Don't Stop Beleafing

Posted on Sun Aug 28th, 2022 @ 1:37am by Master Warrant Officer Gamze

779 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: The Song Of Silver Wings
Location: USS Daedalus | Botany Bay
Timeline: Sometime before launch

"Yes, hello, my darlings."

Gamze absorbed the atmospheric carbon content through the membrane that passed for her epidermis. The carbon particulates contained chemical notes from the diverse flora that proliferated throughout the biochemistry lab which rose up to greet her entry. While many ships often precluded botanical experimentation, the nature of Gamze's Phylosian status made plants her labor of love as surely as tending patients in Sickbay or observing a stellar model playing out in Astrometrics.

In Gamze's view of the universe, life was everywhere, not just in carbon-based lifeforms or even in the Animalia Kingdom. There were arguments to be made that stars were alive in their own non-sentient way, and even humanoids in their narrow view intuited this in their designation of nebulae as stellar nurseries. If stars held any form of consciousness, they were likely akin to corals--or perhaps they were macroorganisms with no concept of the baser lifeforms that lived and died by the eon in their orbit. It was all so wonderful and fascinating that Gamze pitied humanoids who had to interrupt their growth of knowledge and experience with daily sleep.

The flowering and fruiting plants around Gamze constituted just such a nursery. None of them exhibited conscious sentience, but they nonetheless reacted to her presence and the notes of her pheromones as surely as livestock responded to the presence and speech of veterinary experts. She named them after a fashion, but nothing that would translate to verbal expression. Chemical notes could be identified by formula, but the chemistry would fail to convey the essence, rhyme, and reason of each designation.

By her cultivation, these plants had germinated in four times their typical cycle. Standard procedures would not see sprouts for another week, much less the blooms that were opening. It was a eukaryotic menagerie and she was the gardener of life.

"We launch today," Gamze explained as she examined in all ways each stalk of each plant. Her speech was lost on them, but the tones conveyed a certain assuring vibrational quality not unlike pre- and neonatal fetuses were recorded to experience. Phylosian reproduction was far different from the humanoid variety, but some things were universal. They just had to be expressed and processed differently.

"That means the ship's warp core will generate a field strong enough to pull us all into subspace, allowing for travel of great distances in short time."

None of that was relevant to these plants with their stationary root systems and insensate processing. There was no evidence that warp fields had any effect on plant life barring severe environmental factors. Perhaps it was just as much part of Gamze's routine explaining things beyond the input capacity of these baser organisms as it was for their benefit.

"Oh, no! Let us see what is the matter." One of the plants had a wilted leaf. Sliding her anterior protuberance around the soil, it did not take long for Gamze to determine the presence of a fungal culture. "You rascal! How did you come to be here?" she asked rhetorically.

Moving across the lab to retrieve a hyperspanner used for simple maintenance, Gamze returned to molecularly separate the fungi from the soil. "Let's put you back in the Petri dish where you came from. The moisture content is far better than that dirty, old, soil." After depositing it into the dish, she paused a moment before closing and archiving. "Isn't that better?"

The fungus had no comment.

Even so, she dripped some of her personal extract to provide a womb of sorts for the culture to truly grow and flourish within the confines she had placed it. Such a benign act within the larger lab control was tantamount to divinity for microorganisms. Perhaps, one day, if the fungus evolved, it might form metaphysical philosophies around the event. The idea made Gamze chuckle, not only for it being outlandish, but being so outlandish that nobody would think twice about the potential Prime Directive violation it could arguably represent. Evidently fungal and bacterial cultures were exceptions to General Order One.

"There you go..." Gamze said as she trimmed away the shoot's wilted branch. "Now you rest. I'll check on you tomorrow."

Although the conversation was entirely one-sided, Gamze's anterior protuberances waggled in delight at the shift in chemical notes the plant emitted. To her mind, was like a purring cat or a nuzzle from puppy. Aside from that small hiccup, the rest of the plants in her nursery were flourishing. And Gamze saw that it was good.

"Be well, my darlings." Gamze headed back toward the door. "I have more rounds to make, but I shall return soon enough. Computer, resume full-spectrum illumination."

 

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