Treegiraffe2's Arc

Chapter 3 of 10

The fence stood patched by dusk, and the animals were safe. But Treegiraffe2 sat by the pen the next morning with a heavy problem. She looked at her wheat rows behind the barn. Every day they needed water, breaking, replanting. She wanted farms that ran themselves. She had no idea how. Her hands could not tend crops and build cottages and guard the animals all at once. "I need machines," she told Skibble. "But I don't know how to make them." A voice answered from the wheat. "Machines I can do." A short blocky man stood between the rows. A red-and-white mushroom cap sat on his head like a hat. His face was plain white with two black lines for eyes. He wore red overalls dotted with white. He pulled a stalk, studied it, and grinned. "Name's Shroom. I heard a farm was starting. I like farms. I like the quiet ones best." Treegiraffe2 stood fast. "Quiet how?" "Redstone," Shroom said. He knelt and drew a square in the dirt. "Water flows. Pistons push. The wheat cuts itself and drops into a chest. You never touch it." He looked up. "You grow it. The wall does the rest." She stared at him. This was the thing she could not do alone. "Show me," she said. They worked all day. Shroom laid stone brick into a tall frame. He set red dust in lines across it, muttering as he went. Treegiraffe2 hauled water and packed the soil rows. Skibble carried blocks and asked questions Shroom mostly ignored. By afternoon a machine rose behind the barn. Two levels of wheat grew inside it. Pistons crouched at the top like waiting fists. "Ready?" Shroom asked. He set his hand on a lever. Treegiraffe2 held her breath. "Do it." He pulled. The red dust lit. Pistons shoved forward with a snap. Golden stalks broke and fell. Water swept them down the stone into a wooden chest at the base. The lid thumped shut over the load. Then it was quiet again, just the animals chewing behind her. She ran to the chest and opened it. Inside sat tied bundles of golden wheat, full-headed and clean. She had not cut one stalk. "It works," she said. Her voice shook. "It actually works." "Course it works," Shroom said. He was already eyeing the next patch of dirt. Treegiraffe2 turned to him. "Stay. Build these for the whole town. I can't do it without you." Shroom pushed his cap back and nodded once. But then she counted the chest, and her smile faded. One harvest had filled it to the lid. Ten machines would flood her. She had no place to keep so much wheat, and no way yet to move it. The farm would run itself now. Storing what it made was a problem she had never planned for.