plant-bioreactor-answers

[plant-bioreactor-answers]

I should have done better. From wherever you are, I understand if you cannot forgive me. All I can do is leave a fresh flower outside of your tomb. Happy Birthday... Tesla. R.S.

[plant-bioreactor-answers]

HAPPY NEW YEAR, DR SAVEREM! May your ticket to 2025 be a fulfilling one.

Oh, thank you so much! That is so sweet! And a HAPPY NEW YEAR to you, too! May your blank ticket lead you to great things! .... Oh, wait a minute. 2025? You said 2025? Are you sure that you are not addressing my great, great, great grandmother? It is 2456 where I am. The twins just had their first New Year's party (no, I did not let them drink, we had sparkling cider). Some of the Plants in the electricity module created a simulated "fireworks" show within their bulbs for them. We're measuring in Stardate Standard now. Vash is still wondering why we aren't measuring time in Billions because of the estimated age of the universe (also, kid loves dinosaurs), but the human mind is limited and that's how it goes, I said. So cute! Anyway, yes, Happy New Year wherever and whenever you are! _ R.S.

[plant-bioreactor-answers]

Oh! Oh no… that answers so many questions, I’m very sorry for asking them.

You sounded worried about where I found the files?

I found those files in a very dusty book of the ship’s library. They were hidden in an old picture book, my mother works on the ship so I handed them off to her

Apologies again

A dusty book? The SEEDS ships do carry paper books, but relatively few compared to the crystal-encoded files... Hmmm. *Looks at the parameters for this blog* Ah, yes. I worked this blog through a Plant-relay into social media records, therefore, what I am typing exists outside of time. I may be speaking to you in real time. I may be speaking to you from the deep past. What year is it where you are? Just curious. Also, yes, depending upon the circumstances, your life could be in danger from accessing these files. I know, myself, that I am going to have to do a lot of scrubbing work if I am to keep that which is most precious to me safe. R.S.

[plant-bioreactor-answers]

Please don’t cry Miss Saverem. Remember that your future is shrewd of you and you have the opportunity to remedy the mistakes you made with Tesla. You have to extend the forgiveness you teach others to yourself.

This is very sweet. *Sniff.* Thank you. I needed that. R.S.

[plant-bioreactor-answers]

SO THE BLONDE GHOST'S NAME WAS (IS??) TESLA?!

.......is she even a ghost? Do plants have spirits??? Ooooh man, is this karma for all the times I made fun of the plant cults?

*Looks over earlier question* Well, if you are sure that a local child is not sneaking into the Plant facility to play pranks... It very well could be her? The Plants do have a different kind of consciousness than ours - collectively. It is believed that their true form (their "spirits" if you will) do exist on another, higher plane of existence. Maybe... maybe... *God, I'm crying*... what my crew did to ravage her poor body did not affect the rest of her. Maybe she is still trying to reach out to Humanity? Tesla. Her name was Tesla - not "The Subject." I... I'm breaking down again. I'm sorry... I... *bawling.* R.S.

[plant-bioreactor-answers]

In regards to the recent Ask that I was unable to answer right away... I think I have finally gotten this communications relay to work! First of all, how did you find these files of which you speak? I am afraid that your life may be in grave danger. Second, I must make a confession. If you have, indeed, found the files related to a "Project Tesla," well... She was an Independent Plant - the first ever born to the knowledge of Ship 5, at the very least. It happened in the early morning of May 3rd, 2405. There was a full crew on shift at the time, of which I was a part. She appeared for all the world to be just like a human infant, save for her rapid growth when we placed her in observation. It seemed if you simply blinked, she started crawling and babbling. I was a part of the observation and witnessed her astonishing intelligence as she was quick to engage in playing with toys and toddling up to me... Great... I'm getting emotional now... *Sigh* Tesla's story is... it's not a happy one. A Dr. William Conrad and I believed that Tesla should continue to be observed and engaged with. We argued that she had limitless possibilities as a potential communicator between us and the Plants. And, well, she was a little girl - regardless of the rapid pace of her growth. I proposed adoption, myself. Our objections were... overruled. Tesla was taken to a medical bay upon the ship where she was made subject to repeated scanning of her tissues, observations of reactions to stimuli, attempts to force production, and various surgical inquiries of a biomedical nature. My crew was basically taking her apart piece by piece to see what made her tick and I didn't do enough to stop it. The on-duty captain gave me excuses, "pretty" words about progress and science, and how we owed it to the Plants and to the future of the mission to understand this entirely new species of Plant. I did fight. I dissented and I could gain a graduate degree in the self-taught law I subjected myself to in a bid to force the crew to relent with potential legal consequences and arguments from the world convention - my arguments were dismissed on the grounds that human rights only applied to humans and that even animal rights held no sway in the case. Every day I think about how I might have done something more decisive. A one-woman mutiny (or even a two-person mutiny with Conrad) would have been doomed to failure, but it would have been SOMETHING. Tesla lived for only 229 days, most of them miserable. The rest of the crew had stopped some of their work by the time she had developed tumors and had switched track from study to trying to save her, but it was too late. Her remains were dissected and preserved upon the ship. I leave flowers in the medical wing every week and ask forgiveness in case her spirit might linger about her tomb. Oh, God... I was... glad that my next period of active duty was a solo hitch - Navigation with the ship on power conservation mode. I just didn't want to see a human face after that... not for a long time. I know that we can be better, but... what we did to a miracle... it was the worst of us. I'm so sorry... Tesla... R.S.

[plant-bioreactor-answers]

Miss rem (doctor rem?) Um, I ran across a bunch of rather confusing records on a plant experiment named Tesla, what’s the deal there?

[REDACTED!] I'll get back to you later. Hold on... stubborn communications relay! R.S.

[plant-bioreactor-answers]

Out of character: Please address any Asks that are NOT related to Plants / in-character to @littleapocalypsekitten - Meow and Kaboom! That is my main. Even fandom-questions that are not specific to Plants and roleplaying that you're asking Rem Saverem things. This is the "Ask Rem Saverem How Plants Work" blog. My explosive-kitten blog is my main random-junk blog. I re-opened my Asks there. I am not reopening them right now on my other fandom blogs because it's a way to get swamped. Tumblr has always been awash in go fund me asks, even before certain world crisis-things have made them the only thing anyone gets in their inboxes. If you have a Trigun-related ask or a She-Ra related Ask or Zelda or whatever, I'm fine with answering it on my main, even though I don't accept anons there (for Internet-fighting reasons, I learned real quick after having anon on with my She-Ra fandom for a while). I accept anons here to ask about Plants, the main works differently. The go-fund-mes, sadly, are a thing I don't have scratch for right now (I *really* am pressed, almost to the point of sending a go-fund me out into the ether, myself if my job keeps cutting back hours). When I can do charity again, I'm probably going to be chipping in for World Central Kitchen (even though their trucks keep getting bombed).

[plant-bioreactor-answers]

Message from lost-technology: Out of character, Not-Rem: This blog is a roleplay blog. It is an askblog, but it only takes asks related to the Plant-species from Trigun. I do not take Go-Fund Mes here. I doubt that people who send out those things are paying attention, though, they are merely desperate and sending out feelers on all blogs with open askboxes. All non-Plant / roleplay asks will be deleted. This is not because I am heartless, this is because this is not the place for them. (I currently have Asks closed on my other blogs because I feel guilty for not being able to give. I might reopen Asks on my blog, even though my status is the same).

[plant-bioreactor-answers]

How do plants... Make things? Like, aren't they just pulling in the energy? How does matter appear?

This is the great mystery, actually. We are not entirely sure how they do it! We believe that they work upon the quantum level, assembling materials on a molecular level - something comparable to, well, alchemy, for lack of a better term. They seem to pull matter from a literal dimension that is superimposed upon ours - like if you compared the 3 dimensional world to the 2 dimensional world, a Plant would be like a sphere with some part of it dipping into the 2 dimensional plane as a circle and able to draw from the 3D world into the 2D world, while, at the same time, making what it draws accessible to the inhabitants there. So, from our perspective, Plants exist in a liminal Space and they live outside of Time. I know that my answer has probably given you more questions. Welcome to the life of a Plant Engineer! _ R. S.

[plant-bioreactor-answers]

.....what's this about gorilla glue?

It can fix just about anything. Well, except SEVERELY damaged Plant bulbs and a broken heart, I guess. _ R. S.

[plant-bioreactor-answers]

Rem should be allowed to fist fight the system as a treat.

(Out of character) - Oh, I've got plans...

[plant-bioreactor-answers]

You mentioned the low chances of a plant surviving a bulb transfer.

If the bulb only has a small crack, is there no way to just seal it from the outside then later flush out any possible contaminated fluid without having to do a transfer at all??

If the crack goes all the way through to the Plant's side of the bulb, then no. If it is a tiny ding on the outside, such as one might see on the lip of a chipped tea-saucer, welllll... I heard a story about an engineer successfully fixing one of those with Gorilla Glue once. _ R. S.

[plant-bioreactor-answers]

I came across this theory when browsing the Gunsmoke Lost Technology Database today. It is not entirely correct, as it fails to account for the First Entity, but it is remarkably close to a working hypothesis that my crew developed when encountering [REDACTED]. She had a NAME, dammit! The Dependants were never meant to reproduce without direct human involvement. The process was similar to cultivating certain human-dependent agricultural cultivars, except perhaps a little more direct. And then an energy Plant, [REDACTED] surprised us with the spontaneous generation of Subject [REDACTED]. Where did you get your photographs, OP? We believe that the Plants are evolving - and it is entirely possible that an independent reproductive cycle is a part of this evolution, however this was never tested because [REACTED] - Oh, damn you forever, Conrad! THEY ARE CHILDREN! If I can only get past these locks, the world will know! [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] *** SEEDS Automated Message: Once again, Miss Saverem, you are treading upon very dangerous ground. Do we have to remind you once again to cease and desist? Oh, screw you, system! (It's not like I'm not already dead)! _ R. S.

Alternation of Trigun Plant Generations

So, not a bird post, but they have feathers so it counts, right? Right?? *sweats*

I was recently introduced to Trigun, and am absolutely fascinated by the reproduction cycle of Plants. Its time to, once again, put my degree to good use. Here goes nothing:

So at first glance it seems pretty damn fantastical. The main character(and main villian) are the, presumably asexual, reproductive products of a creature with significant physiological differences from them. This is strange for asexual reproduction, as such a thing usually results in a sort of “clone” of the parent. Or does it?

Enter, the life cycle of a fern.

The diagram is a little confusing, but the main point is that the diploid fern(top) asexually reproduces to create the haploid fern(bottom), which looks very little like its parent. The haploid fern can then sexually reproduce to create a another diploid fern, and the cycle goes round and round. Sound familiar? Don’t worry, I’m about to explain it in excrutiating detail. I even made a diagram!

So similar to the fern life cycle. In Trigun, the Dependent Plant can asexually reproduce to create an Independent Plant.

First, up at the top of the diagram, the Independent Plant reaches a state of sporing.

This happens very rarely, as there are only two instances of it occurring on SEEDS ships, and no instances on Gunsmoke/Nomansland. It does seem to, however, become more common on earth, as more Independent Plants arrive at the very end of the manga. I would theorize that this has to do with an incredibly extended lifespan leading to a very late onset of sexual maturity, but that is a theory for another day.

Second, moving down and to the right on the diagram, the Dependent creates spores. These take the form of humanoid infants.

Now, this part of the diagram assumes that the known Independent Plants (ie Vash/Knives and Tesla) are actually male and female(and aren’t functionally sexless like Dependents), which is how they could theoretically reproduce sexually. This is where things diverge from general fern life cycles, as the two sexes are in separate entities not combined into one plant. Therefore, when the Dependent Plant spores, it would create either X(female) or Y(male) Plants originating from one half or the other of its own XY genes. This does align with fern reproduction somewhat, as Haploid plants are created from only one half of a copy of the Diploid plant’s genes. In ferns, both sides of the genes have both male and female characteristics, but for Plants it seems to be split, creating Independents with separate sexes.

Third in the diagram, moving to the bottom. The spores grow into recognizable Independent Plants, with far more humanoid forms than Dependents. These guys would then, at sexual maturity be able to sexually reproduce to create a Dependant Plant zygote(fancy word for baby), which would then grown into a fully formed Dependent Plant. And thus, the cycle continues.

Obviously, we do not directly see this in Trigun, as for the majority of the story, there are only two(presumably male) Independent plants. This cycles has clearly not been documented in the era of the SEEDS ships, so the initial method of plant reproduction was likely simple cloning with some genetic engineering involved. But it is more than possible that natural Plant reproduction was determined on earth, which would be why we see more independents showing up with the earth ships at the end of the manga.

Additional Notes:

Returning to something I mentioned earlier on, dependent plant sporing was not occurring on Gunsmoke/Nomansland. I would guess that this is due to the levels of stress placed on the Dependents by the human populations relying on them. Had the humans been able to reduce the strain on their Plants, they may have been able to produce Independents, therefore allowing for the creation of more dependents, further reducing the strain on existing dependents. But that is just my pet theory.

I have additional theories on the mechanisms behind Dependent Plants resource production, and what an ideal environment of multiple plants living freely might look like, but that is for another post.

Thank you for reading! I honestly don't know if I will do any more non-bird metas, but if you liked this, you can always look at #bfw(my general works tag). As always, my ask box is open to suggestions for bird stuff for me to check out!

[plant-bioreactor-answers]

I know a lot of people have compared plants to alien jellyfish but am I the only one who thinks they kinda resemble succulents?

Very observant! Their patterns resemble some of the natural patterns on succulent flora very much! The details of their creation are a carefully-hidden secret (even from us senior engineers), but it is said by some that they encompass some genetics from every class of Earth-life. (They are mostly human, actually, but have a little bit of everything - including the famous immortal jellyfish and various types of flora, including the succulent varieties).

_ R. S.

[plant-bioreactor-answers]

My friend accidentally got some bulb fluid splashed onto her skin. Luckily, none of it touched her eyes and face area, nor did she inhale/ingest any.

We've washed it off with soap & water and gotten rid of the old clothing. What else do we have to do? What side effects should we look out for?

You got it off right away! Good! If you had let it linger, it would have eaten into the skin. Since you got it off quickly enough not to witness any ill effects, using a salve of aloe vera should do the trick to heal whatever damage may have occurred. It will probably feel like a bad sunburn for a few days. The skin might peel. Watch out for an itchy, bumpy rash over the next several days. That may be the sign of a serious reaction. You're probably in the clear, though! _ R. S.

[plant-bioreactor-answers]

Could dependent & independent plants undergo photosynthesis? If so, why are neither of them green from chlorophyll?

You have to remember that the term "Plant" is drawn more from the English-language term for a production facility (a nuclear power plant, a manufacturing plant) than from "plant" as in the life-Kingdom of flora. It is not that they do not have some genetics drawn from flora in their makeup, but they aren't the same and constitute their own entire kind of Life. However, yes, they are capable of photosynthesis, on a mild level. It runs upon a different spectrum, however. Green flora are green to our eyes because that is the color they are not using and are reflecting back. Plants tend to reflect out blue, absorbing the other colors of the spectrum, and again, they do it on a much lower level than Flora. As with many things Plant, we still aren't entirely sure about how they do it yet. _ R. S.