Agricultural programs! …Shaddap, it’s important.
At least dinner that night was with Sally’s family: her husband Bolin seemed nice enough, and the children were delighted to have a sudden new uncle appear. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement to not discuss militia matters at the dinner table, too, which meant that conversation revolved around Bolin’s agricultural work. It was surprisingly interesting, actually.
But there wasn’t much in the way of magical agriculture, oddly enough. Bolin explained why. “Everything is brute force,” he said. “Want to zap something, or shove something else around? No problem. But if you say, try to make a tomato grow faster, it — it just doesn’t go so well.”
“Giant mutated tomato monsters?” Morgan asked, afraid the answer was going to be ‘yes.’
Bolin laughed. “Not that bad. More like exploding tomatoes, or the whole plant aging an entire year in a second, or the ground losing all the nutrients at once. We keep plugging at it, a little, but it’s going to take time, and we don’t have much to spare right now.”
“Don’t you know this already, Morg?” Sally said as she came back from tucking in the kids. “It’s not a secret. People worry about food all the time. Well, they don’t worry, but they keep an eye on our food supply.”
Morgan took another careful sip of the good booze; the stuff from Before, saved for family and suchlike. “Well, you know how it is, Sally. Nobody ever tells me anything.”
“You mean, you never ask about things you don’t care about.”
“What’s the difference?” said Morgan with a grin.