He had finally found the power room!


    Too bad he didn’t dare open the stupid thing. The panel had flashed so many warnings at him when he went poking about, he had basically just given up. The panel itself had what he was coming to think of as numbers. There appeared to be ten different symbols at least. They didn’t do him any good as the labeling for the panel wasn’t something he could read, but if he could find the information without opening the door, he was happy to keep it closed.


    What he did instead was note down all the numbers he could find, stay near the door for roughly an hour watching said numbers the whole time, then return twice a day to record any changes. While it was very possible that all the numbers had nothing to do with power or were negative or some other situation where looking at them didn’t help, he would at least be informed should they become alarming.


    Alarming to him at least. They could already be heart-stopping for someone who knew what they meant.


    The number that was currently heart-stopping for him were the ration numbers. Between checking the water plant and the power panel every day, he didn’t have a lot of time left over for searching. Add in all the walking and that he was sacrificing the calories in his share of the choco-sticks to give the girl trade fodder and he wasn’t doing well. His energy was bottoming out and he could tell he was on the verge of starvation. He did his best not to go that far, aware that he wouldn’t use the remaining food as efficiently if he did, but it was a close thing. They needed to get more calories somehow.


    While his first thought was a fish thing, he didn’t know the purpose of any of the ones in the tank. If he guessed and picked one that was supposed to clear out poisons, food would be the least of their issues. Truthfully, with the numbers he had managed to gather on the various tanks, he didn’t know that there were enough fish things left for eating. Not that would solve the problem anyways. One or two small critters a week would wipe out the tank pretty fast and wouldn’t be enough to notice a change in the rations.


    The seaweed was really the only option. He would need to watch the growth rate, but as long as it wasn’t sucking up poisons, it was large enough to make a difference. He would just have to use the tank that was farthest from the in-flow and hope for the best. So long as the system was designed to filter things out progressively, the last visible tank growing the seaweed should be mostly clean.


    It did leave him with several problems of course. Considering the tanks were large enough to swim in and tall enough they may as well be in an aquarium, just getting to the plants was going to be a…. task. It had been the original reason he hadn’t thought of using the life in the water plant as food. If they were meant to come out of the tank on a regular basis there would be a way to get to them. Considering he couldn’t spot it, that meant it was locked away somewhere or they were meant to be undisturbed. It was always possible there were automated processes or holding tanks of some kind that he would be aware of if he could read, but he couldn’t.


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    He sure as shit was going to learn before he tried to get another plant though.


    The tops of the tanks were high enough even he didn’t think a fall would leave him unscathed. It was refreshing to have things be proper sized again, he just wished it wasn’t the thing he had to scale just to eat. He did get it though. Climbing and getting the tank open were the hardest parts as well. It seemed the plants weren’t anchored all that deep in the tank bottom. A bit of metal and a long string with a loop on the end managed to be enough of a fishing rod to snag the plant well enough to hold through fighting it out of the tank. The plant was long enough it was between 2 and 3 times his own height, whatever that was nowadays, and probably weighed more than the girl did. He took a small bite of course, best to start the testing as soon as he could. He would need to do a lot of work to get it palatable though. The only thing he could compare it to was the strings from fresh celery mixed into chewy mush.


    It was a shame they didn’t have any oil. Deep frying may be the only thing that could save it.


    His only ideas were to make a stock or see if cooking it changed anything. Considering it was already mushy, he might try drying some as well. Scratch that, he would need to dry some. There was far too much to eat all at once and he didn’t have a cold box of any description.


    He would keep the root end in a pot of water for now while he experimented though.


    <hr>


    Aside from one fit from the girl about the seaweed, which he wholeheartedly agreed with, things were not terrible. When the seaweed had begun to disintegrate as each part of it died, he had panicked a little. It was clearly not food and was meant to leave the system if it wasn’t alive anymore. Given that it only caused a grumbly belly, he was sure it wasn’t acute poison, but he didn’t want to risk things.


    When he finally managed to translate some pages from the labs near the water plant, he was terribly disappointed in his priorities. There seemed to be some kind of filling area nearby, but it wasn’t until the girl excitedly brought him a bag that he had managed to work anything out. Though she seemed more interested in the treat than the implications.


    There seemed to be a food lab of some description near the water plant that had an area to fill the bags the powder came in. He still didn’t know how it worked, but there was clearly a renewing supply of the powder. It would explain what happened to the plants and why they disintegrated.


    A good system if he could make it work.


    He didn’t really start to kick himself until he translated the rest of those papers from that lab area when one of them mentioned a long-term edibles storage. It even gave him an area to look in. Such easy success was not making his decision-making look good, that was for sure. It still took him a couple of days to find it of course. One of the large industrial doors he had left behind before. Now that he had an idea of the area and a hint about what it was, he wasn’t as afraid to open it.


    He would be pretty busy now, there were a lot of numbers to record.


    ‘Once food is out of the way, I am definitely going to check that door that didn’t let me in. Anything with central in the panel has to be important.’