Her tendrils ripped into the rock-hard soil like so many trillion earthworms, devouring raw minerals which she sucked greedily into her nucleus as she grew explosively upward.

She was no ordinary organism. Although born of seed, she was not a plant. She existed beyond the animal, vegetable or mineral kingdoms. She was the queen of a new reign; a new flesh of intelligent, embryonic gems, copulating and subdividing in a mesh of cartilaginous meat; thoughts of light racing through a nervous system of delicately branching diamond fibers.

After 3 days of growth, she realized the soil contained no living bacteria.