Sporemageddon

I was squinting through the rather poor lighting in my little farm when the door opened. I glanced up and over, checking Sir Nibble’s reaction, but the panbadger didn’t fly into a rage so it was probably someone friendly.

I got confirmation as I heard someone coughing by the entrance, followed by two sets of feet walking over.

“Hello, Willow, Daisy,” I said.

“Heya, boss,” Willow replied. “Daisy, wanna run off and keep an eye out by the door?”

“‘Kay,” Daisy said. I listened to her feet pattering away, then refocused on what I was working on.

“What’s that?” Willow asked a moment later.

I carefully raised a hand in a ‘one moment’ gesture, then finished the work I was doing. It was delicate. I had the stalk of one mushroom and the cap of another, and I was carefully sewing them together.

Would this work? Probably not, but it was worth the attempt. I usually bound mycelium together, but that wasn’t always enough, and this particular mix didn’t seem to agree. I suspected that one of the parent mushrooms wasn’t gathering something correctly, but I couldn’t pinpoint what it was well enough to compensate by giving it more. Frustrating, but I’d figure it out. In the meantime, a more... Frankensteinien attempt wasn’t amiss.

“Just trying to come up with something new,” I said as I set the mushroom down and turned. Willow was looking better. She had grown another half inch in the last month or so and her cheeks were a little more plump. She was still on the thinner side of things, but she was definitely healthier.

It probably helped that she had enough to feed herself and Daisy, now. “That’s neat,” Willow said with a nod. I don’t think she actually caught on to what I was doing, but she seemed to trust me. According to everything I learned at the Academy, that was worth a lot on its own. “So, did you come with news, or are you just checking in?” I asked.

The farm was growing. There were two factors in that. First, the landlord didn’t seem to be in a great financial spot, so an offer to rent out the location next door was accepted. So far, we’d opened up a hole large enough to get to the other side, and then barricaded the front entrance. The room had been used as storage for crates filled with empty glass bottles. I was still working at finding a way to clear those out and make room.

Anyway, that was all an issue for later, something I set aside as Willow leaned up against one of the planter boxes and crossed her arms. “Sure did,” she said. “Get some news, I mean. I went around, asked some questions, and I memorized a bunch of stuff.”

“Oh?” I asked. I grabbed a towel, yoinking it out from beneath where Sir Nibbles was resting, then tsked at the amount of fur stuck to it. Still, it was the best that I had to wash my hands with.

Really needed to look into getting plumbing in here.

“Yeah. So, I asked around, and there’s mostly just four things that people take,” Willow said. She counted off on her fingers. “There’s laudanum, poppy, and Caciman leaf.”

I frowned. Laudanum was a commonly sold tincture, at least among the slightly wealthier sort. I’d actually seen more than one student taking it at the academy, and the nurse’s office had a stock of it with different herbal mixes.

Essentially, laudanum was a mixture of opiates and wine. Sometimes water. It was addictive, as most opiates were, and effective at what it did. It relieved pain, and even in smaller doses, gave a slight high.

There were plenty of laudanum addicts amongst the nobility. It was prescribed frequently, and cutting it off was difficult. But it was, culturally, treated as something akin to alcohol. It was just something people took sometimes.

Poppy was opium.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

It was the colloquial term for it. I wasn’t sure where it was farmed, but it wasn’t in this city, so it had to be imported from somewhere with more clement weather. Still, it was the base for laudanum and what more addicted sorts used. Again though, it was considered mostly a medical drug, a sedative and anesthetic.

Poppy addiction was more severe, but poppy supply was too low for it to be widespread. Mostly pharmacologists had it.

“Caciman leaf,” I repeated. “What’s that look like?”

Willow shrugged. “Never saw the leaf myself. But it’s supposed to come in leaves that you chew or like, a powder? It gives you a lot of energy. The elves make it.”

I blinked. Right, elves were a thing. Uncommon, but still around, though not in this city for whatever reason. “Interesting. What did you learn about it?”

“I asked around,” Willow said. “And it’s pretty common for factory workers. They make a tea out of the powder, or they chew the leaves. If you ever see a factory worker with black teeth, that might be it.”

That was starting to sound a bit like coca, the leaf that was the basis for cocaine. “Does anyone sniff it?” I asked.

She nodded.

Well, that might be it, then. But with a different name? Or it could be a different but similar plant. If I could graft and create new fungi, then who was to say that someone clever hadn’t done the same to the humble coca plant.

“Is it addictive?”

“Oh yeah. You don’t want to work in one of those factories. People get all moody and dark when they don’t get their powder or leaves, and they’re real tired, I guess.” Willow rubbed at her chin. “I heard that it makes them work real fast while they’re on it, but then you need to be chewing leaves all the time.”

Damn. I could see how that would work. Pay the employee with addictive drugs that make them faster on the chain, more awake, and addict them. Then probably charge for higher dosages once they were hooked.

Messed up, but not unheard of.

“Laudanum, poppy, and Caciman leaf, that makes three, but you mentioned four,” I said.

Willow blinked, then nodded. “Oh, right. The last is... I’m not sure?”

“You’re not sure?”

“If it’s like what you said,” Willow replied. “If alcohol doesn’t count, then I’m not sure about this one. It’s put in a bunch of drinks. Expensive ones, but...” Willow had a small satchel around her hip, something like a purse, but more utilitarian. She searched within, then came out with a small bottle.

She handed it over. It was glass, not too different from old soda bottles back on Earth, though maybe on the smaller side.

“Where did you get this?” I asked as I turned the bottle this way and that.

“It was four shilling,” Willow said, there was a definitive note of complaint in her voice, and I got that. Four shilling was about forty-eight pence, and that was four and a bit mushrooms sold. Honestly, it really wasn’t much. A shilling could get you a small tin of sardined fish, and three shillings a can of beans. So this was worth more than that, by a little.

I turned the label over to read it.

Jager’s Carbonated Dirt Kracker Soda

Made with real dirt and real kracktom

There was a crudely printed image of a short, stout man with a beard on the front. He had a pick over one shoulder and was smiling.

A dwarf? First elves and now dwarves?

There was no ingredients list, or nutritional values. That kind of stuff was unheard of.

Kracktom? That didn’t ring any bells. “What’s it do?” I asked.

“Makes you feel good,” Willow said. “And there’s supposed to be dirt in it?”

I frowned, then fished around in my pockets and found a six-shilling coin that I tossed to Willow. She caught it, looked at it, then grinned.

Then I used a nearby table-edge to pop the cap off the bottle. It fizzed, and Sir Nibbles raised his head at the sound.

I sniffed at the edge of the bottle. It smelled sweet, nectar-y, with a strong hint of... freshly tiled earth? I didn’t want to drink it, but... well, I had plenty of poison-resistances. So, I took a small sip and almost recoiled at the taste.

Fizzy, herby, strong. A very faint taste of alcohol, and something stronger, more earthy. And sugar. Lots of sugar. It was almost a syrup. The worst were the little particulates that stuck to my tongue.

“Gross,” I said.

“Some people love it,” Willow said. “And apparently if you drink enough, you start to feel very strange and calm.”

“I see,” I said. “I’ll have to look into its active ingredients. Thanks, Willow.”

“Sure thing, boss!” Willow replied. “So, what’s this all about?”

“You’ll see soon enough,” I said.

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