April 27th, 2013
09:29 EST
I didn't really appreciate how
big this place is.
The entrance is right next to the workshop and the greenhouses, and obviously I didn't
fly here. And I know the idea that Lex Luthor ordered everything in LexCorp to be lead lined is kind of a
joke, but x-ray vision gets kinda blurry if you try staring through too many walls. And they've got trees along the road…
But from here I can see all of the annual crops, and the smaller flowering plants, and it's all laid out in giant rectangular fields, with strong steel fences dividing them up.
The fields are
really big, actually.
"How did you get this whole area this flat?"
"Hm?" Miss Teschmacher tears her own eyes away from the view. I… It might be a bit rude to think this, but I don't think that human eyes could really let her take this in like mine can. "Oh, huge amounts of low and semi-skilled labor with digging equipment. It's not exactly the
Grand Canal, but it
was fairly impressive to watch it all come together."
Each of the fields are fenced off from each other, with computer controlled gates between them. There are gravel and dirt roads, and… Drainage trenches at regular intervals. The robots
are a bit like weird-shaped combine harvesters, and-.
I watch as one turns off a road and then… Lowers itself, retracting its road wheels and lowering the broader and more rugged off-road wheels before manoeuvring onto the planting area.
"The plan required that we have precise control of the drainage and microbial content of the soil. The first thing that was produced here was the topsoil that now covers the farm."
"Do you use magic?"
She looks a little surprised. "Magic?"
"Yeah. Y'know. Gotham got buried in vines two years ago, and then there's what the Accala have done in Brazil… It looks like a growth industry. And.. I heard about LexCorp making that warded paper. But I… Guess we shouldn't talk about that."
"Perhaps that would be best." She gestures to a nearby SUV. "Shall we?"
She takes the driver's seat, and I climb into the passenger seat next to her. Huh, it's fully electric. I guess when the whole farm is run by robots you might as well take advantage of the fact that you have to run power cables everywhere anyway.
"But it's still a big deal. I just… Thought that even if most people can't be P-.
Pamela Isley or Swamp Thing… It's something people could do?"
She presses the accelerator, and pulls the SUV out of the parking lot and onto the road.
"I see what you mean. But there are two problems. Firstly, while LexCorp has… Ah, tried to make connections with the magical community, there simply aren't that many magicians in America. Not ones with abilities that can be used on any sort of scale. As far as we can tell, magicians like Giovanni Zatara are actually
very unusual, and are just
born with far more raw power than most people. And then, when it comes to growing plants better, most of the magicians who could do something we might have been able to work with didn't want to work with us."
"Why not?"
"Well, they were…
Mostly… Ah…
How do I put this? Well, they liked the simple life."
"Simple? Like, living in a cabin in the woods and living on what they grow for themselves?"
"That's…" She looks a little awkward. "More or less it. People who reject modernity don't have much time for agri-business. So between them and the rarity of powerful and knowledgeable wizards, it hasn't really been something that we've been able to try out. I think that.. some part of the company was trying to reach out to Atlantis, but between KordTech and the Orange Lantern Corps, most of their more adventurous magicians were already fully employed."
We stop at a gate, and she leans out of her seat and holds up her badge to a scanner. A moment passes and then there's a happy-sounding
beep and the gate starts to open.
"How about just buying a magic book?"
"We…" She nods. "We did do that. The problem was that Atlanteans live under water, and the spells needed to grow things in the air are very different. Seaweed just isn't a mass appeal product on land, and I don't think that's going to change."
She drives us through the gate, and it closes behind us. This field… Looks like potatoes. Two planting robots are still planting the far side of the field.
"So what's happening in
this field?"
"Ah, with these potatoes we're trying to increase their nutrient count while trying to make them grow a more regular size. They're also a little hardier and more disease resistant than most current potato brands, but those are modifications that we've already researched."
"Is the size of potatoes really a problem?"
"I wouldn't say that it's a
problem, but there's an optimal size where the plant efficiently turns nutrients into potato without creating a potato that's awkward to dig out or use in factory processes. If we can make every potato the same size you'd be
amazed at the savings we can make on large volumes."
"I guess I'm used to smaller scale farming." I shrug. "Amazons have only been farming potatoes for about a year."
"Oh? I assumed they either weren't interested in outside produce or they'd have started growing them decades ago."
"Ah… Orange Lantern… He brought a shipping container of outside food to Themyscira a few years ago. That got them interested in a few things."
And it
did, but the reason they started farming potatoes was because Cassie started nagging them about making fries. And I don't think that Lex Luthor knows about Cassie yet.
I look over to where one of the robots has finished a row. It pulls onto the road, turns in a circle and then drives back onto the growing bed, giving me a better look at its digging tools. It has a kind of cylinder cutting tool, which it punches into the ground and then uses to dig out a cylinder of earth, watched by a whole bunch of cameras so that the robot can see exactly what the soil is doing. The seed potatoes are in a little hopper just to the side, and a separate arm picks it up and plants it once the robot decides that the hole is the right depth. Then the cylinder shakes and deposits the earth back in broken lumps. And then the robot drives forward-.
Huh. It's working on several plantings at once. Two rows of four, then it drives forwards for the next set.
"Do you think they'd be interested in anything we could provide?"
"Ah… They
might be? But I don't think they'd want plants that don't produce their own seeds. Or… If that's what you sold them, they've got a few priestesses of Demeter, so…"
She raises her eyebrows. "They could make them fertile?"
"I don't know. Probably. Or Demeter could."
We turn a corner, and start driving parallel to the path being taken by the closest robot.
"Do the robots use the same tools for everything, or do they have different modules they can swap in and out?"
"Different modules, and the machine that swaps them in and out is entirely automated. It can even do basic maintenance, though Mister Flaherty handles anything complicated."
The robot finishes its planting action and then stops, retracting its tools inside its chassis. Then it deploys its road wheels… While keeping its dirt wheels down?
Did I get the wrong-?
It turns on the spot, churning up the earth around it, and then drives towards the road we're on.
"Okay. Ah. Is it supposed to be doing-"
The SUV's engine dies and the robot accelerates
hard.
"-that?"
It's not like there are that many capes on Earth with interplanetary capabilities.
Unless you're Swamp Thing or the Floronic Man or guys like that... So it's only the shady but generally-legal business of farm supply and growing. I suspect Mitchell's time in the office will be the more interesting to see in general, though.
