Short Stories Of The Mind

Artificial Natural World

The year is 3059, on one human colony on a far distant world called Gliese 581g. A lush planet that had been uninhabited and had allowed large amounts of spaces for humanity to use without interferences. Humanity were able to travel to such planets by the discovery of a special type of gem that is found in the center of a comet that retains immense amounts of energy; they soon learned that they could harness its energy for spacecraft. Meanwhile on Gliese 581g, there is a corporation called R.I.E. or Re-Inventing Evolution Corporations that is trying to perfect the process of creating new life. By designing living organisms out of synthetic tissue, they've learned how to make many types of plants that has benefited their world, like trees that can absorb energy from the sun that they can harvest and use.
A man stands in the lobby of one of R.I.E's main corporate buildings, waiting for some investors from earth to arrive. He was soon met by three individuals, all wearing suits, one of them was also carrying a brief case in his left hand.
"Welcome lady and gentlemen, to Gliese 581g, I hope your journey here was comfortable," the man said as he welcomed the three investors with a smile and shook each of their hands.
"Quite the facility here Mr. Jenson, you've certainly spent our money quite well," The lead man said as he looked around the lobby.
"Oh trust me Mr. Fowler, this is only the tip of the iceberg," Mr. Jenson said with a proud look on his face before he led them to a nearby elevator.
"So what have you been able to make here at R.I.E?" The woman asked as the elevator started to go down.
"We've made many different things here, vegetation that could really do miracles; trees that can make energy, herbs that can cure almost any disease, and so much more," Then the elevator starts to show a massive underground forest. "Just look for yourselves," The three investors look in amazement, for as far as the eye could was square sections, ranging from twenty square feet to almost one hundred square feet.
"This was a natural underground cavern that we repurposed into the largest garden humanity has ever seen before," Mr. Jenson said with pride.
"How big is this cavern anyway?" The woman asked as she stared at the variety of vegetation.
"Excellent question Ms. Delion, it's around the same dimensions as the Mariana Trench on Earth, except for this one is underground," All three of the investors was now even more impressed with this part of the facility. The elevator finally stopped on the ground level of the garden. As Mr. Jenson led the investors in between the sections of the garden, they notice that next to each section was a small computer, each one has information on the plants within its section.
"So are all of these plants on the surface of the planet?" Ms. Delion asked as she looked at the various plant life around them.
"A good portion of them but for some of the more important plants we only grow in gardens in facilities similar to this one worldwide," Mr. Jenson then walked up to a nearby tree-like plant and pulled off a bulbous object from one of the lower branches. "Here, try this," He handed it to Ms. Delion the object; she was at first confused because the outer skin felt a bit like sandpaper, but it almost looks like a pear from earth. She then takes a bite out of its side and begins to chew it inside her mouth. As Ms. Delion continued to chew, her eyes began to get wider and wider with amazement.
"What is this?" She finally asked after she swallowed the bite that was in her mouth.
"We call them Amber Trees that grow its Amber fruit," Ms. Delion didn't understand why they were called Amber fruit at first, until she looked at the inner flesh of the fruit and its coloration looks similar to that of fossilized amber.
"This tastes incredible, what is it used for?" Mr. Fowler asked after trying the fruit for himself.
"This fruit was designed to grow food in dryer locations, for you see it collects the water it needs to survive from both underground and from the air around it. One Amber Tree could feed around two dozen people for two months,"
"How did you make such a crop?" The third man finally asked.
"Come with me and I'll show you," Mr. Jenson said as he started to go back to the elevator to go to the genetics labs. Right as they were about to enter the elevator, something dropped from a nearby tree and into a bin. They look up and see a young woman in a harness gathering fruit from the higher parts of a different species of tree and dropped them into a bin far below.
"Who is that?" Ms. Delion asked.
"Oh that's Ms. Terra Wyman, our lead gardener, she's in charge of taking care of most of this garden," Terra then looked down and saw them watching her from down below and began to repel down the side of the tree. Once she lands on the ground she unclips her harness from the tree and begins to walk over to Mr. Jenson and the investors.
"Hey Mr. Jenson, are these the investors from earth?" Terra asked as she began to shake each of their hands.
"Yes, I'm just showing them around and trying to get more investing for our next project,"
"Oh yes, the animal division," Terra said, recognizing what he was talking about. "Well it was a pleasure to meet you three and I'll leave you to continue the tour," She then began to walk away to some other gardeners who were collecting some Amber Fruit and placed them into baskets.
"She seems like a good worker," Mr. Fowler said as they entered the elevator.
"Oh yes, she's one of our best workers," Mr. Jenson said before the door closed. Meanwhile Terra had reached the other workers in the Amber Tree section.
"How's the harvest today?"
"Good, we've gotten around sixty fruits from this batch," said one of the other gardeners.
"That's pretty good, trying giving them more water, see if that'll increase the harvest number," Terra said before leaving to see how the rest of the garden is going. For it was her job to make sure that almost everything in the garden was going smoothly and with as little setbacks as she can help. As she walked on the main path in between the different sections of plants.
Terra soon entered a very interesting part of the garden, the aquatic section. In this part of the garden, all of the plants were designed to survive almost completely submerged in water, like earth's kelp and seaweed. She watched divers collecting fruits and plants within the sectioned pools and some people using rake like tools to collect fruits that have floated to the top. Terra was quite proud of how far she had one in this company, from starting as a cleaner to being in control of one of the main gardens on the planet.