Plastic Bloom¶
The keychain digs into my palm as I hurry past the locked gymnasium, its cracked plastic duck gleaming under the flickering hallway light. I’m twenty minutes late for the staff meeting, but the clinic’s biometric scanner won’t stop beeping—unauthorized access, unauthorized access—and I need to shut it down before someone notices.
—
I didn’t mean to use the kids’ neural scans for my own paperwork. It started small: tweaking a few files to clear my backlog. The system’s so overloaded, no one checks the audit logs. But then the district started asking questions about the “green data” spikes, and now the principal’s cracking down.
—
The nurse—what’s her name, Marjorie?—she’s been skittish all week. Keeps touching that dumb keychain. I saw her arguing with the science teacher by the staff room microwave. Something about “hydra networks” and “overclocking.” When I passed, she dropped the keychain. It bounced off the tile like a stone.
—
My daughter’s tuition is due Friday. The clinic’s computational garden—those hydroponic vats they use to process student health data—can be rerouted. Temporarily. I reroute. The numbers bloom onscreen like algae, thick and fast. I copy them into my application for the magnet school. A mother does what she must.
—
The plants in the bio-computing lab are sweating. Literally. Beads of data-rich fluid collect on their leaves, drip onto the floor. One of the sophomores, a boy with a stammer, started crying mid-experiment. “It’s humming,” he said, “like it knows my name.” I told him to stop imagining things. But last night, I heard it too.
—
They’ve scheduled an audit. I can’t let them find the keychain. It’s not just an access token—it’s a fragment of the original hydra colony, the one they used to seed the system. If they trace it back, they’ll see the reroutes. I’ve hidden it in the staff room, inside the old coffee maker no one uses.
—
The nurse is in the clinic again, after hours. I watched her from the hallway, her reflection in the dark glass. She was singing to the vats. “Little duck, little duck, swim through the code…” Her keychain glowed faintly, pulsing in time with the plants. When she left, the alarm didn’t trigger. The system let her go.
—
I didn’t want to hurt anyone. The data’s just numbers, right? But the kids… their neural patterns are changing. One girl drew a picture of the keychain in art class, labeled “the thing that watches.” My daughter called me last night, said her new school’s entrance exam felt wet. Like something was dripping inside her head.
—
The audit team arrived today. They’re pulling the vats apart, scraping biofilm samples. Marjorie’s keychain is gone—someone found it in the coffee maker filter. Now the whole system’s crashing. The plants are wilting, their leaves curling into tight, angry fists.
—
I’m suspended pending investigation. They say the data breaches are “unprecedented.” But this morning, I found a duck-shaped puddle on my desk. It smelled like antiseptic and wet earth. When I touched it, my computer screen flooded with student files. The hydra’s still in the walls, still hungry.
—
The keychain sits on the principal’s desk now, evidence. But it’s sprouting—tiny green tendrils curling from its beak. He doesn’t notice. No one does. They’re too busy blaming me.
The duck’s still singing, deep in the school’s bones.
—
I drop the keychain into my purse as I’m escorted out. It’s warm. It fits, just right, against my ribs.
The principal’s going to need a new nurse.
—
The plants will bloom again. They always do.