The seeds I now possessed were not stolen. They had been chosen.
Not at random, not out of necessity, but because the Ether had whispered their names to me as I wandered at the edge of the woods.
Not words, of course. The Ether did not speak. But waves that guided me.
Resonances between the atoms of the plants and those of the earth. Here, certain species were simply waiting for someone to give them a chance.
I had spent two days wandering in the undergrowth, my fingers brushing against stems, leaves, half-buried roots. The Ether had guided me toward them, like a compass, an itch, a tension in the air when I approached the right ones.
Seeds of red squash, robust, capable of growing in cold dampness if given enough light.
Climbing beans, the kind that clung to rocky walls like tendrils and whose pods stored water better than any container.
And then buckwheat, not the black wheat of open fields, but a wild variety, smaller, tougher, the one that survived early frosts by pressing its seeds against the ground.
And there was something else.
In the hollow of my palm, almost invisible, seeds I hadn't taken, but found. Hazel nuts still wrapped in their green bracts, fallen too early from the tree but not dead, just waiting.
Jerusalem artichoke roots, gnarled and tenacious, that I had dug up near a dried-up stream, their tubers already swollen with promise.
Even a handful of black elderberries, dried but not desiccated, their hard pits. Jet-black beads, ready to burst into life if you breathed on them.
I spread them out on the damp earth, between my knees. Perfect. Not because they were rare or precious, but because the Ether spoke around them. Not uniformly. Some shone brighter than others. Their potential was already there, latent, ready to explode.
— Right. Let's see what you'll give me, my pretties.
I placed my index finger on a squash seed. Not to plant it. Not yet. Just to listen.
The Ether reacted even before I forced anything. A golden shiver ran across the shell. A spark on a fuse. I felt its structure. The carbon chains of cellulose, the starch reserves coiled in tight spirals, the membranes ready to swell with water.
Everything was there. I just had to… adjust.
No magic. Just physics.
I took a breath, concentrating my will not on the seed itself, but on the spaces between its atoms.
The Ether rushed in, docile, like a liquid in a capillary. The bonds tightened. The energy reserves became denser. The cell walls thickened, not randomly, but following patterns I guessed more than understood. Fractals of optimized growth. The plant already knew what it was supposed to become.
The seed swelled under my finger.
Not much. Just enough for its shell to split, revealing a germ twice as large as normal, its cotyledons already swollen to bursting. I removed my hand. The transformation continued on its own, the Ether clinging to the seed.
— Good. Very good.
I moved to the next one. A bean. Same principle, but this time, I pushed a little further, not only the size of the germ, but the structure of the future pods. More fibers. More capacity to store water. Secondary roots that would spread, greedy in the soil.
The Jerusalem artichoke was tougher. Its tubbers were already survival machines, packed with inulin and nutrients. So I directed the Ether toward something else: branching. A single plant would produce ten. Twenty. An underground web capable of colonizing a square meter of soil in a few weeks. Maybe days.
Here, everything seemed possible beyond my comprehension.
When I looked up, all the seeds had changed.
Some had already germinated, their white radicles beginning to sink greedily into the damp earth. Others waited, swollen, ready to burst.
I sat back on my heels, hands dirty, forehead slightly damp.
— OK. So I can make things grow. Great. Now I just need to figure out how to keep them alive without sunlight.
One problem at a time.
I started calmly planting them in raised beds around my cabin.
Two hours later, my fingers were numb and the back of my neck stiff from the effort.
I sat cross-legged near the freshly planted rows, my back against a flat rock I had dragged there to serve as a marker. The Ether still hummed around me, but less violently than at the start. It had gotten used to my presence.
Or I had gotten used to it.
In the corner of my normal eye, I saw the first evening shadows lengthen on the cave walls. But in the other vision, the garden was already different.
The seeds I had touched glowed faintly, like embers under ash. No visible light. Just that golden gleam of Ether accumulating around them and feeding them.
— So I just invented agriculture 2.0.
A laugh escaped me, dry and a bit nervous. I was playing apprentice sorcerer with the laws of biology, and all I could do was crack lame jokes.
— Paul, old man, you're going crazy.
The next morning, I woke up again with a dull ache in my temples. The taste of coffee missing.
I dragged myself to the improvised garden and crouched.
The shoots were there.
Not fragile little stems, no. Plants already five centimeters tall, with broad leaves of a green that was too intense. Time had accelerated just for them. I reached out a hand, hesitated, then brushed a leaf with my fingertips.
It was warm.
Not burning. Just… warmer than the surrounding air. Photosynthesis must have been in overdrive.
— OK. So it works.
I took a step back, observing the whole. The modified plants were aligned in neat rows, their leaves almost perfectly symmetrical. Those I had planted without touching them were smaller, paler. Normal.
— Interesting.
The Ether didn't just accelerate growth. It also structured the matter around it. The modified plants had thicker stems, roots that sank deeper into the soil. Their DNA must have been… optimized.
— Damn, I've created GMOs without a lab.
A shiver ran down my spine. Not of fear. Of excitement. Because if it worked for plants…
— Could it work for… something else?
I shook my head.
— One thing at a time, Paul.
First, survive.
Then, understand.
And then, maybe, find a way not to end up as a mutant vegetable in my own garden.
I spent the rest of the day observing.
The plants grew visibly. Literally. Before my eyes, stems lengthened, leaves unfurled in fast motion. The Ether swirled around them in tight spirals, sucked in by their growth.
And then there were the side effects.
The earth around the modified plants was darker, richer. When I dug a little with my fingers, I saw white filaments, mycelial fungi, that glowed faintly with Ether.
The fungal network had expanded to take advantage of the extra energy.
— So I haven't just accelerated plant growth.
I had enriched the entire ecosystem.
I grinned to myself.
— Not bad for a first try.
I lay on my back, hands behind my neck.
— Did I just create an Ether hotspot?
The idea made my eyebrows rise.
If that was the case… then this garden wasn't just a food source.
It was a battery.
A reserve of energy that I might be able to… use.
I closed my eyes.
— Tomorrow.
Tomorrow, I would try to understand how to draw from it.
Today…
Today, I was hungry.
And very soon, I would have something to eat.