Chapter Twelve – Thousand Gardens

Chapter Twelve – Thousand Gardens

“We’re locking down sector B, rows 25 to 29 from further testing.

Note: I fucking told you that grafting antithesis shit onto cabbages was a horrific fucking idea.”

Crop Corp internal memo, 2048

***

I tapped the door release, then set a foot on the cement ground just outside the Fury. A hand on the doorframe gave me the leverage I needed to pull myself out of the car.

The Crop Corp facility was huge, huge in a way that made me feel small in comparison. It challenged my sense of scale.

The greenhouses weren’t all that wide. Maybe thirty metres to a side. They were hexagonal, with glass walls all around lit up from within by faint lights. There were orange pillars, yellow ones, even a few that glowed purple. Their roofs were capped by blue solar panels, which were folded in on themselves like the petals of some high-tech flower.

Each rose up at least a hundred metres. Nothing compared to the skyscrapers back home. In fact, in terms of sheer size, at least the size of the greenhouses, the operation wasn’t that impressive.

It was the scale that was terrifying. There had to be thousands of those pillars, all packed in tight with just enough room between them that a pair of smaller cars could dart past each other. “How big is this place?” I asked.

This is the third largest growing operation feeding New Montreal. The facility covers six square kilometres.

“That’s… a fuckload of plants,” I said.

Yes. I should have just opened with that. This facility has the third largest fuckload of plants in the New Montreal area.

I chuckled. “Yeah, alright.” I dragged my attention down from the rows of pillars. It looked like some of them were moving? They had these big vehicles, large enough to wrap around a pillar, and equipped with four wheels that were at least five metres tall. The middle of the machines looked like they could clamp onto a pillar, and there were workers crawling up and down them, securing the pillars that were about to be moved.

“Head’s up,” Gomorrah said. “We have guests coming.”

I glanced her way in time to see her slipping her mask on, then followed the low hum of an electric vehicle to see a little golf-cart looking thing zipping our way. It turned as it came to a stop, and a man in a shirt and slacks jumped out of it. “You can’t be here,” he said.

“Beg to differ,” I said.

He glared, then reached up to adjust his half-mask. He had a white hardhat on too, it was a bit incongruous over his business casual. “No, I mean this is where the gardens will be moved. Unless you want that pretty car crushed, it had better move.”

Gomorrah shrugged, and half a second later the Fury shot up and into the air. In a blink it was out of sight.

The man stared for a moment, then turned his attention back to us. “I was hoping you’d be in the car when it left,” he said.

“We’re here to help,” I said. “Got a warning that the region had some antithesis presence?”

“You’re samurai? Wait, no, of course you are. Fuck me, could have lead with that.”

“I thought it was pretty obvious,” I said. Did he get a lot of visitors in nun getup and cat-themed power-armour?

“Sorry, ma’am,” he said. “Been a bit stressful. We have several thousand pillars left to move still. We’ve only moved twenty percent. At this rate we’ll be here for another three days.”

“That’s… not ideal,” I said.

He nodded. “You’re telling me. I sent a request in for more movers three months back but headquarters said it wasn’t worth the expense. We’ll see how much they like the expense of replacing lost gardens.”

“Right,” I said. “You might not have three days to move these things.”

He shook his head. “We’ll do what we can. Might be getting some movers from Facility 187NM, that’ll cut down the workload. And if you can keep the bug bastards off our plants, that would be nice.”