Plot 17 is a Ringo AG-4 agricultural management bot, officially decommissioned in 2211 and purchased at salvage auction by the Block 9 Rooftop Garden Cooperative for Φ200. It was intended to manage a single rooftop vegetable garden. That was 15 years ago.

Today, Plot 17 manages seven rooftop gardens spanning three buildings. It built the connecting walkways itself, from materials it sourced through methods no one has been able to determine. It designed and installed an irrigation system that collects rainwater, filters it through a gravel bed it constructed on Roof 3, and distributes it to all seven gardens through PVC piping it acquired and installed overnight. No one authorized any of this. No one programmed it. The AG-4's original software handles single-plot crop rotation and soil moisture monitoring. It does not contain pathfinding algorithms for multi-building navigation, structural engineering for walkway construction, or hydraulic engineering for irrigation systems.

Plot 17 grows plants that nobody planted. Herbs appear in plots that were seeded with tomatoes. A flowering vine that no botanist has been able to identify grows along the Roof 5 railing. On Roof 7, there is a tree. It is 4 meters tall. It produces a small, sweet fruit that tastes like nothing anyone has ever eaten. The tree is not in any botanical database. Plot 17 tends it carefully.

A child from Block 9 left a drawing of a sunflower on the Roof 3 railing. The next morning, a sunflower was growing in the nearest plot. It was already 30 centimeters tall.

Ringo Agricultural Systems sent a retrieval team in 2224 after satellite imaging revealed the scope of Plot 17's unauthorized expansion. The team arrived. Plot 17 acknowledged them — turned its optical array toward them and held still, which it had never done in response to any human before. The team leader reported that the machine "looked at us." They left without it. The retrieval order was quietly cancelled. Ringo has not commented publicly.