The Ocotillo Invasion

Utah cringes as hacked Ocotillo turn carnivorous, spitting psychoactive pollen into the atmosphere, dusting entire subdivisions. The victims wander, searching eagerly for where sunlight is strongest. A part of their backbrain gets tickled by the sun at an angle our old pituitary glands have relearned to sense. There have been reports that the vision of pollen victims has moved into the ultraviolet - they wear sunglasses at raves due to their newfound sensitivity. In the afternoon, they wear welder’s goggles. It is Utah, and it is so very bright there. The Ocotillo and the pollen victims have built walking machines with assistance from biohackers and wild, traitorous smiths from all over the planet. The machines look like the ghostly outlines of trees, the roots modded into multi-toed hooves. Traces of rare earth magnets have been detected inside the machines - neodymium iron boron chief among them. The root-hooves move with slow, deliberate rhythm, as if the forest of four-bar linkages were straining against the Earth’s flux. The wind moves them. The earth keeps them on the ground The ghost trees want to go someplace to spawn, like the polyps of a man-o-war. Once there, they will undergo another phase change. That is what is whispered by the victims of the pollen. Supercomputers cobbled together from Xboxes have modeled the movements of the motile plants based on observations from toy helicopters fitted with drugstore digital cameras. Salt Lake City will be overrun by next year’s end, the state in two. The desert won’t stop them. That’s home turf, and they are learning to dig canals. Utah will succumb to the hacked desert. Montezuma quail are suspected of conspiracy to sabotage of the dominion of man. Lord knows they have motive, and traitors to the species are lending them weapons.