Chapter 2 - My Plants are Illegal

Uari didn't quite know where to start. His memories, or the plants?

Uari went through the rest of the day in a slight daze. He did in fact purchase a hot sandwich from one of the VendoStor's vending machines, as well as some Lightspeed. The gaping of his chest had yet to dissipate and he was wandering around streets carelessly, trying to make sense of things that had no explanation.

Someone had carried out a memory wipe on him so badly that he had immediately sensed an emptiness upon waking up. He couldn't be sure how much of his memories he retained because although he 'remembered' about six months' worth of memories, he couldn't be sure if they were real or implanted.

And then.

Why were there so many plants in his house? Plants were illegal as hell for the average layperson to own, regulated heavily by the AgroAuthority. They claimed it was to ensure that the regulation of scarce organic materials, to prevent deforestation and climate change and at the same time also monopolisation.

That meant that everything that could come from a plant had to go through the AgroAuthority. No one—not even the elite up in the shining buildings at Gildest—could own living plants. Even seeds were illegal unless they were already cooked into porridge or soup and therefore couldn't germinate.

Even craftsmen working with natural materials were now artisans, sought out only by the ultra-wealthy to work with prohibitively expensive, incredibly rare materials or wood—

He clutched the Lightspeed in his hand and whimpered when he remembered that his cabinets were made of wood too. Something at the back of his mind informed him, helpfully, that they were made of high-quality birch.

He recalled that his floorboards were also wood and that his bedframe was also wood, and choked down a dry moan of agony at how he was going to explain this to the AgroAuthority.

Why was there so much wood in his house? It was a collectable and selling even one plank of his cabinet would settle him for the rest of his life. Why did a poor musician have so much wood?

He didn't know how he had them or why he had them, but he was afraid. He didn't know the penalties, but he knew they were bad - like, bad bad. Bad enough that he didn't want anything to do with them, bad enough that he wanted to yeet the plants right out of his house and into the local incinerator.

Lastly, there was the question of who had sent him a plant earlier today too. Who had access to such a thing, to be able to send him something like that in broad daylight? That was a real plant, not—not a fake plastic thing that people frequently decorated their house with.

What was their intention with it, too? Was it a coincidence that he had woken up today with that maw in his chest, and then someone had sent him a plant? He couldn't believe it.

Another uneasy prickle slid across his skin, and he couldn't help but look over his shoulder warily. His brain felt sharp—no, sharper. The haze of the earlier day had lifted, and he was now aware of the incongruities of his current lifestyle.

There was nothing else for him to do outside on these cold metal streets, so he made his way home and opened the door cautiously, ensuring that there was no one around before he did. He slid into the house through a tiny sliver and closed the door immediately before saying a quick prayer to the gods of all four major religions available in the Southernlands.

The room was comfortable and familiar and his, and that was kind of the problem. He knew he owned these items—this wood, these plants, the soil—but he didn't know how, or why, or where. He didn't remember having a history of criminal activity or even a penchant for greenery.

As far as he knew, Uari Orthen was an average, unassuming, terrible musician. His grades had been mediocre, his looks would blend in, his bank account was-

Well, it was outstanding - outstanding in debt, that was. He gave himself a mental pat on the back for the joke.

What possessed him to possess all of this organic stuff, especially when it could mean prison time?

Right now he needed more information on himself, and the only lead he had was this apartment, so he would begin by flipping his entire house inside out for some clues.

It didn't take long to upturn the entire apartment given how small it was, and by the end, there was one measly thing on his coffee table. It was hard and mostly black, but there was a strip of red along the edges, and a word was inscribed on top.

'SanDesk, it said, but Uari didn't know what that was. Maybe it was some kind of ancient language. He also didn't know what this thing was. One end was squared off, and when he looked at it from the side, the top half of the thing was hollowed out. It looked like something was supposed to go in.

Well, he didn't know how to use it either, so he trudged over to the Interface, which whirred to life upon his approach, and Geegled the name on the thing. He was careful to use protection.

SanDesk turned out to be the name of a hardware company from hundreds of years ago, and they produced things like thumbdrives, memory cards, and solid-state drives. All of it was redundant technology now, but the point was that they could all contain information. He turned the thumbdrive over in his hand, found nothing else it could tell him externally, and pulled up the eBuy store instead.

The ancient thumbdrive-to-Interface converter arrived in two hours courtesy of the eBuy DropDrone Delivery service, so he connected everything together, took a few turns to shove the thumbdrive at the converter: one side up, the other side up, and then the original side up again, at which point it slid in and stopped. A single file loaded onto his Interface screen and he was thankful it was a text file because his Interface was too old for any fancy graphics.

It contained only two sentences. He was disappointed, and then slightly hopeful.

564339.

Turn the wheel.

564339 was a postal code, and it was quite near if he wasn't wrong. He didn't know what 'turn the wheel' meant, but he supposed he could figure it out when he got there. He closed the text file, carefully ejected the thumb drive as per instructions that came with the converter, and pocketed the little thing.

He would go and deal with whatever was there tomorrow.