Cloudforme
“Just look up, and you’ll see me, free as a cloud,” she used to say. She knew about it back then, having knowledge beyond my understanding of internet systems. She said it in response to my worry when she holed herself up in her room for days with her brightly “Do Not Disturb” sign glowing orange neon on her door. She did tell me what she was doing, but I was never interested. My interests were in the ground, taking samples and studying the compositions of earth from all over. It all started from plants, and learning about the hydrologic cycle and how it cultivated the world at just the right temperature. Water evaporated into the atmosphere, condensated, and fell back down at another location, helping plants drink nutrients from the soil to produce oxygen, pollen, and fruit, all while eating carbon out of the air. It was beautiful to be a part of the cycle, especially with humans both adding to the plant cycle and benefiting from it. Cloudforme was the compound in question. Vivian exp...