"...probably more like uncle? If what's going on is what I think is going on then whatever they did to you was research based on my brother."

"Aw. Oh well. I guess I can call you uncle Zash. I'll have to think about it."

"Okay fine just. Yes. Go. Tragic backstory part two fine fine just. Augh!"

It is her turn to thonk her head down onto the table. She is so unhappy.

"...how about we sleep, first, and do more tragic backstorying tomorrow instead when we resume our drive to Terminal? You look kinda miserable."

"No, no, now it'll bug me, just. Just. Go, it's fine. The world is wide and horrible and I knew it was both but I did not know how much."

"Alright. Well, about 140 years and change ago, I was living with some scientists from another ship—mine wasn't one of the surviving ones—and I was... helping the cities get started. People were abusing their plants even worse than they do today, they were constantly terrified that they were going to die, and I was trying to teach them how to... not do that, I guess. Listen, some, to the needs of the plants, and use them sustainably."

This causes her to soften and lift her head up from the table to give him a smile. "Right. The groundwork for what I do, with your psychic plant powers."

"...yeah. The plants themselves were a lot more... panicked, then. They were just as worried about the possibility that humans would die out. They were constantly so sad about the Fall... Some of it was just convincing them that it would be okay, that they could hold on and the humans would be fine. There was some give from both sides."

".... Aw."

"I was still very mad at Nai, and hurt. I hadn't seen him since the Fall. I had no idea where he was and I got to a point where I was too scared to go look for him in case I couldn't find him if I tried.

"The scientists were going through the crash sites one by one, teaching the engineers, but one day they managed to recover some recordings from ship 05 that suggested Nai was the one behind the Fall. I hadn't... told them about Nai, at all. One of them thought I had colluded with Nai, that we had both been..." Sigh. "I looked like a human does when they're eighteen but I was seven, I was just a kid, and I ran away and decided to try to find him then."

She bites her lip, then nods.

Morgan is watching silently and is actually quite entertained by how 'God' apparently did rip the ships from the sky! Neat. All of those sermons have literally any use at all.

"I didn't really have a plan to find him, mind you. I decided to just go to a city I hadn't visited, and I knew where February was, so I went there."

February is not one of the seven cities. It is one of the ones that didn't make it past the first few decades.

"... I don't like where this is going, but please go on."

"We can hear it when plants get into red state. They—cry out. Back in Jeneora Rock, Nai and I heard a scream, and I think that was when the bomber ripped the blue plant off the grid.

"When I got close enough to February I could hear dozens of plants crying out."

"Oh. Oh no, I -- I know about this. A little, from the, from the engineer side of things, not with the -- name of the place, but. They wanted to try and terraform just the area around them, to support life, and. Linked up all of the plants they could to make it as efficient as possible and. Their plan was that it would work and they'd live or it'd fail and they'd all die. All or nothing."

Either way, all of the plants would be dead. It was meant to wring all that they possibly could from them. As efficiently as possible.

“What, turn this bit of inhospitable desert into Eden-or-whatever?”

“The specs we learned about had been for an arcology, with a dome and a biosphere inside, instead of just out in the open. But otherwise, yes.”

And obviously that did not pan out well for them. She hadn’t known the city name associated with the failed project.

He nods. "And Nai could hear it too. He got there before I did but he was so upset he was projecting really far, in retrospect I think I heard him before I heard the plants themselves. I, I knew what was happening there before I even got there..."

"What is this?"

The plants room is massive, which fits with the origin of this place: February was built on top of the ruins of one of the plant-carrier ships, which Nai had explicitly meant to keep intact when he hacked into the SEEDS ships' navigation programs. Rows upon rows of plants inside glass spheres lining up the walls with a metal walkway going through the middle of the chamber.

"They've hit production limit," says the man standing with him. All of the plants are red, and a warning alarm is blaring. "They put... too great a load on the plants. It cut them off from the higher dimension; they can't maintain their bodies. They're in terminal stage..."

Nai is only half-listening, walking ahead in a daze, seeing each and every one of his sisters shrivelled up, screaming in pain. He walks up to one of the spheres and places both hands on it. [Sister. I can hear you. I'll help you, I promise.] The mental words are tinged with worry, sadness, anger, and no small measure of uncertainty. He can't lie to them, he knows there's a chance he just won't be able to help at all. But there's no response; only screaming.

    "What are you doing here?" comes a voice from the entrance of the room. "This area is off-limits."

"What are you doing?" exclaims the man who's been walking with Nai, the man Nai has taken to just calling "the doctor" because he's been too angry to care about his name. "Why did you continue to overload them beyond the threshold? As if they're disposable?"

        The two men are armed and pointing their guns at the intruders. "Isn't it obvious?" asks the other one. "They are disposable. And we'll use them to build somewhere we can live."

Nai whirls around to fully face the two men, growling. But they can't hear him, of course. No one can, not any humans. All they see is a boy, one they think is harmless, at best confused.

He hates them.

    "It's the only way we can hope to prosper on this planet. It's this, or nothing."

        "Now leave. The Last Run will begin soon."

The doctor blanches.