TBoB - Book 8 - Chapter 10 - The Hidden Gardens (Patreon)

As we strolled towards the back of the short subterranean area, I noticed it ended at a heavy metal gate rather than a wall. I glanced back at the entrance in order to get a feeling for the distance, and estimated that it probably had been installed right before what had been the first major crossroads.

“Why put up a gate, instead of just walling everything off?” I asked. “Using the old tunnels as testing areas?”“Well, yes… but that’s not why it’s gated off,” Wild replied. “The beavers put up that wall right after the Antithesis tried to tunnel under our lines to keep any stealthy models that might have survived the battle from sneaking topside. Even after the Gene Tender ran off we kept finding gribblies skulking around down here. It turns out that a number of Antithesis models will go dormant if they’re buried alive and only attempt to dig themselves out days later. Apparently, it’s a defense mechanism, which allows them to develop sleeper cells after the enemy’s main force clears an area.”“Ugh, of course they do,” I grumbled. “Dusty, please tell me we swept those massive hive systems properly after the global to prevent shit like that from happening. I’d hate to return home and find those hives active again.”“Don’t worry boss, the foxes went over every inch of them. Apparently, the fox's ears are so sensitive that they can perform a sort of ground-penetrating radar scan, although they’re not very good at it when Bandit isn’t monitoring them,” Dusty replied. “If memory serves, he spent over a week down in the tunnels, monitoring everything, and when he was done, a couple of samurai post-battle cleaners came in to do another sweep. There’s no way something slipped through.”“Good,” I grunted. “I’d hate to return home only to find we had another incursion on our hands.”“I’m pretty sure that ‘several day’ hibernation limit already expired quite a while ago,” Sharron snorted. “If any Antithesis had somehow survived our sweeps, they would have showed up months ago.”“Can’t ever be too careful,” I muttered, causing Wild to chuckle. From what I could tell, Wild was leading us towards the last room in the row, so I glanced into each of the small glass-front enclosures as we went. 

She’d apparently created quite the array of biospheres in the few short weeks since I left. While the first room appeared to just be a replica of the local area, the next seemed to be designed to replicate the badlands, a desert, some sort of arctic tundra, and finally an aquarium. Somehow, I managed to keep myself from stopping and glowering at the tank, but just barely.

“I knew you hated being in the Pacific, but I didn’t know it traumatized you,” Sharron laughed. “You can’t even stare at an aquarium without frowning anymore.”

“The oceans are the devil’s playground, and I don’t want anything to do with them,” I grumbled. “It couldn’t have been that bad,” Wild exclaimed.

“Oh? You really think so? Well, let me tell you that I hated it so much that when we walked by your aquarium, I had to fight the urge to smash it.”

Wild glanced over her shoulder in alarm. “Please don’t do that. I just got it assembled, and all the samples settled; I really don’t want to have to set it up again.” “Don’t worry, I have a little bit of self-control. It’s minuscule, but it does exist,” I muttered.

When we got to the final area, I noticed that, unlike the other enclosures, this last area didn’t have a full-length window, just a handful of smaller observation windows placed slightly too high for me to see inside. As Wild stepped up to the heavy metal door in the middle of the final section it slid open, revealing a surprisingly comfy-looking lounge.

To the left was a bunch of plush chairs and sofas surrounding a low coffee table. Beyond that area was a handful of massive heavy bookcases filled with all sorts of paperback books, and a large cappuccino machine. On the right there was a small bar, with what appeared to be a series of candy machines mounted on the wall behind it.

While I surveyed the room my eyes I realized that there was a girl sitting at the bar, head down. She was dressed in what appeared to be a tattered, but fashionable punk style jacket, skirt and oversized boots and her skin was covered in tattoos. As I approached closer I noticed that she also had a large number of piercings.

“Ah, I thought you’d be in here,” Wild declared. “Now that everyone’s assembled, we can finally do introductions.”She looked over at Sharron for several moments until my brain finally kicked in, and I realized what she was hinting at. “Intro… Oh! Right! You and Sharron have never met. She was still on the transport back from Mars while I was here. I can’t remember if I introduced you across the comms while Benadict was arranging for our orbital support but I guess I really should do the polite thing and formally introduce you,” I said. “Wild, this is Sharron Brooks, AKA Humboldt. One of my oldest and trusted friends. Sharron, meet Alice Green, AKA WildWalker, one of the two local samurai who helped me defend the town when everything went to hell.”“Nice to meet you,” Sharron declared, stepping forward to shake the other woman’s hand. 

“Charmed,” Alice replied, accepting Sharron’s hand and giving her a wide, welcoming smile. Once they’d finished their handshake and stepped away from each other, Alice slipped back and held out a hand towards the girl at the bar. 

“And I want to introduce you both to someone. This, is Oggy,” Alice declared.

I stared at the girl at the bar, who didn’t move a muscle despite being introduced. “Just Oggy?”“Isn’t that enough?” the girl grumbled. “Names are artificial constructs anyways.”

Alice glanced over at the girl, eyebrow raised, but she didn’t seem insulted or disappointed at the girl’s behaviour. In fact it seemed like she’d expected it.

“Oggy here, came to help us contain and cleanup all the fungus and spores that were sprinkled around by that teraformer,” Alice explained. “If it wasn’t for her, I expect the town would be covered in mold right now.”“She did? Impressive,” I said. “How’d you manage that? Chemical weapons?”Oggy finally lifted her head off the bar and turned it towards me. Even though the motion was smooth, there was something a little uncanny about it. I could have sworn that she’d turned her head way past what should have been possible for a human, and her body needed a moment to catch up. 

“Chemicals? Nah, far too unreliable. I just ate it all,” Oggy said. 

“Ate it all?” Sharron asked, before I could. 

“Yup,” Oggy replied before holding up a hand. As I watched, her fingers began to unravel, turning into a thick metallic smoke. Within a matter of moments her entire hand had disappeared; Thankfully the dissolving seemed to end when it hit her wrist.

“Uhhhh…” was all I managed to get out as my brain attempted to process what I was seeing.

“I’m not human,” Oggy said. “Not anymore anyways. I transformed my body into a nanite swarm, what you’re seeing right now is just a body I cobbled together for when I need to converse with people,” she explained.

“So when you said you ate them, you mant you broke them down similar to how the nano dissassembly grenades work?” Sharron asked.

“Exactly. It didn’t take me that long once I spread out into a cloud. I can cover quite an area in that form,” Oggy said. “I spent a whole week combing the area and removing any traces of that fungus.”“Impressive,” Sharron said. “You must be pretty worn out after all that, you seemed pretty listless when we came in.”“Oh no, I don’t really need much sleep; I was actually a little disappointed because now that I finished cleaning up, I’m hungry again,” Oggy said. “I’m an all consuming void, and hunger has not been sated. I’m so hungry I feel like I could devour and entire moon and not be satisfied.”“Yeah, let’s avoid that if we can. I’ve already had my fill of moon-based disasters,” I said. “Whle I don’t have an chunck of sellar body for you to chew on, I do have an entire storage area full of raw elements, if you think that would help. If not, I’ve got a whole bunch of fresh vegetables up on my ship, or some tasty cookies if you think that would help distract you. I got them from a samurai that specializes in baking of all things.”Oggy’s head snapped in my direction, her eyes went wide, and a grin spread across her face. “Cookies?”

“Yeah, I can share a couple boxes with you if you think it would help. I brought them for my family, but I don’t mind giving you a few,” I said. “If I do, do you think you can avoid celestial snacking?”

“Absolutely,” Oggy declared. 

“Then I’ll have the bears bring a couple down,” I replied before shaking my head. “I can’t believe I’m bribing a sentient swarm of microscopic robots with pastries.”

“I find it’s better to just not think about that sort of thing and just go along with the crazy,” Oggy said. “It’s easier.”

“I can’t argue with that,” I muttered as I wandered over to the bar and hopped up on one of the stools. “Now that we’ve handled the ‘crisis’ hopefully we can just sit down and chat. I’ve had a hard couple weeks, and I’d love some downtime,”

“Sure,” Alice said, sashaying around the counter before filling a mug with some sort of chocolate candy and popping a few in her mouth. “What would you like to talk about?”“Anything. As long as it doesn’t involve water, or fish,” I moaned. 

Alice laughed. “I’m sure we can handle that,” she said, holding out the mug so I could take a couple of the hard shelled candy. “I should have said this earlier, but welcome back. I’m glad you stopped in now that the chaos finally died down a little.”“It’s good to be here,” I muttered, before popping the candies into my mouth. The instant they hit my tongue they dissolved into a smooth velvety paste, which I gulped down with a smile. “Good to be here indeed.”