Better Gardening 19 (Patreon)

Commissioned by Kejmur

Better Gardening

Chapter 19

-VB-

I allowed Mana to experiment on how best they could genetically modify and “simplify” the pokemons I caught. 

In the meantime, I was out in the field again, though instead of the pokemon world, I went to explore another world. 

It’s not everyday that I got to explore a post-apocalyptic Earth, a version of the homeworld where the nation-states of Earth blasted each other back to the stone ages using nuclear bombs. 

According to the archives available to me about the history of my home universe, nuclear bombs did extensively see action in interstellar wars. More than a few colonies have been reduced to nothing by orbital nuclear bombardment when orders came from above to cleanse the world of problems like bioeningeered plague, unchained AI outbreak, and more. Or for war crime reasons. 

As I tracked across a formerly irradiated landmass of North America, I found myself wondering if there was anything interesting here. Creatures that come out alive and surviving from irradiated landscapes generally didn’t do well outside of it. 

Landscapes that remained irradiated for a long time had a tendency to create a sort of exotic ecosystem. Creatures within these ecosystem thrived in the exotic ecosystem did well, they did well in spite of it by adapting into it. Unfortunately, adapting to irradiated ecosystem often made them ill-suited for regular environments. Sometimes, this was because their adaptation made them well suited to hunting other exotic ecosystem adaptees. In such cases, the creatures may find a niche to slid into in regular environments, but they will be competing against others who were already established and more likely to be better suited simply because they didn’t have to waste energy preventing radiation damage, a process that was likely to continue in irradiated ecosystem animals. 

In some cases, however, they might become an invasive species that was too well-suited to every other environment.

Why did I think this?

I looked over my shoulder. 

The two-horned creature slowly stalking me and Umma was a giant thing standing taller than unaugmented humans, possessed hands and claws that could and would tear meat and bones apart with ease, and legs strong enough to carry it in a run. And my scanner suggested that it had enough stamina to chase someone for miles on end if need be. 

It was avery interesting animal, but I wasn’t sure if I should add it to my world. 

Because something about the way it moved and behaved suggested to me that it had a degree of sapience and intelligence I was uncomfortable with. This creature wasn’t like the pidgeys, rattatas, and caterpies. Those creatures were intelligent and sentient but lacked the sapience to go beyond. Well, aside from extraordinary individuals, according to the textbooks, but outliers did not make a species. 

And so I found myself cautious with this particular creature. 

Also, my scanner alerted me to the creature’s blatant genetic engineering origin, of which there were two. The older genetic engineering happened long ago enough that the scanner wasn’t even how far along it was. The more recent GE happened very recently. Like less than a decade ago. 

It made me rather concerned. 

For one, what kind of remnant civilization performed genetic experiments to create a creature like this? Two, how intelligent was this creature? Three, were there more of these creatures nearby?

“Umma, can you stop?” 

My elephant guardian stopped as I requested, and I turned around on top of her and looked idrectly at the creature. It may be a hulking creature that scarier than most carnivorous dinosaurs, but it was smaller than Umma and definitely not strong enough to fight me. 

“What do you want?” I asked, hoping it could talk.

It hesitated and not in a way that an animal would. No, it showed fear and wariness. 

It spoke. 

Yeah… Yeah, it was intelligent.

My scanner immediately took that in and began to process the language. The creature spoke again but this time a little in frustration. In seconds, my scanner completed the compilation and spat out the result. 

Archaic English.

Ugh. That hodgepodge language that still goes around mugging other languages for vocab? It was such a barbaric language, not at all like the streamlined and engineered Commons. 

I cleared my throat as I allowed the universal translator in my head to mess with my language center. 

“Hello?” I asked when the unit finished its job. 

It looked at me warily.

“You who?”

“... My name is Daniel,” I replied. 

“Who you work for?”

“Work for? No one. Technically, I work for myself and my newfound purpose but ultimately for no one.”

It didn’t look like it believed me. 

“Why here?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why you here?”

“Me? I’m looking for animals.”

For some reason, it seemed to think something about my purpose and relaxed. Did it think I was out hunting or something?

“Oh. Animals not tasty around. Tasty animals way over there,” it said and pointed toward an area that my scanner did indicate as being less irradiated and with much more vegetation than this currently near barren landscape. 

“... And what’s your name?” I asked. 

“Name?” it grunted. “On Clay say me Valdis.”