Harvesting Points

"Hmm? Did you say something?"

"Just that it would be nice to live under the stars like this."

"Once we get to Exveus, we'll be able to see the stars at night all the time." Alexis reached up and made a fist.

"I'll have to rely on you to get us there safely, Miss First Strike squad member."

The two of them sat under the tree, joking and laughing while they watched the stars. Eventually, the dome closed as the ship reentered hyper speed. Matt and Alexis walked around to look at all of the different species of tree before finally returning to their room. Thinking about it, Matt realized this was their first actual date. Although neither mentioned it, since going there was a tacit agreement.

'By day, I'm a scientist in love, but by night, I am a mind controlling parasite.'

Since the excitement about the skirmish was over, Matt decided to pay a visit to Dr. Bradshaw the next day. This would be a good opportunity to pick up some more nuts and also try to poke around with his hypnosis. Matt was also curious about how his mental energy would interact with Martha. The last time he was there, he sensed something from the plant that seemed like intelligence. He wondered if perhaps he could use his abilities on it.

Matt decided to keep sending Alexis good dreams every night to see if it did anything. He didn't want to mess with her mind too much, but he needed practice before using it on others. If he saw any bad side effects, he would stop. At the moment, he only had three evolution points, so he didn't have any for emergency use like before. This scared him since he already had a near miss with death. Hopefully, he could gain some quick points from Dr. Bradshaw.

Since it was an experiment, he decided to do it systematically. He started with the smallest amount of energy he could use to activate dream and sent it in. Last time, he brought out his inner Cthulhu. This time, it was like lightly sprinkling magic happy dust on her. He would slowly increase it every night and see the difference in her sleeping pattern and morning mood. He was also planning ahead for when she started getting emotional due to the pregnancy. Since he could cheat, why wouldn't he abuse it?

The next morning, he didn't notice any peculiar differences and he made a note on his personal device. He made sure to disguise it as monitoring her mood due to pregnancy. In case the AI received permission to break his privacy settings and rummage, he didn't want to give anything away. Anyway, he had already downloaded various funny videos from the twenty-first century from the database onto his personal device.

There was a surprising amount of storage capacity on his small watch. He had over a hundred terabytes of cat videos alone. Matt hadn't even watched more than a few. The real purpose was to mess with the AI. If it wanted to go through his files for whatever reason, it would need to spend some effort to look through all of the videos. He used his simple coding knowledge to encode the videos so that they seemed important. The AI could come up with an algorithm to filter through it all, but it would waste time at the very least.

Matt's body was still weak, but it was finally recovering. Based on the change from yesterday, it would probably take two or three more days. Alexis needed to have a private meeting to discuss her promotion, so Matt had nothing stopping him from meeting with Dr. Bradshaw today. He grabbed his bag and went out. He planned to stuff as many nuts as he could into it. As he was leaving his quarters, his personal device rang and Matt opened the channel to Dr. Bradshaw.

"Good timing, Dr. Bradshaw, I was just heading over to your lab."

"Wonderful, then you are free. Instead of coming to my lab, head over to the botany lab on deck eighteen."

"What's the situation?"

"Nothing like that. Remember when I told you that only a few of Martha's seeds are viable? Well, you'll learn more when you get here."

Matt was extremely curious about the situation. His guess was that they had been trying to grow more plants like Martha. The fact that Matt was being called to see likely means they didn't grow as expected. If their experiment succeeded, the project would likely be sent to the lower decks. Deck eighteen was already the lowest deck of the upper decks, so they were practically advertising that it would be moved down.

There were many possibilities that Matt had come up with. However, when he arrived to see a dozen people frantically harvesting various vegetables from overgrown vines, he was shocked. Matt stood at the entrance to see that almost the whole botany lab and the specimen rooms were overgrown with vines that had different vegetables hanging from them. One of the scientists noticed Matt and shouted over to him.

"Well don't just stand there. Grab some tools and help us."

Matt saw some people he recognized. However, they all ignored him to focus on their task. Matt grabbed some clippers and gloves and started helping. When he reached one of the pods, he realized that it was a cacao pod. He really wanted to hear Dr. Bradshaw's explanation now. When he clipped and grabbed the fourth pod, a notification came up in his mind.

[Genetic Material Detected. 22% compatibility. Grade 0. Consume for 1 Evolution Point.]

'That's exactly like those nuts! Whatever they did here was an attempt at recreating Martha. However, instead of the original process, they used the plants viable seeds. The most likely scenario is they grafted various plants onto the sprout.'

A Genetic Chimera was when one organism had two sets of unique DNA in their body. This happens naturally in humans, albeit very rarely, when tissue coded for their twin ends up in their body instead. The process is very complicated and Matt doesn't completely understand it. However, this can also be done artificially with plants. Plants have a strong tolerance to grafting different plants onto them. Based on what he knows and what he has observed so far, Dr. Bradshaw is trying to create some sort of Chimera.

His modern mind instantly went down a path of horrors. There were many things wrong with this kind of research, but as long as it didn't include intelligent life, the science community didn't speak out. However, something in the back of his mind kept bothering him. The problem was the concept of intelligent life.

Matt thought about Martha's reaction the last time he was there. He had thought that it was just the splicing of alien DNA that created that plant. However, what if it was not? It sounded reasonable to say that if Dr. Bradshaw was messing with alien DNA, the people in the shadows would have already shipped him to the lower decks.

If Matt considered the data he had, Martha was most likely created as a Genetic Chimera using an intelligent creature. The reason he was so secretive about the genome was likely due to unethical practice. However, why would the AI cover for him and also fake a gas leak containment? This situation brought up more questions than answers so he decided to collect as much produce here for his evolution needs and wait until he had more information.

'This is the supermarket of my dreams. Shopping for Evolution Points.'

After filling his backpack with eight cacao pods, six potatoes, and twelve cucumbers, Dr. Bradshaw finally appeared. It turned out that he wasn't even aware that Matt had already arrived. The other scientists just assumed he was another helping hand. The plants had grown so uncontrollably overnight. He explained the process they used to create these plants and it was exactly as Matt had thought. Dr. Bradshaw led Matt to one of the rooms that seemed to have been recently covered in vines.

"The lab was left unattended for only three days due to various reasons. No one expected such a thing to happen. The AI also didn't seem to consider this as something important to alert the scientists of. Honestly, I don't know what that damn machine is up to. Anyway, here we are."

The room he was brought to was where the original seeds were planted and grown. This botany lab utilized aeroponics to grow all of its plants. This process was very simple and had been used in space for centuries. The plant is suspended on a tray and at regular intervals it is sprayed with a highly nutritious solution. Since it doesn't have to fight against soil, it grows quickly.

The base of these plants didn't have anything like the membrane Martha possessed. However, when Dr. Bradshaw and Matt walked up to them, they seemed to almost move away and shudder in their presence. This was the same instinct of fear that Matt detected before with Martha. He looked over to Dr. Bradshaw and couldn't decipher what he was thinking.

"They seem to be very sensitive to stimuli. My hypothesis was correct. These plants don't react at all when the other scientists enter the room. Since you had direct interactions with Martha, I wanted to test their reaction to you. It seems these fellas have some sort of connection to Martha. How exciting!"

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Sorry for late chapter, but I was really tired last night. This might be the regular time for a weekday chapter in the future. I'll try to catch up to all the bonus chaps on the weekend.