Miracles all around

 [Originally written September 17 2020]

Tom pawing uselessly at the ground was a heartbreaking sight to come back to. Edmund and Sauron evidently felt the same pity I did, because they stuck to him like glue. Sauron even took to tickling the Norn and sleeping curled up next to him, which I unfortunately didn’t get a screencap of. With the disabled child in good claws, Edmund went off to try his hand at beekeeping, which went poorly.

While making my initial rounds to get a sense of the state of the world, I found Beth in the tunnels under the incubator room, so I promptly caught her and brought her back up. Moments later, I discovered that Erika was down there too, having somehow gone unnoticed. I captured her as well and brought her home before heading back to Tom.

Determined to find out what was causing this gait issue, I once again cracked open his genetics, this time dumping the entire thing to a text file via the D-DNA Analyzer. I then searched for every instance of “limp” I could find until I suddenly stumbled upon a gene that didn’t look right, in a way which could account for his odd limp. I compared it to his mother, and sure enough, it didn’t match. 

Receptor

Gene 316: Limp when weak

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Sensorimotor”, Locus: “Special Gait 2^(Limp)”. Chemical: “Glycogen”. Analogue: Output = 35 - ((Signal - 16) * 255).

Organ: “Creature”, Tissue: “Sensorimotor”, Locus: “Special Gait 2^(Limp)”. Chemical: “Glycogen”. Analogue: Output = 35 + ((Signal - 16) * 255).

This gene is normally flagged as inverted – the output decreases as the signal increases. When the glycogen level falls below a certain very low amount, the creature begins to limp along weakly. In Tom, though, this gene is not inverted, so he limps as long as his glycogen is above that threshold! 

But how is that possible? It wasn’t flagged as a mutation, and his mother doesn’t have it. His father, Aaron, was the PMN that is packaged with Creatures 1, so shouldn’t have mutations… but when I opened his C2 genome, he had this same gene issue. Which is extremely odd because I don’t recall ever seeing him limping, and I’m sure his glycogen was above the dangerously low levels required to hit this gene’s tipping point. And this isn’t the conversion carrying over a mutation (as this gene is properly inverted in his C1 genome), nor a universal alteration (as Beth wasn’t affected). It is a mystery for the ages, but at least I know why Tom limps!

A notification informed me that a Norn had low ATP, and I found Damien in the strangest of places, drowning in a shallow pond. Whether a Norn can breathe is actually determined by where their feet are, so he actually could have died without my intervention despite sitting upright with his head above the surface. Why the game doesn’t just check the location of their head, I don’t know. I was apparently very quick on this recovery, as he didn’t even need an injection to get him back up and moving on being fished out of the pond.

Meanwhile, Beth and Erika made a second escape attempt, much to the astonishment of Edmund, who had made his way over to the desert and was quite delighed to see Norns! Apparently the sight of him was equally welcome to Beth and Erika, who tried to stop the lift at ground level to get off, but disagreed on how to do it. Unfortunately for them, I managed to send them back down to the incubator before they could escape!

Edmund carried on with his little journey. When he reached the end of the dock, he appeared to decide to test out the new and improved pufferfish, and did a perfect feet-first dive into the sea… and promptly did not sink! 

To my utter disbelief, he simply walked over to the other side and hopped up onto the dock! He then blew the horn of love to announce the arrival of Norn Jesus in Albia.

Baffled, I wrangled him onto the boat and sent him back across the sea, and led him home to the Calendar Tree. The story of the miracle inspired poor little Tom to proclaim that he was going to run, to no avail. I brought him a toy to lift his spirits again, and he was delighted to discover that he didn’t need to be able to walk to be able to rock!

Sadly, I realized that old Sauron had passed away at some point when I happened to look into the volcano and see a baby Grendel still in the egg room. I set to work immediately, teaching him basic vocabulary and leading little Morgoth out to his new home. I’ve got to say, even though I’m not crazy about their looks, the C2 Grendels have grown on me.

Meanwhile, back in the incubator room, I noticed that I hadn’t seen the mushroom patch in a while. Either Erika and Beth really like eating them, or the soil was depleted, which I’ve heard can happen. As I removed rotted carrots from the garden in preparation for planting a new batch, I had a brilliant idea – I dropped all the rotten carrots into a sort of compost pile where the mushrooms usually grow. Sure enough, soon the mushrooms were back! 

Inspired, I went to fill in another empty patch of the world – the area by the tantris bush. For whatever reason, the nut and tomato plants only grow around the edges, and won’t grow in the middle. I decided to plant some triffids, which worked! 

Damien was apparently interested in what I was doing, because he came up the lift to the mushroom bridge, crossed over, and went up another level to the new garden, where he chased some butterflies.

Meanwhile, Norn Jesus had evidently performed another miracle, healing the crippled Tom! In reality, I suspect what happened was that the condition to trigger another gait was met and it overrode the limping gait, allowing Tom to move about. Still, I’d count it as a little miracle in its own way!

With the world having calmed down, I decided it was finally time to get to my special secret! Erika and Beth were very surprised by the sudden appearance of an egg in their midst. Whatever could be inside? Out rolled a very strange little Norn. The girls’ maternal instincts kicked in and they contributed almost as much to teaching little Arwen her vocabulary as I did, and soon she was joined by tiny Boromir. There’s more to these Norns than their odd coloration, though, as we’ll soon see!