(I was going over my notes for "With this station-ring", and noticed I hadn't revised this yet. So, better late than never, here's take two...)
====== Wonderland ======
~~NOTOC~~
^ Registry Number: | L5-G |
^ Base Hull: | Rockhounds Space Rock #5 |
^ Drive Type: | Speed (gravity drive) |
^ Drive Rating: | Max velocity 0.0001c |
^ Owner of Record: | [[gazetteer:companies
tellvia_corporation|Stellvia Corp.] |
^ Flag of Record: | [[ships:Stellvia] |
^ Purpose: | Agribusiness |
^ Launched: | as //Wonderland,// 1 January 2013 |
^ Crew: | Micheline Rouleau (chief administrator)\ Jerry Freedman (chief agronomist)\ Lea Meadows (chief apiarist)\ Sergy Gudanov (ship's doctor) |
^ Supplementary Crew: | many, as-yet-unnamed |
^ Auxillary Vehicles: | many and various, including [[ships:OGJ Troop Carrier] class ships //Glennorth, Katase,// and //Otoyama// as station shuttles |
^ Faction: | Stellvian |
^ Status: | **Active** |
Formerly known as Rockhounds' Space Rock #5, **Wonderland** is the single largest post-[[gazetteer:government:great_justice|OGJ] source of produce for station //[[ships:Stellvia]//.
===== Known Ship's Quirks =====
None. //Wonderland// is primarily an asteroid, and its propulsion and artificial gravity are remarkably uniform. (It's almost as if they were hardtech...)
===== History =====
"Earth is the only place you can get vegetables." - Alice (Arisa) Glennorth, //Uchuu no Stellvia//
As much as [[chars:Noah Scott] likes that particular anime, this one line from it always bothered him. Why not grow vegetables in space? He quickly found out how impractical it was to grow more than a token amount of food crops in the disused nooks and crannies on his station, but he never completely abandoned the idea.
Finally, in October 2012, Stellvia Trading took possession of Rockhounds' Space Rock #5. It was fully mined-out, with a maze of twisty little passages (all alike) throughout its body - ideal for widening and turning into huge caverns. His staff have enlarged the various chambers to the point that there are over two hundred acres of land available for cultivation, and handwaved the chambers so that they'd have earth-normal gravity and day-night cycles. Stellvia Trading also purchased topsoil from 'Daneside developers who were turning farmland into suburbs, and used it to turn the asteroid's barren rock into farmland.
In recognition of needing to go down "rabbit holes" to get to the farms and in honour of Alice, Noah re-named the asteroid //Wonderland// when he officially opened it on January 1, 2013.
===== What's Down the Rabbit-Hole? =====
Wonderland's largest chambers are usually devoted to grasses and similar plants; wheat, barley, quinoa, amaranth, rye, and maize are all in the collection to a greater or lesser degree. Smaller chambers hold beans, berries, edible flowers, and other vegetables - especially potatoes, tomatoes, cocoa beans, coffee bushes, sugar beets, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and roses. (Although the large chambers sometimes grow beans and the smaller ones sometimes grow grasses; chief agronomist Freedman knows the importance of crop rotation.) And there's clover and beehives in all the farm chambers.
The smallest chambers are for long-term seed storage, short-term harvested food storage, dedicated agricultural experiments, compost and related processing and storage (Wonderland takes and processes most of //Stellvia//'s organic wastes for fertilizer), and residences.
Chambers with handwaved crops are carefully isolated, with independant life-support systems and no internal access to the rest of Wonderland. One of those carefully-isolated chambers holds a single Soul of the Earth rose bush, one beehive, and a selection of clover, grasses, and ornamental roses. [[chars:Leda Swansen] is running an experiment to determine whether, and how quickly, handwavium spreads through pollination from 'waved plants to unwaved plants. (And [[chars:the Jason] is wondering what effect this has on the bees, and whether biomodded bees produce Mnemnosyne's Honey, a particularly sweet version of Guacamole, both at the same time, or something else.) The Jason, [[chars:the Professor], and [[chars:A.C. Peters] are all consultants on this experiment.
Wonderland's chief agronomist, Jerry Freedman, doesn't believe in using GMOs; he can't bank their seeds and use them the next growing cycle, and the controlled climates of Wonderland don't have any unwanted pests. Some of the staff suggested using "heirloom" breeds of vegetables and berries for their subtly different flavours, so there are a variety of breeds for many of the local plants in the asteroid's seed banks.
The farm does its best to not compete directly with //[[ships:Babylon .5];// since that station is known for growing tropical fruits, Wonderland mostly stays out of that business.
===== Noteworthy Inhabitants =====
**Micheline Rouleau** is Wonderland's chief administrator. Hired away from Air France, she spends her time directing traffic and pushing paper, rarely even visiting the farms.
**Jerry Freedman** is the asteroid's chief agronomist. An old Kentucky boy who was happy to move to space permanently, he puts his agriculture degree to good use, ensuring Wonderland's ecosystems don't go off-kilter.
**Lea Meadows** is Wonderland's chief apiarist. This ex-pat Canadian from southern Ontario keeps the bees happy, and the honey and beeswax supply flowing from Wonderland to //Stellvia.// She's obviously biomodded, with short antenna that pick up subtle changes in wind direction and air pressure (and make it impossible for her to wear a mass-produced spacesuit).
**Sergy Gudanov** is the facility's doctor. He makes his services available to the other L5 habitats when he isn't needed on Wonderland. Born and raised in Moscow, Dr. Gudanov didn't realize the folly of putting a half-acre (the entirety of one of the isolated chambers) of Blood Oranges under cultivation; he's now happy to give them away, making Wonderland the largest supplier of Blood Oranges outside of the Jason himself after Operation Great Justice.
===== Competition, or lack thereof =====
//Wonderland// is an order of magnitude larger than most agribusinesses in Fenspace - only //[[ships:Grover's Corners], [[ships:Babylon .5],// and //[[ships:Yggdrasil]// come close to matching its output. But the stations don't have as much overlap as one might expect:
* //Grover's Corners// and the smaller "mom and pop" farms cater to individual Fen; //Wonderland// supplies food on an industrial scale, primarily for the //[[ships:Stellvia]// station complex. If you want a couple of cobs of corn for dinner once in a while, you head to //Grover's Corners//; if you want bushels of corn every day, you head to //Wonderland//.
* //Babylon .5// concentrates on tree fruits and tropical food plants; //Wonderland// concentrates on grains and legumes. (Grains, beans, berries, honey, beeswax, and sugar from the sugarbeets are what //Wonderland// has for sale; the potatoes, tomatoes, and coffee and cocoa beans are for station use.)
* //Yggdrasil// has a reputation (sometimes undeserved) of producing 'wave-enhanced produce; //Wonderland// prides itself on its 'wave-free produce.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
