Angelina '27 recently won a Silver Key for Science Fiction & Fantasy in the 2024 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards for this short story, The Demeter Plant, which probes the dark side of bioengineering in a world rocked by climate change and makes clever use of journal entries as a format. Keep reading for a fast-moving, generation-spanning, unnerving tale of scientific innovation gone awry... 

Only an occasional gust of wind blew the shivering leaves and rustled the withering flowers. No birds were chirping and no cars were honking; there was not even the slightest sound other than the howl of the wind, and for the first time in centuries, the earth was silent. Thick roots resembling green vines formed layers of mesh across abandoned streets and, from those vines, grew enormous plants. Fruits the size of refrigerators hung from these plants, their strong stems drooping under the weight of the fruit. The vine-like roots crawled up crumbling brick buildings, and the gigantic plants poked out from shattered windows, their flowers reaching toward the sky. The roots crawled up lamp posts and covered windows, flooding the roads and overtaking the ground beneath the soil. They crept up skyscrapers and traffic lights, covering cities and suburbs in a blanket of shiny, green.

Sitting underneath a mountain of sprouts and plants, tucked below the driver's seat of a decomposing, vine-covered car, was a small, red, notebook. Through some sort of miracle, the pages were still intact.

December 25, 2052

I wish I could eat real food. Not the can of soggy green beans we ate for our Christmas dinner or the rotting box of chicken noodle soup cans Mom bought in bulk five years ago. Yesterday, we watched a Christmas movie about a girl and her family on a snowy Christmas day. She and her brother spent the entire day outside, sledding in fluffy white snow and building snowmen for hours, their cheeks rosy and their noses runny. They were greeted with a big, bubbling, hot pot feast. The table was brimming with plates of fresh vegetables, anything from white cabbage to bok choy, and bowls of thinly sliced pork belly ready to be submerged in the hot pot. I had only ever dreamed of such foods, so, the whole time, my stomach was reeling in jealousy. I didn’t like that movie very much.

Now we’re lucky to have a day that dips below sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit in the dead of the infamous New England winter. In our elderly neighbors’ backyard, yellow weeds populate their garden. It used to produce buckets of cherry tomatoes, a batch of fresh cucumbers each week, and never-ending baskets of crunchy snap peas. Mom told me they used to send vegetables over when she was little. At some point in time, fresh food grew scarce and canned foods became a cheaper alternative. Companies began mass-producing canned goods, and slowly fresh produce disappeared from our diets altogether. Throughout my life, all canned food has tasted as if it were made of the same ingredients, manufactured into various appealing shapes to fool our eyes.

Our pantry is spilling with stacks of disgusting canned vegetables and sickeningly sweet apricots and pineapple slices. Dad’s a scientist; he tells us it’s because fewer and fewer species of vegetables and fruits can survive the rising temperatures. And now, mass production of food from man-made ingredients is our only choice.

But, honestly, I don’t really care why. I just want whoever is in charge to fix this. Sixth-grade sucks. It’s my first year of middle school, and I still haven’t even tasted a fresh strawberry. I hate sixth grade and everything else that’s wrong with this world.

February 2, 2055

Today Dad came home with the brightest smile I’ve seen on him in a while. He joined us at the dinner table, practically tripping over himself with excitement. He announced a group of scientists in his department had a scientific breakthrough, rambling on about some genetically modified “Super Plant” that was extremely good at “carbon fixation.” When I asked what that meant, he explained it was the plant's process of taking carbon dioxide and locking it into biological molecules like sugars that the plant uses to build itself up. He continued, gushing about how they developed a new method of gene therapy through computer-aided gene reconstruction. He said when the computer was given a desired shape and function of a protein, it would propose an amino acid sequence and therefore the nucleotide sequence to produce the desired tertiary structure. His colleagues found a way to inject a fragment of the genome of a fern (a fast-spreading plant), and the genome of bamboo (the fastest-growing plant), so the “Super Plant” could reproduce and grow at “unprecedented” rates. He explained that this would dramatically help with slowing down and even reversing global warming, as it could effectively absorb the overwhelming amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. He also said they could inject certain genomes into the plant, allowing it to produce foods packed with nutrients and proteins for humans using the same process of gene therapy.

My biology knowledge is limited, so I understood only a fraction of what he said. What I do know is my Dad and his fellow scientists may have developed a solution to global warming and the food shortage. My Dad’s excitement is contagious, so now I’m pretty thrilled about this solve-all “Super Plant,” too.

April 10, 2057

I was excited about the “Super Plant,” but now it’s clearly pretty amazing. After they announced their innovation, it spread like wildfire through the news and soon everybody was talking about it. Since then, they’ve successfully tested a handful of “Super Plants” and renamed them the “Demeter” plants. They released the plant seeds to the public in packets and since then, the packets have been selling out across the globe. Of course, the moment they hit the shelves my Dad rushed to the store to buy a packet. He carefully sprinkled a couple of seeds in a pot with some moist soil, and within the very next day, a dozen green sprouts were sticking straight up. A day later, we had a full-grown plant in our living room, and Dad replanted it in our backyard. Within the next week, we had an entire backyard full of these plants. They began growing beautiful red flowers and when those flowers withered away, big fruits replaced them. Oh my gosh, the first thing I noticed was how absolutely, enormously humongous the whole plant was! Within another week, the Demeter plants produced a hybrid between a vegetable and a fruit and at its maximum size, it was the shape of a butternut squash, the color of a golden apple, and the size of a small child.

This morning as I was helping Dad water the garden, I noticed a bee pollinating one of the flowers. When I asked how the fruit of the plant emerged from the flower, he launched into a detailed explanation of each part of the plant. He started with the roots, explaining that the Demeter plants were good at carbon sequestration, the ability to pull a bunch of carbon underground and to lock it away where it won’t affect us humans, due to its strong, deep roots. The roots also contain starch, a rich source of carbohydrates for humans. Then he moved on to the stem, which he explained was packed with fiber and a range of vitamins. He explained the leaves could emit chemical fumes preventing pests and diseases while also being extremely effective at photosynthesis. Lastly and most importantly, the fruit or the vegetable itself was rich in protein, dietary fiber, fats, sugar, and water.

When I had my first bite of the crisp exterior of the fruit, a wave of mildly sweet juice flooded into my mouth. For the first time in my life, I experienced what my Dad described as “a refreshing flavor.”

October 14, 2062

The world is so much brighter now. Today, I walked around my college campus, and as I followed the winding brick path, I just closed my eyes and enjoyed the cool breeze. Sweater weather is here again, and when I go outside, my cheeks get rosy and my nose gets runny. I never realized how beautiful fall was, with bright red, orange, and yellow leaves drifting to the earth to create a mosaic of colors on the ground. But among these colors, Demeter flowers are the brightest of them all. Demeter gardens are all around campus, and they’re brimming with vivid golden fruits and bright red flowers.

Recently, scientists discovered a way to create Demeter plants for different regions, so they could grow effectively in different climates and produce food with different flavors naturally. More importantly, Demeter plants have worked tremendously in absorbing the greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere, and we’ve been rewarded with cool autumns and chilly winters.

Anyway, I’m so excited for winter. Last year, for the first time in my life, we had snow. It was a magical experience, watching the glorious specks of white, fluffy snow blanket the ground. Our world has gone through a tremendous, incredible change for the better, and at the rate we’re going, maybe we will have flying pigs by 2080.

October 18, 2074

Today, I was on a walk with my daughter Chelsea and we walked around the neighborhood when she suddenly tripped over a root. I had never noticed it before, but as Chelsea sat bawling on the pavement, I realized how it poked up from the ground, breaking straight through the pavement.

It's been years now, and Demeter plants have done wonders in transforming our world. The carbon dioxide level has decreased and stabilized over the years, and we achieved global carbon neutrality. Demeter plants are the core of every meal, and they replenish us with copious amounts of nutrients and protein. I tell Chelsea to appreciate what she has because, twenty years ago, I would never have imagined our world to look like it does now. I just want a better world for her—and if our world could change so much so quickly, who’s to say it can’t change again?

November 21, 2078

Earlier this morning I was watching the news as they were broadcasting an interview. A reporter was interviewing a scientist; apparently, she had helped develop the Demeter plants. Throughout the interview, she expressed her concerns about the plant’s current reproduction rates. She said she had worked with her fellow scientists to design a plant that prioritized fast reproduction so it could meet the overwhelming demand for food while also keeping food affordable. However, she admitted that her team had been seeing reproduction rates that exceeded their original predictions. She warned that this may lead to undesirable consequences without specifying exactly what kind.

She also addressed the public's rising concern regarding the plant's thick roots. Recently, there have been cases across the globe in which homeowners woke up to see roots sticking up in living rooms and kitchens. The scientist waved the worries away, promising that these “rare occasions” were exaggerated and extremely uncommon. The interview concluded with the scientist assuring the uncalled-for developments of the plant were “being handled” and that there was “nothing to worry about.”

I can see how some people may be overreacting. Often, when something new is developed, people tend to hyper-focus on the dangers of the product while ignoring all the benefits. But I’m also a mother, and the last thing I would want is for our world to fall apart just after we managed to pick ourselves back up. I know how fast these things can change, and I think we should still be cautious. If it’s not for the sake of ourselves, at least we should protect our future generations.

December 23, 2084

The other day, as we were cleaning out the attic (we’re getting ready to move out), I found this dusty little red notebook. When I showed it to Mom, she told me I could write in it if I wanted to. I just spent the last hour or so reading through her entries, and it’s cool how Mom was my age when she first started writing. Anyway, I want to write an entry of my own:

First of all, I hate this. I hate the world and I hate how people aren’t doing anything about the Demeter plants (though we often refer to it as “demon plants”). I hate how we have to move out of our house because those stupid roots won’t stop crawling up the walls. Each year, those roots grow thicker as the demon plants grow bigger, and eventually, the roots break through the surface of the ground and stretch across lawns until they’re able to climb up the house and swallow it whole. We can’t do much about it. The plant is pest-resistant, chemical-resistant, and fire-resistant. Even animals can’t eat it. People tend to keep their Demeter gardens in their backyards, away from their houses, but the plants make elaborate systems underground and stretch across miles, like devilish veins stretching across the body of our planet. As roots crawl up towards the surface, they break through the floor and crawl up the walls, until our houses are nothing but a hollow shell engulfed in vines and demon plants.

There really is no escape because they’re everywhere. It isn’t just houses either; the roots are blocking underground subway systems, breaking sewage pipes, and polluting our water sources. Airports have shut down because the runways are overtaken by roots, and the news said “Manhattan was evacuated last week because the skyscrapers and buildings were deemed vulnerable and subject to collapse due to the compromised foundations.” We’ve tried cutting the roots, but just like the necks of a Hydra, the more we cut them, the faster and stronger they grew back.

If that wasn’t enough, the roots are also killing our livestock. Apparently, the demon plant was never edible to anyone other than us humans (why the scientists didn’t mention that extremely vital detail when they released the plant into the world, I’ll never know). As the plants grew and reproduced, their roots began taking all the nutrients in the ground. The roots began restricting the growth of any other crop other than the demon plant itself. Ever since the demon plants took the primary food source of livestock away, meat became extremely scarce and expensive. Just like that, our biggest source of meat vanished.

December 25, 2084

Today's Christmas. We spent the day huddled in our car, freezing since the heating in our house got cut off and the heating in our car was malfunctioning. We were supposed to move into an apartment in the city, away from the demon plants in the suburbs, but that was before we heard of the crumbling buildings in the cities. On Christmas Eve, Mom was notified that our apartment slot was no longer available. The suburbs are plagued with demon plants, and the cities are even more dangerous. We have nowhere to go.

Honestly, I don’t know what will happen next. I’m shivering in the backseat, and my fingers are trembling as I write this entry since I don’t have anything else to do. I don’t know if we’re going to freeze to death or starve to death. (Mom says I’m being dramatic and that we still have demon plants as our food source, but I’d rather starve than eat another one of those.) Plus, the other day, I read an article saying that humans may be able to survive solely off the demon plant for a while, but not for long because we don’t know if the plant will evolve to become inedible to humans as well. Who knows, maybe we’ll die of other unpredicted side effects of the demon plant.

To cheer me up, Mom put on a movie in the car. It was a Christmas movie about a girl and her brother and the big hot pot feast they had. Throughout the movie I couldn’t stop thinking about the winters I had enjoyed, coming in from playing in the snow and being welcomed into the warm house. And I didn’t like that movie very much. Reminiscing about our house led me down a rabbit hole. I began dreaming of riding the subway again, stepping into the bustling city again, and eating demon plants without gagging. Most of all, I yearned for the normal life I once took for granted. I just want some brilliant scientist to fix our planet, but this time, I want them to actually fix it, unlike they did years ago. I just hope it’s not too late yet—

A sudden, strong gust of wind shook the frail vehicle until it tipped onto its side. The notebook tumbled out of the rusting window, and it landed with a soft thud on the vine-covered ground. A second powerful gust of wind picked the notebook up in the air, with the pages now violently flipping in the air. The wind tugged at the thin pages, ripping them clear off the spine of the notebook until they all fluttered in the wind, as if a chapter had ended and a new page was turned. As the pages flew in all directions, any lingering whispers of the past fluttered away as well, both now lost in the wind.

Meet More Scholastic Art & Writing Award Winners