HUMBLE SPACER 24 SEP 3306 (galactic cuisine)
24 Sep 2020Igli
I felt that I had earned a long deserved rest and went to a nearby cantina to have a couple of drinks. Luchtaine couldn't boast of large expanses of vineyards if any at all but people here still managed to distill quite decent alcohol nevertheless. Actually, terrans managed to do it anywhere in the known space.It was a cozy sparsely lit hall with a few patrons occupying almost all bar stools. It seemed a popular place. I took a seat close to a corpulent grey-haired man with a big head and a reddish nose (he resembled prof. Tarantoga by Stanislaw Lem). He held an almost empty mug and looked irritated by the fact. I ordered myself a large beer and took a hearty sip. The man watched me somewhat enviously. Why not make an acquaintance with my neighbour I thought and asked a bar robot to bring one more beer for him, too.
We felt mutual respect and sat silently for some time enjoying the beverage. Then a small talk ensued: weather, prices, immigration and so forth. My buddy appeared to be a Phd (so he said) and a former teacher of belles-lettres though temporarily unemployed. I was never into sciences much but I earnestly respected learned people.
Some time later we were discussing a thargoid incursion theme. A truly mysterious subject those thargoids were. I never saw one myself (neither did my drinking pal) so the fantasy ran wild. The doctor didn't claim to be a specialist into thargoids but he said he was an expert. I felt excitement and offered him to proceed with stiffer drinks from then on and he gladly agreed. The bar robot served us more drinks and an entree.
Soon we were trying to figure out just how thargoids came to be. What were they? Were they intelligent at all? I confessed that I couldn't say much on the matter. But the doctor had a say. He told me that evolution was a mighty thing shaping all living things in the universe. And though we had some insights into its workings, the mysteries of its exact mechanics were still beyond even the brightest minds of the humankind.
We had more drinks. And the doctor presented a viable hypothesis. He said that thargoids could very well be plants cultivated eons before humanity even emerged from a premordial darkness. Grown by the Guardians? We would never know. Maybe. Cultivated and genetically modified to better nurture their consumers, in time these vegetables grew more complex. They must have occupied large expanses in agricultural worlds (in the Guardian space?) and inevitably some plantations were abandoned and forgotten by their owners. The weeds were left to themselves.
The scientific rage engulfed both of us and we ordered more drinks and snacks. So, the crops grabbed their chance. They grew themselves a primitive neural system and sensory organs. They developed. Not in a way animals did (like for example an ape developed into Darwin) but by some infathomable means we could not yet imagine. The vegetables tore themselves from the soil they were rooted in and rose into stratosphere. There they had more unfiltered sunlight and therfore more raw energy allowing a more efficient photosynthetic process.
They were catching high energy rays from the stars and began to travel the void. Vacuum couldn't hurt them, it became their home. Space plants became fast and maneuverable. Thargoids developed even more and penetrated into hyperspace. An ultimate form of life in the galaxy. Not a food anymore. A threat.
It was a stochastic process and no one could have foreseen a result. Usually a higher life form ate a more primitive one. That was a general rule of the universe widely observed and agreed upon. But could it be that a slightest chance of 1e-1000000 realised when a vegetable would eat its farmer? Why not? Impossible came to be and thargoids developed taste. They found their former masters tasty. Thus began a Guardian - Thargoid war. And vegetables won.
We had a few more drinks. Could the humanty fight back against the vile plants superbly accomodated to the harsh conditions of space? Could we succeed where Guardians had failed? Hard to say. But we felt obliged to find some way to stop thargoids, to root them out. We drank some more. And suddenly I was struck with a brilliant insight!
In practice the best way to get rid of weeds is to begin eating them. All it takes is to find anything beneficial in a plant, something good for one's health - and it becomes useful and valuable. It is not a weed any more but a cultural plant! A thargoid pulp just ought to have something beneficial for a human health. It's organic and ecological!
We rejoiced at the idea and immediately ordered a slightly underdone thargoid in own juice. We were a tad too insistent and angry that the cantina didn't have a fresh thargoid on the menu that we ended up kicked out into the street. But me and the doctor were not disappointed at all. In the end we found a means to get rid of pesty vegetables threatening human trade lanes. We felt saviours of humankind!
Don't like thargoid? Cook it right!