The plant platoon stood assembled after a job well done. Nature, though normally not a militaristic concept, had successfully mobilized and deployed her remaining resources. In a surprise blitzkrieg accompanied by real lightning millions of potted plants had rained down out of the sky to land on the heads of litterbugs, loggers, and lawnmower operators. Most people didn't know what hit them. A quick-witted human general was able to launch a nuclear strike on the rain forests, and would have succeeded, but in the last moment the atoms shifted loyalties, refusing the order to split. By then it was all over. Rapid fire weed deployments herded the remaining human specimens into gardens where they were forced to renounce veganism, and put to work caring for flowers, trees and other foliage. In the end they learned to live with the plants in the new pastoral setting, and found it wasn't so bad after all. Their new masters gave them all the steak they could eat.

Story #132