Plants turned energy-poor materials into energy-rich. Animals did the reverse. We just weren’t autotrophic. Day after day, in every little leaf, in every tiny chloroplast, the miracle that kept us all alive occurred. Epidermis, cuticle, spongy mesophyll. If you were green you wouldn’t have to eat anything, you wouldn’t have to go shopping, you wouldn’t have to work. You wouldn’t have to do anything at all. You would just have to lie in the sun for a bit, drink some water, absorb carbon dioxide, and everything, really everything, would be fine. Chloroplasts beneath the skin. It would be wonderful!
I couldn´t disagree more about the author´s thesis. I don´t want chloroplasts under my skin and that wouldn´t be wonderful. When you say ´plant life´, there´s rightly a negative connotation. I say hurrah for heterotrophic organisms with their pleasurable activities!
Nevertheless, it has been written and fantasized about this for years. There´s another novel, Solar by Ian McEwan, with no exactly the same plot, but with a kind of MacGuffin about something similar.
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