequently, feeds to the plant. Throughout all this, the clone is to be kept alive at all costs, even at the expense of consciousness, so the machinery that the clone is hooked up to is there to monitor and prolong/perpetuate life-function (this provides a substitution for all natural organs that contribute to life function like the lungs and stuff). As long as the body remains functioning, the plant will remain alive as well. So, generally, clones slip into persistent vegetative states (comas) until the day their body is no longer any use to the plant within them and, thus, to society.
How did humans condone such a thing? It's an easy thing to say 'yes' to when faced with extinction as the only alternative. It was an evil, but a necessary one. And the human race rationalized it beautifully. Orchards were quickly replaced with tanks containing brain-dead clones with vegetation blooming out of them and, after a while, tours of them began to be given to the public, initial revulsion soon turning into pleasant interest. Once there was an excess of oxygen in the world once again, "flower clones" (clones that only produced flowers) were sold on the free market. Some parents even bought their children's clones to decorate their house in a more "family-friendly" way. Other people just bought the more aesthetically attractive and exotic looking flower clones as a symbol of status and wealth (the more attractive/exotic the clone, the more expensive). It was the new look of potted plants and the human race embraced it, blindly.
((And now I'm stuck on the actual plot of this role-play. I only got the backstory and the world down-pat, but I need an actual plot D: Help! Oh, and sorry it's so long...))
So this role-play would be about a post-apocolyptic, not very distant future where the human race was recently devasted by a major loss of plants and greenery as a result of over pollution and man's disregard for all life other than that which it recognizes as its own. Yet, when the last sapling in the world died, humans realized they'd made a grave mistake. Ecosystems collapsed and breathable air became a depleted resource. The government immediately issued oxygen rations, but people were panicking and heart rates were up. Several died that day and even more in the weeks that followed. A wave of alarm ran through countries as their populations continued to dwindle with each passing moment. Big business companies, as usual, found a way to monetize the situation by commercializing the sale of oxygen to the wealthy, cashing in on their fear of death. But even those that profited from the mass hysteria knew money would be useless if death was imminent so the affluent minority decided to take action, something the government was too busy with managing the people to do. They gathered and funded the human species' best and brightest scientists to collaborate in order to find a solution. Yet, for some reason, nothing seemed to work. Each experiment ended with the same unsatisfactory resultant, dead vegetation. The scientists could not only not figure out what the plants needed in order to fully bloom, they couldn't figure out how to even sustain a saplings's life for more than a two-day timespan. All of them simply wilted and died, and, soon, so did the last of humanity's hope.
But one day, a lone scientist working after-hours stumbled upon something revolutionary and soon his idea became practice. It took a few months, but slowly oxygen stopped being a rare commodity, ecosystems found their way to stabilization, and vegetables and fruits were considered blessings from whatever deity lay above. What was this solution, you ask? Well, the scientist discovered that all plants had developed one universal saltation (not sure if I'm using that word right but whatever) within their genetics. A saltation that caused the need for a plant to only be able to grow within the body of a living organism. The first choice was to use the bodies of animals, but there was dissent as people reflected on how the mistreatment of Mother Nature had been what had gotten them into this mess in the first place. So after few debates ( since time was ticking after all), yet all of them heated, the world governments decided that every new baby born that year and thereafter would have a genetically identical duplicate through use of cloning.
These clones would have a specific plant injected into them when they turned two. The plant, inhibited by a thick acid-resistent coating created by scientists, would lay dormant until the age of five when the last of the coating broke down and it would begin to slowly leech the nutrients from inside the clone. By the age of nineteen, the clone would become incapacitated as the blooming plant began to grow out openings such as ears, eyes, mouths, etc. At this age, the clone is "rooted" a term used to describe when a clone is put in and hooked up to a tank filled with a specialized vat of plasma that the clone's body absorbs and, consequently, feeds to the plant. Throughout all this, the clone is to be kept alive at all costs, even at the expense of consciousness, so the machinery that the clone is hooked up to is there to monitor and prolong/perpetuate life-function (this provides a substitution for all natural organs that contribute to life function like the lungs and stuff). As long as the body remains functioning, the plant will remain alive as well. So, generally, clones slip into persistent vegetative states (comas) until the day their body is no longer any use to the plant within them and, thus, to society.
How did humans condone such a thing? It's an easy thing to say 'yes' to when faced with extinction as the only alternative. It was an evil, but a necessary one. And the human race rationalized it beautifully. Orchards were quickly replaced with tanks containing brain-dead clones with vegetation blooming out of them and, after a while, tours of them began to be given to the public, initial revulsion soon turning into pleasant interest. Once there was an excess of oxygen in the world once again, "flower clones" (clones that only produced flowers) were sold on the free market. Some parents even bought their children's clones to decorate their house in a more "family-friendly" way. Other people just bought the more aesthetically attractive and exotic looking flower clones as a symbol of status and wealth (the more attractive/exotic the clone, the more expensive). It was the new look of potted plants and the human race embraced it, blindly.
((And now I'm stuck on the actual plot of this role-play. I only got the backstory and the world down-pat, but I need an actual plot D: Help! Oh, and sorry it's so long...))
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