Close Encounters: Garden Variety Ch. 02

"You can talk now?" Mary asked.

"I am learning. Your harmonics are complex and hard to replicate. The images and feelings are easier. I thought this was important, so she would not worry."

"I appreciate that," she said, sitting up as the vine moved from her ankle to her wrist.

"So, how is this restart going to work?" Darci asked.

Irwin moved him and Darci to the top of the page and created another of himself below them. It put two vines together and created a seed that moved down to a row beneath him. As he created a second, the first one dropped into a pot of soil and sprouted. With the third seed, a clone of himself popped up from the first pot, but this one had a line across its bulb.

"What does the line mean?" Darci asked.

A moment later, thought bubbles popped up near the first clone's head as well as the 'Irwin' creating the seeds. The thoughts of the seed creator were filled with pictures of cities, Darci and Mary, the kitchen, the greenhouse, and a myriad of other things. The thoughts of those below it were pure white with a straight black line running across.

"They can't think?"

"It is not their purpose. They will grow enough to make a seed, then die."

"But these are your children."

"They are not. My children will come later."

In the image, the seed-maker finished filling the top row. When the entire row matured, they all grew as one, produced a seed, then passed away. The process repeated itself five more times before Mary spoke up. "They're mutating."

"Mutating?" asked Darci. The image of her hugging him faded from her mind as the new images grabbed her attention. At the top of the page, Irwin hugged her and let her go as they both faded away.

"Some are taller and some shorter," Mary pointed out. "A few have seven vines while two of them have five. You're artificially creating genetic diversity."

The seed-maker gave her a thumbs up. On the sixth generation, the seed-maker traveled down and mated with each of the clones before they produced their seeds and passed away. In this final generation, the new seeds wore baby bonnets and had pacifiers stuck to them. When they grew up, each had cartoon eyes showing an array of personality traits and thought bubbles full of images.

"These will be my children, though knowledge is all I give them," said Irwin. "This is how we survived in the past."

"Neat trick. And it just so happens you landed at a house with a plant lover with her own personal greenhouse."

Irwin brought up the series of images from earlier where he summoned all his friends. Beside it, he wore a graduation cap and tapped the images with a pointing stick.

"Ah yes, this was 'Plan B.' So really, you just got lucky."

'Professor' Irwin gave her another thumbs-up.

"Is there anything we can do to help?" Darci asked.

The image of the Irwin making seeds appeared again. This time he made one and set it in a pot, then made a second as Darci appeared next to him. Using his vines, he slipped the seed under her dress, making her blush for a moment. She stepped away from him and laid down on a bed as the surrounding area darkened and then lightened again. After waking up, she stood and pulled the seed out from under her dress. It then took its spot in a pot next to the first. Three generations passed instead of five before the seed-maker Irwin mated with the non-sentient offspring. The seed it produced grew up to wear a sundress on its stalk and workboots on the ends of its vines.

Mary chuckled and looked over at Darci. Her smile vanished when she saw the hopeful look on her friend's face. "You aren't seriously thinking about this, are you? How would that even work?"

"Our seeds use the genetic material of other species to fuel their mutation," said Irwin accompanying his words with an image of himself putting a seed inside a slit in the gorilla-cow-thing's chest. The animal passed the night, and the seed dropped out of its chest slit. It immediately grew up upon hitting the ground, and Darci and Mary both struggled to hold in their laughter at the new Irwin's afro and paintbrush.

"Bob Ross? Really?" Mary finally squeaked out.

"I am still learning your culture. The frequency of his image and its many variants made me think he was important. Is this incorrect?"

"Better Bob Ross than Mickey Mouse or Ronald McDonald," said Darci.

Mary nodded in agreement, "So if we incubate your seeds inside us, we help your children have greater biodiversity."

"By the time each of my examples reaches the last iteration, and I give them my memories, they are genetically no longer my children. You do not need to make an immediate decision. I still need to grow for some time before I have the nutrient reserves to create seeds."

Darci winced. "I'm sorry, Irwin, but could you go back to the pictures until you've mastered our words a little better. Your voice in my head is very hard to listen to."

Irwin, dressed in all black and wearing a skullcap, mask, and rapier, appeared on the piece of paper in their minds before bowing to her.

"How the fuck...?" Mary asked, raising an eyebrow.

Darci pointed at her TV, "I watched it the other day. I guess it's more accurate to say we watched it."

Mary sighed, "I came here hoping to make love to you tonight. With all this, I can't say I'm in the mood much anymore."

Irwin sent her an image of her holding his vine and then pulling her fingers away coated with a yellow liquid. She held the fingers to her nose and sniffed, then blushed as her expression turned sultry. The last image was of her pouncing on Darci like a cat on its prey.

"You can make an aphrodisiac?"

The image of Mary playing with herself in the kitchen while licking Darci reappeared and was followed by Darci pouncing on her, but out in the living room.

Darci's eyes widened, "The liquid when your vine came off! Oh hell, I sniffed that tissue over and over before I left work. No wonder I was insatiable that night."

"What other tricks do you have?" Mary asked.

He made pictures of calming feelings of fear, which he admitted to using on them earlier before he revealed himself, and the aphrodisiac. He claimed to be able to promote healing, even to the point of regrowing an attached limb. Mary and Darci were skeptical of such an amazing ability, and he tried giving an explanation through pictures until Mary came to his rescue.

"I think what he's saying is that he can stimulate cell growth and turn where the limb was severed back into stem cells. From there, they can regrow the limb. It's similar to the process axolotl's use to regenerate."

"What about old scar tissue?" Darci asked.

Mary's eyes widened. "Dar, let go for a second," she said, her voice stern.

"Why?"

"Because I don't know if my thoughts can bleed through to you if we are both touching him. I'm going to show Irwin what happened to me, and I don't think you want to see that."

Darci let go of Irwin's vine. "I'm sorry, Mary, but no, I don't."

"Alright, Irwin, you've probably seen some bad humans if you've been watching movies with Darci. What you are about to see is about as bad as humans can get. The worst part is they are real, not make-believe like in the movies. Before you decide you want to hang around and share the Earth with us, you should be aware of the good, like Dar and I, and the very bad too." She looked over at Darci, "after this, there won't be any sexy time tonight, but I'm gonna need some industrial-grade cuddles."

"I'm here for you," Darci replied.

Taking a deep breath, Mary looked at Irwin, "Let's do this."

---

Irwin was shaken.

The quadrupeds didn't have enough of an emotional range to comprehend the concept of 'evil,' and until now, he thought it just pertained to the mildly comical characters in Darci's movies. He was not prepared for what Mary showed him, and the utter depths humans could sink to.

"Remember," said Mary, "the number of humans who do things like that is extremely tiny. There are hundreds of thousands of good people out there like Dar and me for every one of them."

"I understand," he replied. A few seconds later, he sent her an image of himself growing bigger, followed by a wall of flesh with long smooth sections representing scars. The tip of his vine coated in a white, glue-like substance passed over the damaged tissue, and the final picture was the same wall of flesh without the scars.

"So, if I help you get bigger, you can heal me of what those people did?" she asked.

The image of Irwin gave her a thumbs up, looking a lot happier than he was feeling.

She turned to Darci and took a shuddering breath, but the pained look on her face held some hope too. "How about those cuddles?"

"Goodnight, Irwin," said Darci, brushing a finger over the nearest vine. Standing up, she took Mary's hand and led her back to the bedroom.