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Hey again, Signy. There’s something I’d like to ask you that has nothing to do with my plant, and if I’ve read this wrong, then I’m very sorry, and please forget I said anything.

I had a really nice time with you at the stables. I know I was kind of out of it for most of it, but I had fun showing you the ropes, and I liked having chicory with you afterward. I thought it was a good conversation, and I got the feeling maybe there was a little more behind it. Would you like to have chicory again, from a real cup this time? Or if you drink, maybe a drink? Ahead of our plant appointment, if you’re not too busy? I do have some ground work scheduled this week, so it’d be hard for me to get to Midtown before late, but if you’re down to meet closer to Flytown one evening, there are some good cafes on rafts 11 and 12. I’d be happy to pay for your ferry ticket.

Again, if you’re not interested, no worries. We can just stick to plants and never talk about this again.

Cora

To: Cora Marten [[email protected]]

From: Signy Keller [[email protected]]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: my new plant

I do drink, but I’d prefer chicory.

I have an All-Raft pass. You pick the place. Saturday would be best.

To: Cora Marten [[email protected]]

From: Signy Keller [[email protected]]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: my new plant

I liked our conversation, too.

Chapter 782 Signy, Cypsela

There was an irony, of sorts, in writing descriptions for seed templates. Seeds were simply containers for DNA, and DNA was, of course, nothing but instructions. As far as humans had documented, biological life passed on instructions to future generations in one of two ways: reproduction or teaching. Grow this, avoid that, hunt here, eat those.

Homo sapiens, however, had another trick up their collective sleeve, and inasmuch as you could trust the Primer as an exhaustive resource, they were the only species discovered thus far who practiced it: recorded information. Writing. Drawing. Carving. Coding. Any means of preserving information beyond your immediate anatomy and behavior. Biologically, an organism might have, say, an inherited instinct to fear water, passed down from generation to generation. Behaviorally, you might have a nearby parent or friend who grabs you and says, “Careful! You’re about to fall in!”—a warning you would remember and pass along to the next person who needed to hear it. But with recorded information, you could put up a sign that read Caution: Drowning Hazard in combination with a drawing of a person swept under the waves. You didn’t need to remain in that place physically for other people to receive that instruction, and you didn’t need to leave any of your genome behind. So long as the sign persisted, and so long as people were taught how to read it, the instructions would continue to be passed along.

What was funny about that to Signy was how roundabout the practice was. Humans ran on a platform of DNA, and they had used their resulting brains and bodies to come up with writing and drawing and carving and so forth. These crafts were used, in turn, to amass knowledge and share ideas until they could eventually puzzle out what DNA was. And from there, they shared instructions on how to manipulate the DNA, but in order to keep that work going, you needed to explain to other people what the species you’d just constructed was used for.

You needed to write instructions for your instructions.

Signy thought about this all the time. She was thinking about it right then, as she sat down at her computer in the test garden and began to upload her newest seed templates into the Solace Ring’s supplement to the Primer.

Interstitial

Common name: Soapmaker’s Borage

Species name: Borago cypsela

Adaptation path: Borago officinalis -> Borago astralis -> Borago cypsela

This strain has been cultivated for community-requested use in soap and lotion production. Borago cypsela produces twice the number of seeds as standard Borago astralis, with a higher individual oil yield when pressed. While the flowers remain edible, the current iteration of this strain results in a more astringent and less pleasant taste. Further development could result in a more general-purpose plant, but as borage is not a crucial resource nor in particular demand as a foodstuff, it is not a priority for this greenhouse at this time.

As with the parent strain, Borago cypsela is an annual plant. It does best in well-draining soil. Seeds or seedlings should be planted ⅛" apart.

Borage will happily grow as a companion plant alongside many other common crops. However, borage is also highly attractive to bumblebees. This can be a plus in certain gardens, but if you use bees for general pollination, you may want to plant borage elsewhere in your facility, so that the bees will focus on crops you would prefer for them to seek out.

Borago cypsela is a fertile strain. Seeds printed from this template or harvested from mature plants should germinate in one to two Earth weeks. At current printing, this template’s rate of successful germination is 92%.

Chapter 26 Cora, Fortune

Cora had spent a whole evening doing thorough field research on the cafés of raft eleven. It would’ve been easier to invite Signy to Flytown, because Cora knew those cafés like the back of her hand. But what she didn’t know was how this night was going to go, and she did not need to have an audience of coworkers for it, so, raft eleven it was. The Yellow Bowl was cute, but a little too cute for Cora’s tastes. The kind of place you might take a nibling for an after-school treat. Eddie’s Joint made a killer brew, but it was more of a grab-your-drink-through-the-airlock-window sort of sitch, with nowhere comfy to sit. Corner Table was fine, but Cora wanted to do better than fine. Jungle Jungle looked sticky, and the Crowbar was more of, well, a bar, so that left Hopscotch. Hopscotch did not make as good a brew as Eddie’s Joint, and its snacks were not the most exciting, but they were definitely better than Corner Table, and most importantly, Hopscotch had comfy chairs. It was inviting, it was colorful, it was full of art and twinkly lights, and the air filters were pretty damn good for a chicory shop. A solid setting for a cozy, casual, no-expectations sort of evening.

Or it would have been, if there hadn’t been an open mic on the night itself. The café was packed, the servers were stressed, whoever was running sound had cranked that shit way too high, and the only table that was available was right next to the bathroom.