L: Less than a year after the worm incident, I's in my lab working. Jevoi was off playing with Gank, when I had a visitor.
In the lab-cum-store sits twenty potted pepper plants across four tables with protective domes. Each table has the same arrangement of five different types pepper. Between each set, stands a different colored glowing crystal; between the tables, a cross wall containing safely coated lead plates.
Dr. Ling sits at her counter with a red pepper cut open on a tray, seeds carefully extracted in a pile. Her writing notes for each plant's current condition and exposure schedule next to it.
"After three weeks, the peppers appear to be unchanged externally under the red light," she mutters to herself, "But the seeds have grown in size. Taste testing will need to be redone."
She sighs, for she is unable to taste a difference in these supposedly hot peppers. The capsaicinoids have no effect on her, nor her current assistants, but to the mammals it was intended to repel, its flavor is valued highly. If the taste is too different, or worse, unpalatable, her work will never be accepted; it's already hard enough to assure most people that her food is safe. Sure, goblins will eat anything, but elves and dwarves? They have standards, traditions. No matter what affects she's had politically, she still had to fight for every plant, for every scrap of funding. Three steps forward, two steps back, until she dies. A never-ending-
The sudden rapping on her door awakens Ling from her thoughts. The stress is getting to her again. She walks to the door, preparing how she'll react. Is this for passage or medicine? 'Or maybe love?' hopes Ling. She opens the door slowly. "Who's it?"
Standing outside Ling's house is a uniformed gnome woman. The curly haired cutie is someone Ling vaguely recognizes, "Good eve~ning~, Dr. Ling," she says.
"Tanglepork?" Ling asks, "I already gave your boss my files. Did ya come just to come?" She licks one eye in her approximation of a wink.
"That's Deputy Tanglepork, now," says the gnome, gesturing to her badge. "I need to ask you a few questions; it's serious. May I?"
"Come on in, Porky," says Ling, "Need a break from plants."