Leaf the Flying to Us
Name: Andrew Burton
Email: tuglyraisin@aol.com
LJ: jarodrussell
For: Karen (odditycollector)
Requested characters used: Vril Dox II (and, I did write what he told me to!)
Leaf the Flying to Us
Name: Andrew Burton
Email: tuglyraisin@aol.com
LJ: jarodrussell
For: Karen (odditycollector)
Requested characters used: Vril Dox II (and, I did write what he told me to!)
The arboretum was growing nicely. Flowers were in full bloom. Vines
snaked across the ground, winding their way up exposed pipes and
anything else their tendrils could grasp. The entire, indoor garden
was full of greens, oranges, and lush purples. It was a sight to
behold.
Vril Dox admired his garden with no small amount of pride. It had
taken a good bit of work to get so many plants from various worlds to
flourish, but even such a task was mere child's play for a twelfth
level intelligence, which Vril Dox just happened to be. The ultimate
solution actually came from the L.E.G.I.O.N.naire Taptree, who Dox
managed to talk out of a small cutting from one of his branches.
By grafting the cutting onto one of the tree in his garden, as well
as artificially splicing some of Taptree's genetic material into his
other growth, Dox managed to spawn a semi-sapient garden. Such
intelligence, even if it was little more than the intelligence
possessed by a pet, made the plants so much more adaptable. Leaning
toward light was the least that his plants could do after their gene
therapy took hold.
Dox had first witnessed this when several of his plants started
uprooting themselves and trading plots with other plants about the
garden. Subsequent studies revealed that his plants, it turned out,
were not only sapient, they were conversive. The plants had worked
out, among themselves, the best way to be arranged. It went on like
that for some time, the pants not only adapting themselves but the
garden as a whole to something more streamlined.
It was amazing, as the plants grew and Dox studied their growth, the
Taptree mutations proved that while the plants weren't aware to the
point of being legally considered a sentient lifeform, they were a
fully functional ecosystem unto themselves. The garden ceased to be,
and in its place Dox had unknowingly created an evolving system,
something close to being what most would consider a small city.
Evolving as it was, though, was terribly inefficient. While the
plants could rearrange themselves, they only did so at an
eighty-percent efficiency rating, compared to Dox's own models. That
did not sit right, and did not last for long.
Devising a methodology for programming and conditioning the plants
was a rather trivial matter; an equally low-level, though artificial,
intelligence that controlled both the habitat controls for the
arboretum and the robotic, pollination insectoid-drones was all that
was really required. With the software running, Dox could tweak and
change the arboretum's evolution with ease, from any of the consoles
around the house.
In no time, the garden went from an eighty-percent efficiency rating
to a one hundred ten percent rating -- subtle changes from within the
plants pushed them past even Dox's projections. It dawned on Dox that
as the plants evolved, so did their communication methods. It was
surprising, even to him, but the garden developed a primitive
information-gathering network.
Vines weren't just wrapping around pipes arbitrarily, they
instinctively were reaching out and learning when water flowed through
them. Haustorial roots weren't merely growing into other plants for
parasitic reasons; they were increasing the bandwidth by way of
landlines -- as opposed to the "wireless" pheromone communications Dox
previously observed. In just a matter of months, the garden that was
no longer a garden had moved beyond being an ecosystem; Dox felt safe
to describe his garden as an actual organic machine.
With such an organic machine at his disposal, it really was a
foregone conclusion what his next step should be: an organic computer.
That idea wasn't as far-fetched as Stealth made it out to be when Dox
tried to explain it over dinner, which is why he kept mostly quiet
about it otherwise. After all, had they not spent a year or more on a
living starship that was powered by brains? If a starship could be
built from organic components, then why not a computer.
But then, Dox began to think, if a computer could be grown from
biological components -- and after a few months of work, he
successfully proved that it could be done when he managed to develop a
kind of feedback loop between the garden and the habitat control
systems, further increasing its efficiency -- why not a starship.
Early starships, while not organic in composition, were designed with
organic life support systems. Food was grown on long star voyages, as
opposed to crews attempting to merely carry stores. Plants were used
to filter air onboard those ships, often at much higher levels of
efficiency than artificial systems.
And so it went for some time.
It took time to expand the garden to the point that it could perform
the level of calculations required for space flight, but the garden
never under whelmed Dox. There was an entire patch of tubers that had
navigational algorithms grown into the molecular structure of their
starches. The vines that stretched across the garden linked those
databanks with the processing systems comprised of the pollination
insectoid-drones and several carnivorous plants.
It wasn't the kind of navigational computer that could be plugged
into something that required agile, ever-changing jumps, like a star
fighter; calculating a jump required about a week, barring any habitat
malfunctions that might arise; but even as Dox finalized his garden,
possible applications came to mind. An entirely biological system that
could be launched through space, sent to a planet, and then infiltrate
the communications network of a world via its ecosystem was the first.
That idea was the first memo he sent to L.E.G.I.O.N. The next involved
using a plant-based computer-ship as a possible terraforming or
ecological recovery system for barren worlds. The sheer amount of
potential managed to boggle even Dox's great intellect.
And that was before his system made its first faster-than-light jump.
"Ready to make history, Lyrl?" Vril asked his son.
Lyrl Dox, who had grown up along side the garden, nodded with
excitement. "This is going to be so sprocking awesome," he cheered.
Vril raised an eyebrow at his son's explicative. Something he picked
up from Stealth no doubt. Still, such an outburst could easily be
forgiven. It was rather exciting. Years of work were about to move
from the frivolous realm of theory into the most important real of
application.
"Yes," Vril nodded, "sprocking awesome." He reached out and ruffled
Lyrl's blond hair. "Have you figured out where we'll be jumping to
yet? I hope my hints weren't too glaringly obvious."
Lyrl smiled up at his father, eyes sparkling. "Oh, they weren't
glaringly obvious," Lyrl admitted with a shrug, "but I must admit they
were obvious. However, few things aren't for a twelfth level
intellects like us." Lyrl paused for a moment, and then added, "We're
going to Cairn, aren't we?"
"Yes, we are going to Cairn," Vril answered. Lyrl would have
probably guessed that was the destination for their initial flight even
if he hadn't dropped any hints. After all, what better place that to
show off the next generation of L.E.G.I.O.N. weaponry than its home
world?
"We're going to Cairn?" a voice asked from just outside the
arboretum. "I just got back from there."
"Momma!" Lyrl cried. He hopped up from the floor and streaked toward
Stealth. The two collided in an embrace, Lyrl hugging her waist and
Stealth hugging his neck. "Dad's going to try out his O.R.B.I.T.S.!"
"Orbits?" Stealth asked Vril. Stealth cocked her head to one side as
she asked.
"Uh, yes," Vril replied. "It stands for: Organically Raised
Biological Interstellar Transit System." He gestured out to the garden,
his hand starting it's path with the control console resting on the
floor, then moving across the arboretum, and finally ending with a
finger pointing at the tuber-drives. "It's been calculating jump
coordinates for Cairn over the last week."
"Is it safe?" Stealth asked.
"Of course it is!" Vril answered. Stealth raised an eyebrow, not
wholly convinced. "Mostly safe anyway," he muttered.
"I helped," Lyrl added, looking up at his mother.
Stealth looked even less convinced, but before she could say as much,
Vril interjected, "There, you see. This is the product of not one, but
two twelfth level intellects. You couldn't ask for a safer pair to
have constructed this." Vril turned back to the console. "Besides," he
added, "there is only one way to know if it'll work or not."
He began typing commands into the console.
Lyrl cheered and sprinted back to his father's side. He slid to his
knees the last few inches, ending up right next to the console.
Stealth sighed. She knew Vril could build a jump system in his
sleep. She also knew that Lyrl wasn't the sociopathic infant she once
feared. There was really nothing to be concerned about, she decided.
Stealth walked closer to the pair of Doxes.
"So, how long until the jump?" she asked. While she waited for an
answer -- something she knew could take a minute -- Stealth eyed a
ripe, red apple that hung from one of Vril's trees. Her stomach let
out a small growl as she eyed the fruit, suddenly reminding her just
how long the slight from Cairn really was.
Without thinking, Stealth reached out and plucked the apple off the
tree. Just as the stem of the apple snapped from the tree, she heard
Vril cry out, "DON'T--"
He didn't have time to finish his warning. At that very moment, in
sudden, frightened reaction to having a part of its great body
harvested, the O.R.B.I.T.S. bucked. The star-drive connected to it
flared, and in a panicked burst, the planetoid that was both home and
vessel to the Dox family vanished from reality in a white burst.
To where, no one knew.