0036 - Cyber-Greenhouse & Hunger Marketing
1659 Words
Victor Corvinus stood in the kitchen, staring into the abyss.
The abyss, in this case, was the pantry.
It was a cavernous space, lined with shelves of dark, polished mahogany that reached the ceiling. It was designed to hold the feasts of vampire lords—aged wines, jars of preserved organs, perhaps a few dusty skulls.
Currently, it held one bag of potatoes.
They were old. They had been sitting in the dark for so long that they had forgotten they were food and started believing they were a colony. Long, pale, spindly sprouts twisted out of their eyes, groping blindly for light. They looked less like vegetables and more like the fingers of a buried corpse trying to scratch its way to the surface.
Victor picked up the mesh bag. It weighed next to nothing.
"Carbohydrates," he whispered, his voice trembling.
His hands were shaking. The adrenaline from the clinic had burned off, leaving a hollow, scraping hunger that felt like sandpaper on the inside of his ribs. The carbonized remains of his bento box were still cooling on the driveway outside.
He looked at the potatoes. They looked back with their many, many eyes.
"You're disgusting," Victor told them. "I'm going to make you multiply."
The path to the Greenhouse did not lead outside. In Blackwood Manor, "Nature" was an internal organ.
Victor walked down a corridor that smelled faintly of ozone and wet soil. The temperature rose with every step. By the time he reached the heavy iron door marked ARBORETUM / SERVER FARM, sweat was already beading on his forehead.
He pushed the door open.
A heavy, suffocating blanket of heat. It wasn't the dry heat of a furnace, but the thick, wet, biological warmth of a tropical swamp trapped inside a computer case.
The Greenhouse was vast, a glass-domed cathedral where the sun was filtered through layers of smart-glass that shifted opacity in real-time. But it was the noise that hit him first.
Plants shouldn't make noise.
Here, they did.
The ferns didn't rustle; they hummed. A low, steady vibration like the cooling fans of a massive data center. The orchids hanging from the ceiling didn't just bloom; they adjusted their petals with the sharp, mechanical precision of camera shutters tracking his movement.
Victor stepped onto the metal grating that served as a walkway. Beneath his feet, thick black cables wove in and out of the soil, indistinguishable from the roots of the massive trees that held up the roof.
"Yggdrasil?" Victor called out.
The humidity was 200%. The air tasted green—a synthetic, high-concentrate chlorophyll flavor that coated his tongue like copper.
A vine near his head uncoiled. It didn't sway in the breeze. It moved with the jerky, precise articulation of a robotic arm. The tip of the vine, capped with a blue bioluminescent flower, swiveled to face him.
"Ah, Master Victor," the voice resonated. It didn't come from speakers; it vibrated directly into his skull, conducted through the moisture in the air. It sounded like wind whistling through a cooling fan, auto-tuned into English. "You look dreadful. Have you been eating dust again? My sensors indicate your blood sugar is lower than the Manor's credit rating."
"I need to plant these," Victor said, lifting the bag of zombie potatoes.
The vine recoiled. The blue flower dimmed to a judgmental grey.
"Potatoes, sir? Truly?" the voice sneered, the sound distorting like a bad radio signal. "We have evolved beyond... root vegetables. These are necrotic. They are boring. They lack panache."
The hum of the garden rose in pitch. It sounded like a choir of offended hard drives.
"Please do not insult the Architecture," the vine continued, its bioluminescence pulsing with each syllable. "I have spent centuries calibrating this soil for Hyper-Flora. I am curating a symphony of memory-moss, and you wish to introduce... static."
"I'm starving, Yggdrasil," Victor said, leaning against a railing. His knees felt like water. "And the Master needs energy. These are calories."
"They are trash, sir," Yggdrasil shot back. "Their genetic code is spaghetti—and not the good kind. If I plant them, they will bore the root network to death."
A large Venus Flytrap to his left snapped its jaws shut. A spark of electricity jumped between its teeth. It looked ready to vomit.
Victor closed his eyes. The hunger was making him dizzy. He needed to think. He needed to lie.
He looked at the potatoes again. The sprouts were long, pale, and twisted. They looked... retro.
"You're looking at this wrong," Victor said, forcing a smile. He tapped the mesh bag. "These aren't just potatoes. Look at the degradation. Look at the chaotic growth patterns."
The vine paused. The flower flickered.
"Elaborate, if you must."
"This is legacy code," Victor said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "These are 'Solanum Tuberosum: V1.0 - The Ancestral Build'. They don't have WiFi. They don't have optical sensors. They are purely analog."
He pulled one potato out. It was soft and wrinkled.
"Your system is too advanced, Yggdrasil. The voltage is too high. That's why the orchids are twitchy. You have no grounding." Victor held the potato up like a sacred artifact. "You need an analog buffer. Something to absorb the static charge. These biological capacitors are rare. They don't make them like this anymore."
The garden went silent. The hum dropped to a thoughtful purr.
Yggdrasil was an ancient biological supercomputer, but like all tech enthusiasts, he had a weakness for "Vintage."
The vine crept closer. The blue light intensified, scanning the potato with a laser-like focus.
"The structure is... quaintly inefficient," the voice murmured, sounding almost intrigued. "The logic is nonexistent. It is almost... charmingly stupid."
"It's organic warmth," Victor corrected. "It provides acoustic texture to the soil."
The vine wrapped around the potato. It squeezed, testing the density.
"I suppose... one could argue that a touch of analog resistance might add 'texture' to the nitrogen cycles. Like a vinyl record."
"Exactly," Victor said. "It's for the aesthetic. It makes the server farm look... authentic."
The vine hesitated, then snatched the potato from his hand.
"Very well. I shall allow it. Temporarily."
The metal grating beneath Victor's feet retracted. A patch of dark, oily soil churned open, exposing a network of writhing root-cables.
"You may plant your 'Legacy Code', sir," Yggdrasil commanded. "But be warned. This soil is High-Fidelity. It has standards. If these tubers fail to entertain, they will be evicted."
"Just let them grow," Victor muttered, kneeling down.
He dug his hands into the earth.
It didn't feel like dirt. It felt like warm meat. The soil pulsed against his palms, a wet, rhythmic heartbeat that synced with his own. He shoved the potatoes into the ground, burying the pale sprouts deep.
The floor dropped away.
BZZT.
A static shock zapped up his arms, snapping his teeth together. It wasn't just electricity; it was a data spike.
For a second, his brain synced with the soil. He didn't just feel the dirt; he felt the hunger of the entire server farm. He felt the thirst of the ferns draining his own mana like a cold copper wire soldered directly to his nerve endings.
His vision glitched. The world dissolved into code and fertilizer.
It wasn't a system notification. It was a physical invasion.
He gasped, yanking his hands back as if he'd touched a hot stove. He fell backward onto the grating, chest heaving.
"Done," he choked out. "They're planted."
"They are in," the voice confirmed, sounding smoother now, satisfied. "Though I feel dirty just watching them."
The soil rippled. It didn't just cover the potatoes; it sealed over them like a healing wound.
"A word of advice, sir," the vine hissed, leaning close to Victor's ear. "High-Performance Soil requires High-Performance Fuel. You cannot expect me to run a server farm on tap water."
"What do you need?" Victor asked, wiping black soil from his hands.
"Proteins."
The word hung in the humid air. The Venus Flytrap hissed.
"Your 'Legacy Code' is hungry, sir. Feed it, or it will start eating my bandwidth."
Victor stared at the patch of earth. "I'll... I'll find something."
He stood up, swaying slightly. He had done it. He had secured a food source. In a few weeks, maybe he would have potatoes.
"Compilation rate... aggressively high. Oh dear."
The soil bulged.
With the wet, heavy sound of tearing leather, a green shoot burst from the ground. It didn't unfurl slowly. It shot up like a switchblade.
The stem was thick and veined with glowing blue sap. It grew a foot in seconds. And then, at the very top, where a flower should have been, a bulb formed.
It opened.
It wasn't a leaf.
It was an eye. A biological camera lens, blinking rapidly, focusing on Victor with the sharp click of a mechanical shutter.
Victor stared at the potato plant. The potato plant stared at Victor.
"Your 'Legacy Code' has been optimized, sir," Yggdrasil announced. "Though I must say, the aesthetic is... aggressive."
Victor rubbed his face. He was so hungry he could eat the eye, lens and all.
"Great," he muttered. "I'm farming surveillance equipment."
He turned and walked toward the door. He needed to find protein. He needed to find fertilizer.
Suddenly, his ears twitched.
It was a faint sound, coming from the main entrance, three floors up. A metallic clink. The sound of a lockpick scratching against brass.
His conscious mind didn't recognize it. But his blood did.
A file opened in the back of his brain. Not a memory of the past, but a biological identification of the present.
Target: Goblin Scout. Activity: Larceny. Nutritional Value: High.
Protein.
Victor stopped. He looked at his trembling hands.
"No," he said to the empty corridor. "That's crazy."
But his stomach growled, a deep, predatory rumble that sounded exactly like the soil in the greenhouse.
"Maybe just a little bit of fertilizer," he whispered.
- Writer
