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Adipose City: Orchard Care

By Psion

An Adipose City Story

All Rights Reserved

Blightweed: Noun; a genetically mutated plant emerging during the Petroleum Crash. Believed to have resulted from cross-pollination between herbicide-resistant GMCs and various weed species, particularly common in Africa and Central Asia.

• Encyclopedia Britannica, circa 2056 AD

Adipose City, cyberpunk metropolis of the post-petroleum world. A sprawling New England city covering parts of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, AC had seen a lot since Peak Oil became less of a theory and more of a reality. The general collapse and degradation of old world power structures, the sudden explosion of technology, the rise of new ones in the form of the corporate state, six major ones and a number of smaller ones to be precise, and the global population getting rounder and fatter. Unsurprisingly, the city had many a story to tell. But it was not the only place that had stories to tell...

Far away, across the Atlantic to the nearly forgotten shores of Africa, the local corporation Berrika continued to slowly reclaim the continent. It was hardly an easy task; Blightweed encroached on much of the Northern and Central parts of Africa, the European corporations of Aristo and Italiana occasionally turned their eyes southward to gain an advantage over the other, SALAD and PanAsia coveted Berrika's own considerable knowledge of botany and chemistry, and of course not even Africa was safe from the shadowy presence of the adipose-hating PhysEd Consortium. As such, the region enjoyed a fragile prosperity, one protected by a troop of homegrown agents and field scientists more then up for the task.

As a Trailblazer ATV came to a stop in the Serengeti wastelands, the occupants inside surveyed their surroundings while waiting for the dust cloud kicked up by the vehicle's six fat all-terrain tires to finally settle. Flask, the Gasbag field chemist, sighed as she looked at the land around her with a pair of hazel brown eyes. At one point this could have been consider the quintessential African grasslands, the site of countless pre-Peak films and cartoons. Now... the soil cracked and turned to dust beneath fat, diabolical-looking yellowish vines. Blightweed... Blightweed as far as the eye could see, turning the lush savannahs to fields full of withered straw, even the Candelabra and Baobab trees sickened and grew weaker under the seemingly endless onslaught of that damn Blightweed; a curse and yet a blessing as well.

Nodding her head to the other members of her team, as much her friends as her coworkers, the gazelle animan checked the snugness of her tool belt over her ample midsection and put on her rubber gloves before stepping out. Black hiking boots landed on the hard dirt with a weighty thud as their occupant shifted her full mass out of the vehicle. A large, pear-shaped woman, the black-haired gazelle anthro squinted in the harsh glare of the African afternoon sun as her team approached the malfunctioning harvester, one of several machines clearing Blightweed from this particular stretch of wasteland. To her left, Scalpel the zebra Druggist scanned their surroundings with an almost bored expression. Flask knew that the chubby, cherubic combat medic would much rather be in a situation requiring her Chem Gun or her surgical tools. The platinum blond equine would have to be bored though, Mass Spec and the Gasbag chemist had work to do here.

Mass Spec was all happy smiles as she approached the malfunctioning harvester. Hard working, diligent, and with a cheerful, can-do attitude, the cheetah aniwoman was about as bouncy as her big bubble butt. A Handyman exo-skeleton was worn over the female Big Tool's khaki shorts and worn t-shirt, the hydraulic motors propelling both her heavy weight and the mass of her equipment at a brisk pace, allowing her to bound along at a speed even those PEC thugs would have trouble keeping up with.

The automated harvester was a huge robotic vehicle about the size of a small house or a very large semi, designed to slowly lumber along the weed-infested wastelands and devour the offending plant life like a Burger World agent at an all-you-can-eat burger buffet. An internal processing station broke down the weed and processed it into something that turned out to be surprisingly edible. And that in turn was Berrika's greatest discovery, one the company guarded closely. When processed, Blightweed became a high-caloric wonder food full of nutrients and high-energy carbohydrates. As such it became an emergency food source, a thickening agent for the fruit yogurts one of its subsidiaries produced to compete with Queensland Confectionaries, and the base ingredient for their own collection of curative and weight-inducing medicinal compounds. The plant gave life as abundantly as it took it, which is why it was up to machines like the one Flask, Scalpel, and Mass Spec were standing in behind of to keep the weeds in check... when they worked that is.

Mass had gotten to work running diagnostics on the harvester while Flask began to take soil samples. First a few from the area the machine just cleared before shutting down yesterday, then a couple from where the weeds were still growing. The gazelle woman carefully stepped past the thick, thorny vines to get a good sample. The thorns weren't poisonous thankfully but they'd still stick her all the same if she let them. Gathering her samples, she couldn't help but notice that the weed growths seem to be unusually thick, almost thick enough to....

"Machine's fine Flask, it just got clogged up by all this excess foliage." Mass Spec announced with a suspicious chewing sound over the division's radio. Fat cheetah butt wiggled like a pair of jello molds as its owner finished cleaning out the machine and began exchanging the full fifty-gallon drums for empties ones the group brought with them. Flask noticed that Mass Spec's mouth and her suit's gauntlets were both stained the sickly yellowish green of ground-up Blightweed and promptly shook her head, that cheetah and her cast-iron stomach.

Loaded with empty containers, the harvester was quickly reactivated and defiantly chugged to life, resuming its singular function with a whirl of blades and the dull groan of grinders turning weed into mush. The three Berrika agents watched the machine dutifully lumber along for a few minutes with a sense of pride welling up in their chests before turning to other tasks. Soil chemistry readings needed to be taken and some of the new growths that occurred during the harvester's shutdown needed to be removed. Mass Spec returned to the Trailblazer to attach a portable food processor and some motorized tilling attachments to her Handyman exoskeleton while Flask busied herself in the vehicle's onboard chemistry lab. Outside and still having nothing to do but sit and watch, Scalpel set up a beach umbrella and a folding chair made out of memory plastic. Sitting down and letting the chair contour itself to her curves to provide a comfortably cushioned seat, she unpacked a pair of binoculars and began scanning the horizon for anything interesting.

As Mass began to rip up patches of Blightweed by the roots, the gazelle chemist compared the sample results to each other. This didn't make any sense to her, the soil samples from the area where the weeds were still growing was bled dry as she expected. But samples from where the harvester just picked clean, which should also be devoid of the required nutrients for supporting plant life, still had some residual amounts. That shouldn't have happened, the swath of land they just cleared was just as thick and overgrown as the fields in front of them...

"Flask! Something's coming down from the north! Ass Spec, stop stuffing yourself and get inside now!" Scalpel shouted.

The Gasbag suspended her tests to see what caused the commotion. Running to one of the Trailblazer's tinted windows as her friends took shelter inside the armored all-terrain vehicle and Scalpel slammed the button that sealed the metal goliath up in case of a chemical attack, the gazelle saw what caused the panic. From the north, a low-flying gunmetal-gray drone had started spraying the Blightweed with a pale azure mist. Flask could see what caused the zebra woman to loose her calm, in another minute the drone's flight path took it directly overhead the campsite; the trio would have been covered in or otherwise inhaled whatever that blue vapor was. Fortunately, it didn't appear to be any challenge for the Trailblazer's filtration system. After waiting a few minutes for the chemicals to settle and the robotic flyer to continue on its journey, Flask unsealed the vehicle and carefully scrapped a sample off one of the air filters. She already had a theory what the compound might be but she needed to run a few experiments to make sure....

It was fertilizer, much like she suspected. A broad-spectrum growth supplement designed to be rapidly absorbed by dirt and plant life. It explained why her soil readings had been off and why the growth had been especially thick along this area. Based on the way Blightweed metabolized nutrients, the only danger Mass Spec faced was indigestion due to over consumption. If they had all been exposed to the open air while the drone flew over their worksite however... the resulting exposure would have been hazardous but not necessarily fatal, especially if Scalpel was able to start detoxifying them immediately. Still, the question now was who owned the drone. What they were trying to accomplish was obvious but who were they?

"It has to be the Consortium, they're the only ones that would be concerned by our land reclamation projects." Scalpel argued in the Trailblazer's living quarters, sitting at the foldout table across from Mass Spec.

"How can you be so sure? None of us had the time to look at the drone." The bottom-heavy cheetah asked politely.

"Who else could it be? Burger World and Taco King are too busy fighting each other to come across the Atlantic. Motherland Provisions is currently watching the fight between Aristo and Italiana unfold practically on its doorstep. Al Ain makes no sense, as our work doesn't interact with their logistics networks at all. And for our usual rivals, they want our research or our farmland. Sabotaging this project makes no sense for any of them."

"But why would the Consortium give us more Blightweed to process into all the stuff we make?"

"Who's to say they know we've managed to break down that weed into something useful? For all we know they could be thinking they're curtailing our expansion." Flask interrupted as she stepped out of the laboratory. "Regardless, this discussion is just speculation without a downed drone to analyze. I've already sent a report about our initial findings to the company headquarters in Butare. There is no word yet on whether or not this changes our assignment in the area. So until then we carry on with our original surveys and make sure that harvester doesn't break down again while we're here." The gazelle concluded. "And maybe while we're out here, we can accelerate our expansion in other areas..." She added with a wry smile, getting snickers from the other girls.

The matter essentially settled, the three Berrika women focused on various tasks until dinner. Scalpel and Flask resumed finishing up laboratory work while Mass Spec made various adjustments to her portable Blightweed processor and harvesting equipment, rigging together a collection of pumps, adaptors, pressurized containers, and hoses for tomorrow's clear-cutting. The evening meal was a modest affair, reasonably sized portions of Central African foods with a mixed fruit dessert, the better to make sure they had room for tomorrow's events...

The next morning, the trio did their best to get up with the rising sun as it slowly climbed over the horizon. Soil samples from the area immediately around the Trailblazer as Mass Spec set up her equipment. Feeding masks were put on and the cheetah's portable Blight processor was reconfigured to pump processed Blightweed into pressurized, gallon-sized drums as well as feed directly into the cheetah's greedy mouth. And in a minute she was ready and tearing into the growths to one side of the harvester's path. Drums were filled and automatically ejected once they reached their capacity, Mass's belly bulged and grew tight as she harvested a bit more before handing off the full containers to her cohorts before slapping a pair of fresh empties into her backpack contraption. Scalpel resumed her bored vigil while Flask began gathering samples, both females sipping the steady slurry of high carbohydrate "sludge" while they worked. Guts grew round and full as the day wore on. Periodically Mass Spec would come back to replace empty containers with full ones but by midday, all of them had reached their limit. Movements were slowed, swollen abdomens groaned audibly, and the girls decided to take a break. Flask briefly checked the Trailblazer's onboard sensors for suspicious radar signatures before lying down in the master bunk, her belly happily churning away as Scalpel and the bed-rocking weight of Mass Spec joined her. Just a quiet hour together, enjoying a luxurious repast before getting back to work...