Chapter Three

"'The first step in addressing a situation you haven't encountered before is to forget everything you think you know about similar circumstances. The easiest mistake is to think that adding more effort and complexity to solving a problem is the sure way to its resolution. It usually is not."

"What good is the knowledge that sophisticated equipment and the wonders of chemistry can completely transform your surroundings when you have no access to said enhancements? After years of being shown the miracles brought forth by science one tends to forget that nature does more effortlessly. A leaf stuck in the ground sprouts roots, it doesn't get more miraculous than that."

 

Over the next couple of weeks Sarah transformed the kitchen into a small laboratory filled with countless glasses containing various mixtures of water and dirt. The mixes incorporated cabbage juice, some really slimy algae that she had fished from the nearby pond, a couple of really uncomfortable frogs and some fresh water clams. The other members of the group worked and ate around this weird set-up with a detachment that made Sarah wonder what it would take to perturb them.

She mixed some of the loamy dirt from her old lot in a bucket of water and left it outside by the kitchen door, where the sun baked it into a mini swamp that stunk of sewer and rotting matter. She tended to the putrid miasma with the patience and self-denial of a martyr, stirring unspoken malodorousness out of it every day to make sure the microorganisms saturated the mix. Just when her colleagues' looks made it clear that she will end up wearing the contents of the bucket if she didn't dispose of it soon she built up a small brim around the brick like debris and poured the liquid in.

If Sarah ever had a wish for solitary life it was fulfilled during the next two weeks when nobody came within fifty feet of the little lot which bore the same intense odor as the substance that enriched it. Nobody, that is, but Seth, who made it a habit to inspect the setting every day and assess the rottenness of the six buckets of muck in various states of putrefaction.

The big day finally arrived and Sarah brought a fistful of seeds and planted them in rows, careful not to let the silty mix wash off on the pavers. Seth was breathing down her neck, watching every move.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" Seth asked, frowning with concentration. Sarah didn't say anything but reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of healthy squirming earthworms.

 

***

 

Everybody waited patiently but by the end of the third week it was painfully clear that any other biological phenomenon was more likely to occur to those seeds than germination. Sarah swallowed her dejection and walked around sheepishly staring at the ground for days while she continued to brew the disgusting concoction that polluted everybody's olfactory sensibility within a half mile radius.

Six months passed, filled with failed seed startings and the ever present stench that now permeated Sarah's clothes and skin. She got so used to it that she almost couldn't smell it anymore. Every morning she mixed another bucket of dirt and then either started a new set of seeds or hope against hope to see something green emerge. She wasn't even aware that her gestures had become automatic and her mind traveled away from the disgusting task to the extraordinary labs in Christchurch where it contemplated visions of transparent roses and blue chamomile.

 

***

 

"Wake up! Wake up now!" Seth shook Sarah and almost dragged her out of bed while the first rays of dawn were still struggling on the horizon. Sarah put her shoes on feverishly and almost knocked Seth over as she ran to the door.

"Where is it? I can't see anything."

"Here, look here" said Seth. Sarah stared at a little indentation in the dirt, right next to the pavers, where something slimy but definitely of a greenish hue tinted the surface.

"This is lichen" said Sarah, who judging by Seth's reaction expected to find out that the heavens opened and replaced the stinky barrenness with lush greenery and abundance.

"It's alive!" Seth said, elated, "It's alive!"