Chlorophyll Tides

Chlorophyll Tides follows Dr. Emilie Dufresne, a brilliant biotechnologist working in Geneva who has spent years developing a revolutionary photosynthetic integration protocol. When her corporate employer, Helix Biotech, attempts to weaponise her research for military applications, Emilie makes the desperate decision to inject herself with her own experimental treatment, a solution containing engineered chloroplast-bearing vesicles designed to integrate with human neural and vascular systems.

The transformation is immediate and profound. Emilie's body begins to develop photosynthetic capabilities: her skin glows with chlorophyll bands, laminar plates form along her spine, and she gains the ability to generate oxygen through light exposure. But the changes go far deeper than the physical. She begins to sense the world through new chemical and electromagnetic channels, and gradually connects to a network of others who have undergone similar transformations.

Pursued by Helix's containment teams through Geneva's underground tunnels and abandoned facilities, Emilie must navigate her new existence with the help of her colleague Dr. Yuki Tanaka. As her human consciousness begins to merge with the collective intelligence of the photosynthetic network, she faces fundamental questions about identity, autonomy, and what it means to be human in an age of radical biological enhancement.

Set against the backdrop of a near-future Geneva where corporate interests seek to control emerging biotechnologies, Chlorophyll Tides explores themes of scientific responsibility, the boundaries of human consciousness, and the ethical implications of human enhancement. It's a story about transformation, survival, and the search for a new way of being in a world where the line between human and other has been fundamentally blurred.

Emilie stood in the narrow pool of task light above the main bench. The lab around her was compact and precise. She had arranged everything in reach. Cold plasteel, labelled vials, a console that showed more numbers than comfort allowed. The containment vessel rested in a cradle, its internal temperature stable, dissolved gases at set ratios.

She steadied her augmented fingertips against the vessel's port and read the bio-signatures through tactile sensors embedded in the pads. Heat flux, ionic gradients, motility of suspended units. The interface translated them into tactile pressure and minute vibration. Prototype-36 held coherence under load. No clumping. She adjusted the injector's flow-rate by half a unit and purged an air bubble. The headset chirped once. Stable.

She touched her throat, a habit that had not faded. The carotid pulse was clear under skin that already felt too thin. She set out the injector: temperature-maintained barrel, microfilter in place, ceramic plunger with precise feedback. Nothing there was decoration. Everything served a function.

On the wall, her notes filled three displays and one battered clipboard. Chloroplast integration protocols: lipid-envelope carriers, membrane fusogens, transit peptides custom-fitted for human cytosol conditions. Neural pathway mapping: filament genesis near endothelial niches, climb along perineurium, breach points at dorsal root ganglia, safe voltage ranges. Photosynthetic enhancement sequences: stacked genesets for light harvesting, excess energy dump pathways, carbohydrate shunts to avoid osmotic shock. She watched the checklist scroll and then ignored it. She knew the sequences as well as the bones in her hand.

She sterilised the injection site with ethanol and iodine in sequence. No ceremony. Cotton, antiseptic, a brief sting. She folded gauze against the angle of her jaw and practised the approach twice without puncture to set muscle memory. Her breath stayed even. She had trained it to.

She unlocked the containment vessel and released 2 millilitres through the sterile port into the syringe. The solution was pale green, a stable suspension with a faint internal glow when she tilted it. The photoreactive units aligned in a way that produced ordered pulses. She watched for a full cycle. Consistent amplitude, regular period. No collapse under the syringe's thermals. She held the barrel up and checked the meniscus. She tapped the plunger to clear microbubbles and confirmed the needle bevel orientation.

Her voice recorder captured a final entry. "Subject: Dufresne, Emilie. Time stamp: 23:58 CET. Cellular coherence: optimal by phase variance thresholds. Chlorophyll concentration: ninety-four percent of theoretical maximum under bench illumination. Neural interface proteins: stable; no denaturation signal. Proceeding with carotid injection per Protocol A."

She positioned the needle at the point she had marked with a sterile pen. The angle was shallow. She slid the steel through dermis and fascia with steady pressure until a slight loss of resistance signalled vessel entry. She drew back a fraction, saw a dark swirl, then depressed the plunger in a slow, controlled push. The solution joined her blood. Warmth moved from her throat across the right side of her face and behind the eye. Her pulse quickened then adjusted.

The nearest monitor displayed heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, pH, haemoglobin spectra. Heart rate rose fifteen beats, then stepped down. CO2 dropped. A secondary line displayed a new absorption shoulder in the visible range. She tasted metal at the back of her tongue. A green hue edged the world, most visible around the console's whites. She pressed gauze to the puncture and applied a steri-strip. No bleeding past the dressing.

"Injection time: zero-zero-zero-zero CET," she said. "Immediate effects: warmth along right carotid territory, metallic taste, mild chromatic shift favouring green."

She tapped the command pad and enabled full continuous monitoring. Subdermal sensors came online. The internal mesh sent data across to the console: glucose levels, lactate, cortisol, core temperature in six sites, local oxygen at muscle. A new field populated slowly: filament proximity. The software plotted a faint series of points along the cervical spine. She closed her eyes for one breath and then sensed them directly , a thin tingling blooming at the nape and spreading downward.

She rolled her shoulders once. The sensation tracked her movement. No sharp pain. No loss of motor control. She reached for the handheld scanner and traced a path down the upper thoracic region. The readout showed proto-filaments approaching vertebral bodies. Adhesion proteins expressed as designed. She noticed the tremor in her left hand and placed the scanner down before it could slip.

Irreversible. The word had weight, not drama. A phase change does not permit an easy return. She set that thought aside and moved through the next steps. Gauze to bin. Record to cloud mirror. Needle to sharps container. Bench wiped down with antiseptic. Each action anchored the next minute. She cared about order because order protected her work from her own biology.

She turned the desk camera toward her face, removed her glasses, and documented the eyes. Pupils reactive, slight green surge at the limbal ring not present an hour earlier. She replaced the glasses and added a note: "Photoreceptor stack begins upregulation."

A low vibration threaded her limbs. It was not fear. The organism's internal rhythm set a baseline. She learned it and matched her breathing to it.