Podflower.aby_sekara.1.var -

"It's getting heavy," Aby whispered. The sound of her labored breathing filled the recording. "The pod is swelling. It’s not just scrubbing the air anymore. It’s adapting. I think... I think it's making seeds. But they aren't seeds for plants."

The final entry in the file was marked by a spike in the data stream.

Instead, filling the entire dome, was a massive, sprawling network of glowing, glass-like vines. At the center was a giant, pulsing pod. When the crew ran their scanners over it, the computer didn't register plant matter. PodFlower.Aby_Sekara.1.var

It registered a human brain wave. Aby Sekara had successfully recorded her variance.

Aby had created a closed-loop system of desperate symbiosis: "It's getting heavy," Aby whispered

Stranded on the tidally locked moon of Kepler-186f, she was the last living crew member of the Aegis expedition. The atmosphere outside the habitat was a toxic soup of heavy ammonia, but inside her failing biodome, Aby had one thing keeping her alive: a single, heavily mutated flowering plant she called the . It was an engineering marvel and a biological nightmare:

Aby Sekara was not a botanist by choice; she was a survivor by necessity. It’s not just scrubbing the air anymore

: Aby provided the carbon dioxide the plant desperately needed in the thin air.