This little sister decided to experiment on a new planet…she planted a chicken egg. And what arose from that… A family business. Who knew that little sister was so smart?
This is a story about how one egg changed our world.
Gillian’s a great little sister, but you can pretty quickly spot that little bit of crazy in her.
Like when she shredded fresh beets from our garden into the clothes washer. Hoping to turn her shirt’s white color into that strange magenta-crimson-blue. Which it did, along with two of mom’s best work blouses. Mom got pretty angry, but when she cooled down, we all talked about how to control experiments, how to plan for possible consequences. Then Mom wore those blouses to the Council meetings, telling everyone G colored them for her.
Another time, G visited Bradley’s house and found his dad’s tablet open to the scheduling app for inbound orbiting cargo. While he made lunch, G used the app to revise the offloading sequence so that the shipment for the candy and dry goods shops got priority over hospital supplies and metal for the forges. That resulted in another series of stern talks.
Stuff like that happened about every week. Once, Ms. Smitherman in the clothing shop pulled me aside and asked why can’t your sister be more like you, Allison?
I smiled, looking around at the perfectly-boring store, and replied because someone here needs to think outside the box.
But of course, Gillian’s most-famous moment as a kid started when she buried that egg.
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I know this’ll go off-world, so to tell you the egg story, I need to explain what it’s like here. Alpha Centauri A is a G2 yellow star, like Earth’s sun, but a bit brighter. It has two habitable planets, a and b, plus a bunch of other planets and moons. We live on planet a, and because it sounds stupid to say ‘Alpha Centauri A a,’ we renamed our planet Kinnara. That’s Indian for ‘centaur’ and it retains those two a’s, which people like.
Despite our air being close to Earth’s mix, after an hour or so, we go back inside, or else we’d need breathing equipment to stay outside any longer. But our plants love the air and soil here, so our primary industry is farming. Farming plants. We don’t raise animals for meat, because we grow that in tanks. But some folks do keep a few chickens, for their eggs, and the birds are smart enough to go outside to eat, but get back in when they need better air. Dad invented airlocks for the chicken coops.
When we arrived, we found plants, from shrubs all the way down to algae, but no animals.
So, Gillian comes up to me one morning, beaming, and I say, what’d you do now? She says I planted an egg. I say, say what? She says no, really, I did.
So we talk about it. She’s only seven then, but of course, she knows all about seeds and how they sprout and become plants. And our neighbor told her that when a rooster puts his seed into the egg, then the chicken’s egg becomes fertile. G figures a fertilized chicken egg has a seed in it. So she plants one, to see what it might grow into.
She shows me where. Not a bad spot, actually. In the sun, and close enough to get to easily, but away from foot and vehicle traffic. She marks the spot with a little ribbon on a stick, and waters the soil there every day. It’s our secret.
I want to tell her it’s hopeless, but an inventor learns more from failures than successes, and you never want to squelch the innovative spirit, so I smile and say good luck.
Who wants to get too worked up over one wasted egg, right?
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Come see! Come see! Gillian screams at me, dragging me out of bed. A plant’s sprouted where she buried that egg. Little thing, with gray-green leaves. Not much to look at.
I tell her, G, it’s most likely that some native seed sprouted here. You know it’s not your egg, right?
She juts her jaw out at me, saying, well, we don’t know that for sure yet, do we? And she keeps watering it.
When she makes me go back out there again, a couple weeks later, I have to admit it does look different from other plants, with its fuschia feathery fronds.
The next time she shows it to me, she stands next to it and those fronds wrap around her, like blankety wings. See, she says proudly, we’re friends.
She strokes the shrubby vine, and then it strokes her in return.
OK, I admit, now that is different.
Dad went bonkers, and called in everybody.
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Nobody’d thought of our worldwide web! An underground network, built and maintained by native fungus. Just like on Earth. Only this fungus thinks. And, apparently, manipulates. It didn’t much care about our Earth plants, and it didn’t react to our worms or bacteria, but that egg!
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Fast forward to today. Mom and Dad own Kinnara Sentiplants, and G is VP of Product Development of plant-animal hybrids. She never made it to high school.
We ship everywhere. Some are pets, and of those, my favorite is the Krimmzlop, because you can suck on its sweet fruitibud while you pet the soft, furry trunk. It makes you happy two ways.
Dad’s learning how to communicate with another new plant, the Kinnawonder. G grew that one from a piece of her hair wrapped around a native Klexicad seed. That plant is teaching us all sorts of new farming tricks.
And, as I write this, the wildest thing is that a potted Kinnslyn’s learned to point at letters, to make words! It’s asking Dad to invent a battery-powered cart for it, with a communicator panel, so the Kinnslyn can move itself around and talk.
A university’s rising within sight of our farm, and we welcome all the scientists. Tourists flock here too, and those pushy crowds–ugh. It’s not easy, dealing with a cultural revolution.
I’ll close this by saying, good job, G! We’re sure glad you planted that egg.
(the end)
