The Roots

From The Pardusian Chronicles

The biggest question i have at the moment is where to start.

The universe as we now know it has been around for several trillion years, and in that time, life has flourished from all corners. I have sampled a mere fraction of what lies under our very feet (if you have them) so to find a beginning is difficult.

So i shall start from where my research started, back on Vewaa at the Bio-University.

When i arrived at Vewaa Bio, my tutor took me to one side and assigned me a special project. I seemed fairly simple to begin with, but soon took a very interesting turn.

The project was to grow and cultivate a plant native to Vewaa called Srallith, a very basic plant, remeniscent of a grass shrubbery with no discerning features except the purple flashes of color that adorn the leaves. The reason for the project was that the plant has been used to help dress wounds for centuries and the cultures in the laboratory had died earlier that week. To be honest, i think that my tutor was giving me a small test of my skills as i biologist and botanist.

Anyway, i set about my project with the boundless enthusiasm of a young scientist helping to save the universe with one plant. I set up a small section of my quarters with lab equipment and growing trays and within a couple of weeks, i culitvated my first batch of Srallise, the sap from the leaves which i took down to the lab.

The very next day, the head technician came to me to talk about my samples. He explained that they had examined them and there was something different. I wondered how this could have been. I had used all the notes available on cultivating Srallise, including light, humidity, and atmoshpere. He continued to say that the samples where reproducing!

I was shocked. How could a simple life-form spontaneously reproduce in such away? I went back to my test and followed through all my procedures and variants. I look at my plants and then i noticed a yellow streak of color running straight up the middle of the leaf, barely a nano-fose wide. I was at a loss until i smelt something. Looking around i noticed some liquid had spilled out over the side of the growing tray. A short nasal analysis confirmed my suspicion that it was urine! But from where?

I short search led me underneath my cryo-chamber to a small scaled creature known as a thear. It is amphibious and fairly common to class M planets. It's about the size of a Ska'ari graada, an Earth cat, or a Rashkir faalx. It had been living there for sometime it seemed, and as i was the intruder in this sense left it to be at this point.

I decided to analyse the urine to see what had caused the mutation in the plant. Mixing srallise with different chemical components of the urine yeilded that the "offending" chemical was Graltharakan, apparent in the urine because of this thear's apparent taste for the slime covering the outlets form the university scullery.

I took my findings to the head technician who was in all a fluster when i arrived. Upon questioning him, he revealed that srallise samples were fantastic. After applying a dressing soaked in the mutated samples, the wound was fixed within hours with little scarring, and also worked on cauterized wounds.

The Graltharakan seemed to accelerate the photosynthesis occuring in the plant, and therefore the regeneration of cells. This, when applied to the wound, created matrices for the wound heal itself quicker.

This is where my involvement ended. The data was sent off to a military establishment back on Keldana I. But i do know that my accidental find was a large help in developing clone technology for pilots killed in combat.

And i also got a pet out of it.

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