Human Arn took in the supreme effort Frip had already gone through in order to create this environment and was already calculating the paperwork inherent in getting it off the planet Earth.
"I am in sooooo much trouble," sighed Human Arn.
This quote is from this prompt from ages ago. @internutter/challenge-02771-g214-a-few-minor-obstacles
Human Arn looked at all the paperwork they've managed to get through and all that still had to get done and shook their head. Not much longer now. SO many studies on the animals, on ensuring there would be no invasive species problems, on ensuring they really were havenworlder safe for as huge a swath of the population as possible, and all the rest of the regulations the Alliance had for the sake of safety and the transport of animals. It was only when all the i's were dotted and t's were crossed, that they could give Frip the news. -- Anon Guest
It helped that the insects had a special diet. It helped that they had specific environmental needs. It meant that, should the containing terrarium break or otherwise leak, the escapees were less likely to become a problem. There was still a study of cloned beetles inside artificial environments meant to simulate key features of stations and ships throughout the alliance. This included some structures made of sucrose and cellulose.
Since it wasn't eucalyptus-flavoured, the cloned insects refused to eat anything there. It was one of the toxins so dire that nothing else wanted to touch it. That was a good thing. At least as far as Frip was concerned. There was, however, one bad thing about it all.
"The good news is that you can take them home," Human Arn began. "The bad news is that you have to do it by reducing the terrarium to the size of a standard sleep pod instead of a small room."
Frip took all this in with the same placid amenability that she had used in the launch of their project. As it happened, they had anticipated this problem and had been working on a "travel pod" for their pets. This included an even more compact dwarf variant of the beetle's favourite food. One that could almost count as a noxious weed for its regenerative capabilities.
Arn, who had been dreading this, started to wonder how much Frip knew about the obstacles in her way. "Just how thoroughly have you been planning all this?"
Frip dailed up a document on her datareader, showing Arn the resulting wall of bullet points. "I have been working towards goals set out in the manuals regarding the expatriation of Deathworlder species."
Ah. Well. That was more or less all right then. Arn breathed a sigh of relief. They weren't in that much trouble after all.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / Tsekhmister]
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