The Secret Science Logs of Agari Coid

[Agari]

((A note to the readers: I have been wanting to do some threads for a while now where Agari experiments in depth with his powers. But then I realized that it probably wouldn't be too much fun for other people to ride in the back seats of those plots. So I came up with this idea. I plan on creating private log entries that Agari keeps as he discovers his powers and just what sorts of things he can do. I am mostly just writing this for myself, but I hope you enjoy reading it all the same.))

Log Entry #1 - gaining awareness

I think I must be going insane.

For the past few days in the mess hall, whenever I was given an unripened fruit or vegetable to eat, it always seemed to be ripe by the time I was ready to eat it. At first I chalked it up to a trick of the mind or the lighting, but it keeps happening. I'm considering seeing the ship's psychologist (or closest equivalent), but I'm hesitant. If I get pegged as a quack this early on in my career, I won't be able to make any headway.

I suppose there is always that other possibility... But that's absurd. The food can't really be ripening, can it? The fact that I am even considering that possibility is probably just further evidence toward my failing mental health.

I don't know. Maybe I'll run some experiments or something.

[Agari]

Log Entry #2 - confirmation

Ok, so I must be dreaming. Because it works.

I don't know why, and I don't know how, but it seems there is some sort of connection between myself and plant maturation.

Today I went to the hangar bay to do some experiments in private. A guy named Asher showed up so it wasn't completely in private, but I digress. The important detail is that I ripened a banana right before my very eyes. And then I made the eyes of a potato begin to sprout and Asher verified that it wasn't just my mind playing tricks on me. It was actually happening.

I think this could be a major scientific discovery, but I should run some more tests before making any claims.

On the note of claims, Asher said his vision has gotten better. He used to need glasses, but now he doesn't and his eyesight is extraordinary. Granted, I have to take his word on it, but I believe him. He suggested there may be a connection between his eyesight and my newfound plant skills. I'm not sure how much merit there is in that claim, but I will definitely keep it in mind.

We decided to ask around to see if anyone else was experiencing anything out of the ordinary, as well as try to do some tests in the lab. Depending on our results, we may or may not go talk to the captain of The Destiny and mention something.

[Agari]

Log Entry #3 - preliminary testing

I have spent most of my waking hours the past couple days staring at dirt.

Thankfully I have had fruitful results. Literally.

The process is almost unbearably slow and mentally taxing, but I have been able to cause plants to do a number of things. I have made fruit ripen, seeds sprout, flowers bloom, sprout leaves, among other things. But it seems my abilities are pretty much limited to plants. I have tried affecting fungi and some of the lab animals, but with no observable results.

As a scientist, I have a hard time admitting this, but I think I might have something akin to a super power. Boy, if any of the other scientists knew I was even thinking this, they would have my head. Which is one of the reasons I am keeping my experiments low-key until I go talk with the captain.

Oh yeah, the captain. Even though I haven't had any success finding other people with strange abilities other than Asher, I have decided to inform the captain anyway. This is just too big for me to keep under wraps.

I'll go talk to her when my shift is over.

[Agari]

Log Entry #4 - informing captain Liara

My meeting with Captain Liara Shepherd went better than I imagined, despite my social deficiencies. She seemed skeptical at first, but after I demonstrated my abilities to her, she seemed to accept my claim. She didn't even freak out or anything!

Although, curious note here, it may be because she has supernatural abilities of her own. The captain seems to think that she may be able to see into the future. Now I am planning to keep a healthy amount of skepticism, but who am I to doubt her? If Liara, Asher, and myself are all displaying various abilities unexplained by science, then it seems this is no mere coincidence.

I wonder if there are others aboard the ship as well. Captain Liara instructed me to inform her if I located anyone who had similar abilities, but at the same time instructed me to try and keep my abilities out of the public eye for the time being. I understand her reasonings, but I have to say I am a bit disappointed that I will have to continue my research in secret.

But my research will continue.

[Agari]

Log Entry #5 - duration

When experimenting with my newfound abilities, it is really tempting to attempt every idea as it comes to mind. But I must avoid giving into these urges if I am to make any significant headway. Therefore I have resolved to try and only do one experiment at a time and only make a note of experiments I may like to try at a later date.

I had already proven to myself that I could manipulate plant maturation in a variety of ways, as noted in a previous log entry. So the next step was to extrapolate on those abilities. Test their limits.

I decided to start with seed germination. I wanted to test and see how long it would take to grow a plant from its seed state to full maturation. For my experiment I decided to go with a type of plant that was small and matured quickly in nature. I found a packet of dandelion seeds in my luggage from one of my internship experiments that would be well suited to the task.

I set up a workspace in my quarters and started with one seed resting atop one pot of soil. I started a stopwatch then concentrated on making the seed grow.

It took about four hours, sixteen minutes to get it to grow from a seed into a fully bloomed flower.

Due to the large amount of time my experiment consumed, I needed to wait until the following day to do the experiment again. I had to at least loosely follow scientific principles and try to reproduce my results.

And I did reproduce them, but not in the same amount of time. The next time I had a mature specimen in only four hours and nine minutes. That is seven minutes faster than the previous experiment!

I repeated this experiment a total of five times and each resulted in a shortened duration. The fifth experiment took me only three hours and fifty eight minutes.

While there is definitely not enough information for my guess to be conclusive, it seems that practice is increasing my capabilities. If this is true, I wonder just how good I can get at this skill.

I suppose only time will tell.

[Agari]

Log Entry #6 - distance

Apparently distance is a factor with my abilities.

I didn't realize this at first since I was always either touching or staring closely at the plants I was trying to affect. So when I tried to make another dandelion start to grow today, this time from across the room, I was a little surprised that it wasn't working.

So then I started testing what my limits were. It seems the further I am from the plant, the more difficult it is to affect it. Anything more than a few feet away makes it extremely difficult to get results. I wonder if I can increase the distance with practice similar to how I can increase the speed.

And the distance isn't restricted to the distance from my brain. I sat three feet away from a specimen, and as I moved my hand closer and further from the plant, it became easier and more difficult to affect it. Directly touching the specimen gave me the best results.

I am not exactly sure what these results mean, but I find them to be extremely interesting.

[Agari]

Log Entry #7 - capacity

So far the major experiments I have done dealt with duration and distance. My latest test deals with capacity.

By capacity I mean how much I can do at once. Am I limited to affecting just one plant at a time, or can I affect an entire group of plants? If I can affect multiple plants at once, do they have to be near each other? Can I make them do different things? Do they have to be the same species?

To start with, I put several dandelion seeds in the same container and concentrated on making all of them grow at the same time. They all grew fairly well, although it did seem a bit more difficult than growing a single plant.

Next I put some more seeds in another container. I set the seeds on one side of me and the seedlings on the other. They both grew, but barely. Though I have a feeling it was mostly due to my own split concentration rather than the distance from each other. It is difficult to concentrate on two things at once.

I brought the potato back in from one of my first experiments to test out different types of plants at the same time. It had grown some on its own, but not much.

Plant type didn't seem to matter much, if at all, when ordering them to do the same thing. Simple growth. But when I ordered the potato sprouts to grow taller, and the dandelion leaves to grow wider, it was rather difficult. But then I tried the same thing with two dandelions and no potato and it was just as difficult.

Preliminary conclusions indicate that my own brainpower is the key factor affecting my capacity to manipulate plants. Interesting.

On another note, I have run out of dandelion seeds. Perhaps I should pollinate the flowers I have gathered thus far in order to procure some new seeds. But in addition I think I will start a sort of collection. Then I can see what inspiration other plants might provide.

[Agari]

Log Entry #8 - plant healing

So it turns out I am sort of a plant healer as well.

I can't undo damage, per se, but I can help them to recover.

The notion came to me when I noticed that the pear seedling I planted after talking to Captain Liara was looking pretty droopy. I hadn't given it any thought since I used it to demonstrate my abilities to her. That day I planted it and watered it, but then it got left in a corner and was neglected until today.

The pear sapling grew a few small leaves on it's own, but they were shriveled and turning brown around the edges by the time I noticed. I was going to throw it out, but I decided to try an experiment instead.

I focused on making the nearly lifeless plant taller and healthier. Sure enough, the leaves filled out again and it started to gain some height. The edges of its leaves were still brown, but they were no longer shriveled. And new leaves soon accompanied them.

After making the sapling a little bigger, I tried out some different methods of healing as well. I gave the tree everything from cuts, to burns, to severed branches, to holes. I wasn't able to heal anything up, but I could heal everything over. That poor sapling is riddled with scars, but at least it isn't in the trash.

[Agari]

Log Entry #9 - lab test results

I sent some sample tissued from the dandelions into the lab to get tested a few days ago. I figured it would be alright if I had some of the other scientists look at the samples to see if they could find anything unusual. I didn't tell them exactly why I need the tests. I just told them it was for some personal experiments I was working on.

I got the results back today.

As far as the ship's limited resources could determine, the plants seemed entirely normal. Their cellular structure, their genetics, their development, everything. Well, everything except their age, but the tests didn't tell me that.

For the most part you can't tell that they are younger than they should be. After all, they went through just as much cell replication as a normal plant, except in a shorter time span. However, secondary age characteristics were not quite as consistent. For example, a tree would not have as many rings as you would expect.

I wonder if I can manually encourage plants to exhibit these secondary characteristics anyway. Hmm...

[Agari]

Log Entry #10 - cuttings

I have definitely noticed an increase in my growing speed. What used to take me hours might take me one now. And what probably would have taken me days, I feel I could do in one day. As they say, "Practice makes perfect," and I have been practicing rigorously.

And today I was practicing with some alternate growing techniques. Namely, I have been experimenting with making plant cuttings. The process of planting a small part of a larger plant in order to grow a whole new one.

I remembered hearing that in order to grow a new banana tree, they would take part of an existing tree, plant it, then grow a new tree from it. So I started with a banana. I doubted it would work since it was just a fruit and not a branch or leaf.

I was right. It didn't work.

But I didn't give up. I tried some more promising produce, like celery, carrots, and even parsley. I got the carrot, and the celery to take root and start growing, but not the parsley. I think it was too far gone.

I tried a variety of plant parts from a variety of plants. Some parts worked better than others, and likewise, some plants seemed to work better than others. I think I will need to do some similar lines of testing.

[Agari]

Log Entry #11 - grafting

After doing a few more minor experiments with cuttings, I decided to move on to grafting. The process of fusing the branch of one plant (usually a tree) onto the branch of another.

I collected seeds from various fruits in the kitchen for this experiment. I had apples, pears, lemons, oranges, limes, peaches, plums, cherries, and apricots. I took a few minutes with each and sprouted the seeds into saplings.

I didn't have any actual grafting tools, so I had to make due with knives from the kitchen and a couple scalpels from the infirmary. They worked well enough, I suppose.

In order to graft one plant's material onto another, I first had to make a v-shaped incision to cut off a branch or trunk of one plant. I then made an identical cut on a second plant and put the extra material from the second plant where I removed it from the first. The next step was to fuse the branches together to become one branch made from two different species.

Easier said than done.

I started with two different species of apple tree, so I knew the process would work with the traditional method of grafting. But the graft wouldn't take. I tried the process several times, but each time I got the same result. The branches would heal over before they could fuse together.

It was frustrating, but I wasn't ready to give up yet. I decided to take it slower. Go one baby step at a time. Instead of just urging the branches to grow together, I was more specific. I urged their wood fibers to intertwine, their bark to overlap, their vessels to merge together.

Finally, I had success. Once I managed to get the two plants to bind, further growth was as easy as ever. After a bit more practice, grafting didn't slow me down nearly as much.

I found that plants that are more similar, genome-wise, were usually easier to graft together. Grafting oranges to lemons was much easier than grafting lemons to cherries. In fact, I couldn't even get the lemons and cherries to graft together at all. It seems there are still limits. It waits to be seen if the limits are permanent though...

[Agari]

Log Entry #12 - surplus

I have run into a bit of a problem.

With all of the plants I have been growing, I have been steadily running out of room in my quarters. The more I practice, the less room I have.

Realistically, I know I should have probably just brought my experiments down to the incinerator and be done with it. But I don't know. It just didn't seem right. It is hard to explain, but by me being the reason that these plants have grown, I feel a stronger connection to them than I ever have had for a mere lab rat.

Now I'm not saying that these plants are "my babies" or anything like that. That is absurd. But I still wanted to find a different way to get rid of them if I could manage.

Which is why I took most of them to the cargo bay and put up a big sign that said "Free" on it. I figure either people will take them, sell them to merchants, or dump them out at the next stop. I just hope I don't get into trouble, but I suppose I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

[Agari]

Log Entry #13 - ripening

After having just gotten rid of the bulk of my experiment results, I decided to go back to practicing one of the most basic skills I have learned. That is, ripening fruits and vegetables.

I have gotten to the point where I can turn a green banana yellow almost instantly. And a whole stack of green bananas will turn yellow in seconds. Even from across the room now. But I figured it never hurts to go back to the basics every once and a while. Even master artists draw stick figures from time to time.

Not that I was calling myself a master artist.

So as I sat at my desk staring at a pile of green apples that were supposed to be red when they are ripe, I tried to figure out what I could learn from ripening fruit.

I had one apple sitting in front of me as I leaned my head against one of my palms. I wasn't having any luck coming up with hypotheses, so out of boredom, I poked the apple and ripened it. A wave of red rushed out and around the apple from the point I touched it. Kind of cool, but nothing new.

Then an idea struck. I grabbed another apple and held it in front of my face by the stem. With my free hand, I traced a line around the center of the apple. Sure enough I got a red stripe to appear. A color arrangement that would probably never happen in nature.

That is when I realized I wasn't just encouraging plants to grow. I was also commanding how they grow. It is a subtle difference, but an important one. Sure, I had caused a branch to grow here, a flower to sprout there, but those things could have happened in nature, easily. Making an apple ripen only around the center is what it took to make me really realize how much I was controlling nature.

Further tests are needed. After I make a checkerboard apple...

[Agari]

Log Entry #14 - sampling soils

Thus far I had only sprouted plants in potting soil, which was generally beneficial to most types of plants. Today I wanted to see if I could grow plants in other types of "soil" as well.

I spent the last few days collecting anything that I could which resembled soil. I still had actual potting soil, of course. But now I also had sand, clay, mud, pudding, ashes, ice shavings, sawdust, and even pure water.

And I had some dandelion seeds with me again, harvested from my earlier flowers before I got rid of them. I figured weeds would be a good indicator of wether or not I could grow plants in my hodgepodge of soil types.

I put one seed in each, set them all an equal distance away from me, then closed my eyes and concentrated on making them all grow at once. It would be slower this way, but it would help ensure that they were all given an equal amount of time and concentration.

For a full ten minutes I stood and concentrated. When my timer went off and I opened my eyes, I was surprised by the results.

Every one of the seeds had grown, albeit not at the same rates or to the same extent. The one in actual soil was a fully flowered specimen. The one grown in the ashes was very similar as well. Very healthy looking.

The mud, pudding, sand, and sawdust specimens looked like they tried, but were lacking something. Probably support for the first two and ample nutrients for the third. Both for the fourth.

The clay one looked like it had a hard time taking root. The ice one seemed to have stunted growth. And the water one had extravagant roots, but just couldn't support itself.

After giving each one more concentration, with my eyes open this time, I was able to continue their growth. But some still posed more of a challenge than others.

I will definitely need to do more tests with soil in the future.