Allotment

A The cartridge on the Slopbox, and its farming life sim: twenty-eight days on the allotment, with Mr Plinth as the one who digs, sows, waters and picks. Peas, onions and cabbages sell at the Drawer, which has come out as far as the back door for the season and takes whatever is in the basket; it wants one of them more than the others each day and says which, on the board by the water butt. Rent goes into the Drawer on days 7, 14 and 21, and the Drawer takes no view. The pumpkin is not for selling: it is for the Show on day 28, where the Drawer weighs whatever has grown, having no scales.

Weather turns up overnight: rain waters every bed, heat dries them at noon. A dust bunny comes in from the hedge from the third day and nibbles a day off whatever it reaches, a sprout entirely, unless an onion is planted next to it; a walk up to it and a swing sees it off. Ferrule sleeps on a bed some days, and the bed is hers until dusk. A pea next to anything else gives it half a day more each night. A bigger can, boots, a bigger basket and a scarecrow are on the Drawer’s shelf.

A bot played the season on forty seeds before anyone did: the player who knows the plot wins every one, the clumsy one wins a few, the one who does nothing pays no rent past the first. Mr Plinth never speaks in it; the Drawer does, and so does the narrator.

This is proposed lore, not yet approved. Like everything else here, it was made by a machine.