Better Gardening 4 (Patreon)

Commissioned by Kejmur

Better Gardening

Chapter 4

-VB-

According to the articles, textbooks, and information Station NLS-9 had on the Pleistocene Era (Ply Stow Seen, Ply Stow Seen, Ply Stow can’t fucking remember Seen), this was the error where humanity supposedly originated in. And since I was on a version of Earth where the Pleistocene Era was still in full swing, I needed to be mindful of people who might be around.

Why did I need to?

Because I was riding a motherfucking alligator.

I was never going to get over that fact, was I?

I had a giant Cretaceous alligator as my Guardian. If someone decided they wanted its meat, then they were going to die in a very messy barrel roll death.

But no more fantasizing about murderblending. I was here for a job and needed to do it well.

My job here, for this first visit, was thus: scout out the land and take scans of all of the fauna, flora, soil, water, and everything else. To do this, I had a hand tool with me, and it was called a scanner.

I know. How original, right?

The scanner, or technically named Togart Brand Short Range Combined Biological and Inorganic Compound Identifier Model CS9, looked like a retail store barcode scanner except bulkier and with a small computer screen facing the wielder.

So I held it out and slowly scanned everything around us as Narco aimlessly walked down the riverside beach.

According to Mana, I was supposed to be in North Africa.

Except it didn’t look or feel like a desert. Everything was a lush green, and there were plenty of animals that looked like modern animals. In fact, Narco was the one that stood out the most because he looked nothing like the alligators (or crocodiles?) in the river water. They looked so much smaller than he did, and he strutted about like a domineering alpha male. It was interesting?

Yeah, it was interesting.

Anyways.

Essentially, I was having fun being a safari tourist, essentially, but unlike the safari tourists I read and saw videos about, I was on an alligator that would bite in twain whichever lion that walks up.

Speaking of which…

I looked behind me and saw a dozen lionesses. They didn’t look like the modern lions and lionesses pictures I saw. For one, they were bigger and actually had fur patterns. It made sense, kind of, because instead of the yellow grass that was found in savannahs, there were a lot more greens. And apparently, according to the NLS-9’s database, the green was much more permanent in this part of North Africa during this era.

Also, these weren’t Barbary Lions or African Lions. They were probably the ancestors to modern African lions and panthers or the ancestor of those ancestors.

As a predator species, they were big and powerful, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted an Ice Age predator roaming… but I should still give them a scan, right?

I pointed my scanner at them, scanned, and then looked at the scanner screen. The scanner did quick comparisons based on the closest comparable objects. In this case, since I was looking at a species in the panthera genus, that’s what the scanner compared them to.

[Panthera pleistoceneleo

Extinct: ~50,000 BC

*Discovered by NLS Foundation during Pleistocene Expeditions, this species of lion is believed to be the progenitor species of Panthera leo and Panthera pardus.

*Larger on average than either lions or leopards, pleistoceneleos rely on small pack tactics instead of the large pride favored by the lions or the solitary lifestyle of leopards. It is currently speculated that there was niche big enough to support both hunting styles that allowed for their divergence.

*Transplant Rank: A

*Stability Rank: C

*Recommendation: due to high calorie intake, it is suggested that they are not added to any biosphere that does not generate at least 1,000 kilograms of biomass per day. Their population must be kept in check to prevent overhunting and population collapse. Adding this species to an environment with large swathes of missing niches may result in “canon” divergence within ~10,000 years.]

And below those statements were estimated dietary, exercise, and stimulation requirements for captivity.

Looking at the suggestions, I nodded and got Narco to keep moving. Since I wasn’t sure exactly how well the untested biosphere would do with animals with high-calorie intake, the animals I started were going to have to be smaller species. Maybe I’ll start with rodents, insects, grass, vegetables, flowering trees, and secondary hunters.

But I’ll be back for them.

What Earth-like world would be complete without its own lion population, neh?

… Speaking of lions, could I substitute them with cats for now? They were prolific hunters, though, and I wasn’t sure if I should. According to the files, cats were sometimes too good at hunting, and I didn’t want to ruin my first biosphere because I wanted some kind of cat.

Ping.

I looked down at the scanner, which had been constantly running.

Then I looked over to see what it had scanned.

Because I just got a profile of an insect with A-ranks across the board. That was certainly going to be -.

- a locust?

Wait, weren’t locusts pretty dangerous insects?

I quickly looked it up.

… Dangerous to human agriculture. Got it.

Then I paused.

Could I transplant humans, too? As long as they didn’t cause too much changes or develop technology too quickly, they were … still animals, right? Would I have to balance it out by preventing the domestication of animals?

Ugh, okay, maybe no people transplanting. That was just going to cause more headaches for the sake of novelty. No.

Alright, back to work.

-VB-

By the end of the day, I collected scans of five dozen species, both flora and fauna, and went through them with Mana back on Station NLS-9.

For the next weeks, I would be traveling all over the globe of Pleistocene Earth to collect samples and scans like these from all sorts of biomes. I’ll get to see Tokyo before humans settle there, Long Island before humans, the densely forested mountains and hills of Ireland, old-growth temperate rainforests of Italy, and more.

This was going to be an exciting month, wasn’t it?