The seeds I now possessed weren’t stolen. They had been chosen.

  Not at random, not out of necessity, but because the Ether had whispered their names to me as I wandered the forest’s edge.

  Not words, of course—the Ether didn’t speak. But waves that guided me.

  Resonances between the atoms of the plants and those of the earth here, as if certain species were simply waiting for someone to give them a chance.

  I’d spent two days wandering through the undergrowth, fingers brushing stems, leaves, half-buried roots. The Ether had guided me toward them, not like a compass, but like an itch—a tension in the air when I neared the right ones.

  Red pumpkin seeds, sturdy, capable of growing in cold dampness if given enough light.

  Climbing beans, the kind that cling to rocky walls like tendrils, their pods storing water better than any container.

  And then wild buckwheat, not the cultivated kind, but a smaller, hardier variety—the kind that survives early frosts by pressing its seeds into the soil like a clenched fist.

  And there was something else.

  Cupped in my palm, nearly invisible, seeds I hadn’t taken, but found—hazelnuts still wrapped in their green bracts, fallen too soon from the tree but not dead, just waiting.

  Jerusalem artichoke roots, knotted and tenacious, unearthed near a dried-up stream, their tubers already swollen with promise.

  Even a handful of black elderberries, dried but not desiccated, their hard seeds like ebony beads, ready to burst into life at the slightest encouragement.

  I spread them on the damp earth between my knees. Perfect. Not because they were rare or precious, but because the Ether spoke around them. Not uniformly—some glowed brighter than others, as if their potential was already there, latent, ready to explode.

  — Alright. Let’s see what you’ve got, my beauties.

  I pressed my index finger against a pumpkin seed. Not to plant it. Not yet. Just to listen.

  The Ether reacted before I even forced anything. A golden shimmer ran through the shell, like a spark on a fuse. I felt its structure—the carbon chains of cellulose, the starch reserves coiled in tight spirals, the membranes ready to swell with water. Everything was there. All I had to do was… adjust.

  No magic. Just physics.

  I took a breath, focusing my will not on the seed itself, but on the spaces between its atoms.

  The Ether flowed in, obedient, like liquid in a capillary. The bonds tightened. The energy reserves densified. The cell walls thickened, not randomly, but following patterns I sensed more than understood—fractals of optimized growth, as if the plant already knew what it needed to become.

  The seed swelled under my finger.

  Not much. Just enough for its shell to crack, revealing a sprout twice the normal size, its cotyledons already plump and straining. I pulled my hand away. The transformation continued on its own, the Ether clinging to the seed like a dog to a bone.

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  — Good. Very good.

  I moved to the next one. A bean. Same principle, but this time I pushed further—not just the size of the sprout, but the structure of the future pods. More fiber. More water storage. Secondary roots that would spread like greedy fingers through the soil.

  The Jerusalem artichoke was tougher. Its tubers were already survival machines, packed with inulin and nutrients. So I directed the Ether elsewhere: branching. A single plant would yield ten. Twenty. An underground network capable of colonizing a square meter of soil in weeks. Maybe days.

  Here, everything seemed possible beyond my understanding.

  When I looked up, all the seeds had changed.

  Some had already sprouted, their white radicles already greedily burrowing into the damp earth. Others waited, swollen like balloons ready to burst.

  I sat back on my heels, dirty hands, forehead slightly damp.

  — OK. So I can make things grow. Great. Now I just need to figure out how to keep them alive without sunlight.

  One problem at a time.

  I began planting them in neat squares around my hut.

  Two hours later, my fingers were numb and my neck stiff from the effort.

  I sat cross-legged near the freshly planted rows, my back against a flat rock I’d dragged over to serve as a marker. The Ether still hummed around me, but less violently than before. As if it had grown accustomed to my presence.

  Or as if I had grown accustomed to it.

  In the corner of my normal eye, I saw the first shadows of evening stretching across the cave walls. But in the other vision, the garden was already different.

  The seeds I’d touched glowed faintly, like embers under ash. Not visible light, no—just that golden Ether glow accumulating around them, as if it were feeding them.

  — So I just invented farming 2.0.

  A laugh escaped me, dry and a little nervous. I was playing mad scientist with the laws of biology, and all I could do was crack bad jokes.

  — You’re losing it, Paul.

  The next morning, I woke with a dull ache in my temples—again—and no coffee to dull it.

  I dragged myself to the makeshift garden and crouched.

  The shoots were there.

  Not fragile little stems, no. Plants already five centimeters tall, with broad leaves of a too-intense green. As if someone had hit fast-forward just for them. I reached out, hesitated, then brushed a leaf with my fingertips.

  It was warm.

  Not burning. Just… warmer than the surrounding air. As if photosynthesis was running in overdrive.

  — OK. So it works.

  I stepped back, surveying the whole thing. The modified plants stood in neat rows, their leaves almost perfectly symmetrical. The ones I’d planted without touching—a blind test—were smaller, paler. Normal.

  — Interesting.

  The Ether didn’t just accelerate growth. It structured the matter around it too. The modified plants had thicker stems, roots that dug deeper into the soil. As if their DNA had been… optimized.

  — Damn. I just made GMO crops without a lab.

  A shiver ran down my spine. Not fear. Excitement. Because if this worked for plants…

  — Could it work for… something else?

  I shook my head.

  — One thing at a time, Paul.

  First, survive.

  Then, understand.

  And then, maybe—maybe—find a way not to end up as a mutant vegetable in my own garden.

  I spent the rest of the day observing.

  The plants grew before my eyes—literally. The stems lengthened, the leaves unfurled as if in fast motion. The Ether swirled around them in tight spirals, as if being pulled by their growth.

  And then there were the side effects.

  The soil around the modified plants was darker, richer. When I dug a little with my fingers, I saw white filaments—mycelial threads—glowing faintly with Ether. As if the fungal network had expanded to take advantage of the extra energy.

  — So I didn’t just speed up plant growth.

  I’d enriched the whole ecosystem.

  I grinned to myself.

  — Not bad for a first try.

  I lay on my back, hands behind my head.

  — Did I just create an Ether hotspot?

  The idea made me raise my eyebrows.

  If that was the case… then this garden wasn’t just a food source.

  It was a battery.

  A reserve of energy that I could maybe… tap into.

  I closed my eyes.

  — Tomorrow.

  Tomorrow, I’d try to figure out how to draw from it.

  Today…

  Today, I was hungry.

  And very soon, I’d have something to eat.