Those lovely blossoms known as dandelions to us. Whole thing is edible, though better when its young. There are a few other plants like that where the entire thing is edible. Well, she was a botanist, not that she let her family, or the deregger, government knew she'd become so well educated. A well-educated young woman there? They'd kill her for being too smart and her family followed the CEO's like they were gods.
Everyone thought her too simple to be of any use, and the bawdy houses were closed down because the current CEO, unlike his father and grandfather, thought them vile pits of sin that distracted the workers. So, since she was considered useless, and there were no bawdies to stick her in, her family let her sit for hours in the field all alone with the odd yellow weeds that the outworlder had given her to play with. People in their world were starving, at least the poorest ones were, but was it not odd, those yellow weeds... now seemed to be everywhere. -- Fighting Fit
Sometimes, the best way to be smart is to play stupid. Orchid learned this as part of the Free Alliance Schooling on Tradeside Station. Her parents sent her because it was free, and because all the best people got an education from Alliance schools. Those "best people" got an education from Deregger establishments that was more akin to deprogramming, but that point was lost on her parents. Thank whatever deities that had decided to interfere in her destiny.
The CEO if Tradeside Station also managed to miss the memo, and his heir had a dim view of the bawdies, and shut them down as mercifully as possible when he took the reins. Also thank those deities. Orchid had learned her lesson and pretended to be very dim in order to please the old guard. As long as she was silly and frivolous, and scrubbed up well, she was not a threat, and therefore not in danger.
Her parents never understood her fascination with botany. Specifically, old Terran plants that could grow anywhere and frequently did. Some had been gengineered for specific purposes, but had become weeds in the modern era. Sunflowers, Tukkatukka, Kudzu, and Dandelions.
Somehow, Orchid got the seeds. Somehow, she grew and cherished those very plants. Somehow, her activity on various forums was not noticed by the executive class. Somehow, wherever she went on holiday, one plant or another would "break free".
..."somehow"... Orchid's blog was very interesting to the lower classes. The CEO's couldn't understand it. It was just dumb stuff about how people throughout history used weeds for things. They didn't particularly care, either. As long as people kept buying things, they were content.
Hardly anyone noticed the health spike in the indentured classes until it was too late. As far as they were concerned, there were massive savings from a drop in leeches taking advantage of the free clinics, and they liked not spending money on their indentured human resources. They didn't pay a jot of attention to why that might be happening.
Orchid had started a grass roots revolution. Or, more accurately, a weed roots revolution. Dandelions would grow in areas where no plant would consider. The gengineered sunflowers and tukkatukka were designed to grow literally anywhere and shove all the toxic badness into their leaves and stems for later extraction or disposal. Kudzu... just grew, but people could eat their leaves and roots.
They finally noticed when flour sales noticeably dropped. Enough people were making their daily breads out of sunflowers, tukkatukka, and kudzu that it had an impact on the hallowed economy. An investigation quickly uncovered the fact that those leeches on society would rather get unsanctioned crops for free rather than contribute to the greater good by buying brand-name wheat or corn flours.
Worse, elementary chemical labs all over the seedier sides of their settlements were dedicating themselves to extracting profit from plant waste instead of the drugs that had made so many easy excuses for their heavy-handed grasp of the law. Things were going to pieces. Their empire was crumbling around their ears, and they hadn't the faintest idea how it could have got this bad.
Of course they tried to ban the alternate food sources. Attempted to wipe them out. Attempted to make it a criminal offense to own land with it growing there. It was amazingly unsuccessful. Kudzu, for a start, could not be killed in a manner that was important. Anywhere it took root, it flourished. In the areas where harvesting it was criminalized... it ate the infrastructure. The CEOs were more likely to directly kill their human resources than the plants they sought to destroy.
Society as they knew it fell over rather quickly. The Alliance was only happy to help pick up the pieces. Unlike most Deregger Collapse Rescues, the lower stratas of the social order were remarkably healthier than those of higher standing.
Orchid greeted them with a bouquet of dandelions and sunflowers.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / qiiip]
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