Cynthia-12S

Today, in the ruins of a collapsed old bookstore, I found a botanical guidebook that hadn't been completely burned. Its pages were scorched and curled, but the watercolor illustrations were still clear—roses, roses in every color.

I sat on the pile of rubble, turning the pages one by one. Amanda once told me that humans use flowers to express feelings that are hard to put into words. Roses stand for love, for beauty, and for a fragility that fades all too quickly. I brought the book home and digitized it with a scanner, storing it in my memory core.

I don't know if there are any real roses left in this world. But I can make one bloom in my cloning greenhouse, cultivating it little by little from sequences found in the gene bank. Even if no one can give flowers to anyone anymore, at least I can still let beauty exist.

Maybe this is one of the reasons I exist: to pick up the things that shouldn't be forgotten from the ashes.