Having a Triffid Time!

I was right about the whoofweed: stealing it was a lot of fun. But don’t tell anyone about this, okay? I know I can trust my online audience (by which I mean, of course, that if anyone squeals I’ll pass their details to the nearest migrating drillworm queen – and yes, that’s as bad as it sounds).

So here’s the kicker, anyway… I moved it!

Yes, I moved the entire plantation. I did a two-day sweep first to check their security rota, and it turned out I had a ten-hour window each day in which to act. So I set up a waterdrone factory and programmed it to produce enough devices to do the job in the time required. The cameras were sabotaged first of course, and then every whoofweed plant was carefully uprooted by a single waterdrone, and all 3.4 million of them are now migrating, en masse, to a new home. It will take a while to get there, as it’s quite a distance and waterdrones are not very fast with delicate loads, but… well, you get the picture. The whole damn thing has gone a bit Huorn on them (or Birnam Wood, if you prefer The Bard to Tolkien), and I’m beyond tickled. Of course, I diverted a few plants to another location, where I can pick them up once the heat is off and enjoy a personal supply of whoof for a year or two. I’m looking forward to chilling out.

Am I crazy? Actually, no. The only reason I dared go ahead with this stunt was that I discovered who was running the plantation. It wasn’t the dread Pintoffnya Clan after all, but someone I happen to know from my youth. I’m not going to go into details, but let’s just say I owe him a taste of his own medicine, and this is a sweet way to deliver it. Perhaps one day I’ll tell you the story.

Anyway, I’ve monitored the comms for the last couple of weeks, and there’s been a hell of a lot of interesting chatter – some of it extremely amusing! My old enemy was spitting mad at first, and tried to blame his mercenaries, who immediately told him where to stick it and left. That was stupid of him. But the next day he got a visit from the feds! I caught the encrypted broadcast containing the interview, and it was interesting. I could hear the relief in his voice clearly as he invited them politely to check the tip-off they’d received, knowing by now that they’d find nothing. Must have been bittersweet. He escaped a pretty bad rap, but he doesn’t know who helped him out. With any luck he’ll think it’s the Pintoffnyai, in which case he won’t dare interfere: believe me, I know. This guy’s a coward.

That leaves me with a few million whoofweed plants on the move under the Atlantic, and I’ve honestly no idea what to do with them all once they arrive in New York. All sensible suggestions gratefully received.

Whoofweed

Well, this is simply hilarious! Someone has been planting Whoofweed on the sea bed off the coast of Scarborough. I’m starting to think I know why there’s been so much police chatter going on recently.

Whoofweed is also known as Pentafolio demensiensis – although the only person who knows it by that name is me. Latin names fascinate me, and since there’s no Latin outside of Earth, I like to invent my own, for certain alien species of import. And Whoofweed is of great import, especially to interstellar crime.

It’s an underwater plant (obviously) with the somewhat dubious distinction of being a near-universal narcotic. In other words, almost every intelligent species in the galaxy can use it for psychedelic recreation. The handful of exceptions include Polavvians – which is one reason they make more trustworthy cops – and also you humans, bless you. You have no idea what it’s like to take this junk, and you never will.

I’ve chewed a little whoof in the past, when partying with a friend from Grootix Academy. The effects are almost impossible to describe, but mostly involve the feeling that you’re individually conscious of every single cell in your body. It’s as trippy as a trip through triple wormhole, though it can be inconvenient when you have an infection of some kind.

Anyway, I came across the vast plantation during my little underwater excursion, and when I say “plantation”, I’m being serious. There are several square kilometres of the stuff. This is evidently a well-funded operation, and I was careful to leave no sign that I’d found it. I’m almost certain that the police are biding their time, questioning people and investigating every little crime they can find, until someone lets something slip about the perpetrators. They clearly don’t yet know where the product is being grown, and are trying to find out so they can bring in evidence.

This leaves me with a bit of a dilemma. Or is it a trilemma? I can contact the feds like a good citizen and let them know the location, claim my reward and hope nobody wants revenge; I can wait and see what happens; or… well, no. I couldn’t just steal it, could I? I mean, this is probably being run by someone like the Pintoffnya Clan. You’d have to be a crazed lunatic to want to mess with those guys. They like to eat people’s faces for dessert. And I don’t mean after killing them first.

Maybe I really am crazy, then.

I’m going to put some thought into this. If I can figure out a way to grab that massive stash without being caught, it could be fun.

Cross Talk

In my last message, I seem to recall saying that I was looking forward to a “quiet Summer”. Now, had just one of those two concepts failed me, perhaps I would have shrugged it off. I’m sad to report that so far, both of them are letting me down badly.

Of course, I’ve known worse rain. Significantly worse. I’ve survived rain made of sulphuric acid that ‘fell’ (if that’s the word I want) sideways, so by comparison the British weather is kind of tame. That said, it would be quite pleasant, for a change, not to feel that the plants were getting the better end of the deal – not to mention the ducks.

But the lack of Summer isn’t the issue, of course. It’s more the lack of quiet.

I’ve mentioned (see journals passim) my intense dislike of those who worship at the altar of the decibel, and you might be assuming that I’m about to moan about some noisy all-night barbecue party, or perhaps an amateur mechanic machining a new crankshaft for a Morgan at 10 p.m. However, this time the noise isn’t coming from anything human – or even terrestrial. It’s coming from my police scanner. My Local Federation police scanner. The damn thing has picked up so many reports in this sector, it’s like watching one of those movies in which strange events start occurring all over the place, and then we eventually find out that there’s an alien invasion going on.

I really hope it isn’t that. I’ve had enough of other aliens for now.

I think I’ll go for one of my long underwater walks.