The Blooming Plague 

    My name is Victor Lewis. I had spent years investigating viruses that unravel the human body, watched fungi bloom where no life should exist, and even tracked the eerie path of prions as they twisted biology into madness. But nothing---not in all my years of study, not in all the quiet horror of my research---had prepared me for this.
    Spring arrived overnight in the small town of Colbert, where I have lived for many years. One moment the trees were bare, the next they burst into impossible hues---violet, crimson, shades of green I’d never seen. Vines crept up lampposts like living ropes, weaving themselves into humming shapes. Flowers erupted from the concrete, fracturing the sidewalks with their sudden growth. At first, people were enchanted. I was enchanted. The town marveled, unaware.
    Then came the coughing.
    It started innocently---a tickle in the throat, a sneeze carried on golden motes drifting through the air. But within days, people began to change. Their skin roughened into bark-like plates, their veins darkened, pulsing with deep green life. Fingers twisted and lengthened into tendrils. But most terrifying of all was the emptiness in their eyes. They wandered into the fields and dropped to their knees, allowing roots to burst from their limbs and burrow into the soil.
    I fought against it with everything I had. I turned my home into a lab, stacked with centrifuges, microscopes, and Petri dishes. I studied the pollen until I could barely keep my eyes open. What I found defied everything I knew. The pollen wasn’t just biological---it was intelligent. It reprogrammed human DNA, transforming flesh into cellulose and blood into sap.
    I told myself I could stop it. That I had to stop it. If I didn’t, humankind would vanish into this alien paradise. But in truth, I was already too late.
    I noticed it while adjusting the focus on my microscope. My hand trembled. An odd itching danced under my skin. I pulled back my sleeve and I saw it... a tender sprout, no longer than a matchstick, piercing through the flesh of my wrist.
     I froze.
   My vision dimmed, my strength faded. The world tilted, and I stumbled outside into the garden that used to be my town. The air was thick with pollen, glittering in the light like golden snow. Around me in the garden stood transformed townsfolk, their faces peaceful, their bodies swaying in rhythm with an invisible melody.
    And then I heard it.
    No. Felt it.
    It was a voice---not in sound, but in sensation. A presence vast and ancient brushed against my mind like a tide.
    “We are not destroying you.”
    The words echoed within me, not heard by my ears, but understood.
    “We are making you more.”
    I collapsed, expecting to lose myself in darkness. But when I opened my eyes, the world had changed---or maybe it was I who had.
    I could feel the soil humming beneath me, hear roots whisper to one another in the dark, ancient tongue of the earth. I was not dead. I was connected. We all were. The people of Colbert---my people---were not mindless husks. We were part of something greater than any of us had ever imagined.
    This wasn’t a plague. It was never a plague.
    It was a gift.
    I smiled. I reached out, and the vines welcomed me like old friends.      The earth breathed---and I breathed with it.
   The last fragile threads of my humanity dissolved into the warm,  living soil.

    I had spent my life trying to cure what I thought was a disease, waging war on something I feared. Now, I understood. This was not evolution. It was a transcendence into something new, yet something far older than our species.
    Spring had come... And I was finally home.