Time and Dirt
(First Day -- Previous Day -- Day 29 -- Next Day)
Day 29
Heliopause Colony on Planet Vertumna, Medbay
Solane, are you okay? I couldn’t really make out what was happening among the noise, but I *think* you weren’t subjected to any cruel experiments tonight. ... At least you don’t look like you were. You... you still look like you’ve looked the whole month, as, well... p-peaceful as ever. Has all the noise this week bothered you at all or could you somehow sleep through it every time? But then what would it take to properly wake you up...
...
I know you are still there, though! You reached for my hand and sometimes keep tossing, but it’s like there’s a thick fog between us that doesn’t let us see each other. But you can probably hear me just fine. I believe that. Especially now that it’s so quiet here again.
Honestly, it’s almost eerie. What *was* going on here? The footsteps were way too light and fast to be from Dr. Instance slow and reluctant steps... Were they from Tangent, then? I hope she wasn’t preparing the plants usually growing in the test tubes and glass flasks here to use them in like, more cruel xeno experiments, or whatever it is they are doing in some of the other rooms sometimes.
Should I even look? I kind of don’t want to, but ... I feel like I have to. Can’t leave the plants alone, you know? What if they are suffering from some terrible stress? They need someone to stand up for them when needed, like I tried at Geoponics. Just thinking of it gives me a headache, but at least it ended well! I’ll tell you later about it. Let’s see now here...
...
Hey, those aren’t the plants I normally see here! Which I *think* are earth flowers, but not any I ever saw in the garden or the fields. They were like Dr. Instance’s personal experiment subjects, weren’t they? And no one else was even allowed to touch them except for Tang. Wait, did she use them for some medical purpose? I thought she believed that was *barbarism*. Would be cool if we were actually getting a lot of our medicine from our small green friends the whole time...
Speaking of which, these aren’t green, Solane! They are purplish... and red and orange. And their shape is not at all like the Earth flowers we grew up with on the Stratosphere. I think I saw some outside the colony when I was crossing the plain with Dys, but these are all baby plants.
They can’t have been here for a long time yet, maybe a week? And so they are still so tiny. What I think is bobberfruit is just a thin stick with a really small purple ball on top. Smooth and solid, that’s its seed, isn’t it? Grows on top of the mature fruit, I have seen it appear on our fields sometimes. I think it gets detached from the plant alongside the stem-like thing by xenos or humans harvesting the fruit, which is the entire part of the plant visible above ground. Because the seed is filled with some gas it tends to land upright, and since the stick it is on has a sharp end it’s often easy for it to bore itself into the ground. Especially since the stick also contains some liquid that drops out of it right before landing that softens the soil! So at first they look like those lollipops made from sugarbug syrup we have gotten at Vertumnalia sometimes. Except with the traces of the acid and the burnable gas inside it you should keep them far away from you...You have to wait for the plant to mature and, uh, digest both.
Anyway, a few days later shoots starts developing at the base, where the seed is connected to the stick, and then they soon engulf the whole stick, and then, when growing upwards, do the same with the seed. And soon you have a bobberfruit again, which has more seed-sticks appear at top like pins on Tammy’s ancient pincushion. Ah, she did really beautiful art with scraps of fabric left over from when the clothes printer malfunctioned...
But actually these don’t seem like normal bobberfruit seedlings... if that’s the right term to use. The smell is all wrong... Is that from what is constantly dripping on them from that dripfeed? I thought it was just water with liquid fertilizer, like in hydroponics, but now that I am closer to it it has this weird smell as well.
Ugh, it burns in my throat even and a bit in my nose, that can’t be right. That’s hardly a good environment for the little friends here... or for you, is it? And neither of you seem look good. Your nose is kind of scrunched and the baby plants look so stressed. I can’t really pinpoint what makes me feel that way. Like their stem is a bit bent, and the shoots don’t look as healthy as they could, but that could have any number of reasons. It’s more a feeling, you know? Like something I can sense somehow. It’s so hard to explain.
I think the other plants here, stars, there are so many here, and different ones, too... all of them xenoplants, like this is a second xenobotany lab... all of them are looking unhappy. And the worst of it is, I can’t do anything to help them. I can’t risk a conflict with Dr. Instance, not while I rely on her goodwill to... to let you stay here so you can get *well* again, you know? It’s so horribly unfair that they would make me choose between friends. But I need... need you, also to help me take care of our family in the garden, and ...
To... to be my sun and your smile to be my sunshine.
I’d want to watch over you the whole night to make sure you are doing fine, that nothing gets to you and that you are still here after the sunrises... just I’m not sure I’m even allowed here right now, especially at this time... s-so, ugh, I probably should go now not to get caught... I’m sorry, Solane. I’ll be back later! Or the next day. As soon as I can...