004
Breathing: Simple!
The human-sized glass jar was set up on its side so the sealable opening was easy to crawl in and out of. It was pushed as far back into the shade of the treeline as it could be while still remaining visible from Vaughan’s backyard—this was so the glass jar would be shaded and not turn into a literal oven quite so easily. Currently, it had a set of soft blankets on the bottom, each made from a different material.
Jeh stood in front of the jar’s opening, holding a tray in her hands. It contained four objects: a chunk of granite taken from Mount Cascade, a Blue crystal about the size of her mitt-less fist, a mouse in a tiny wire cage, and a freshly watered sunflower sprout in a tiny flower pot.
“Ready?” Blue asked, gesturing at the jar.
“But it’s boring!” Jeh whined. “You know what happens.”
“We have to use you as a control.”
“Control?” Jeh furrowed her brow. “Uh… haven’t heard that one before.*”
*Unlike the utter and complete mess known as English, in Karli the word “control” in the sense of “control over something” is not the same word as “control in a scientific experiment.”
“It’s a science word; means ‘a thing we use to compare with others.’ It helps us figure things out. For instance—example, sorry—if we didn’t put you in the jar and then observed a living mouse at the end, we couldn’t discern anything; maybe the air was different. We need you to make sure everything’s the same. Plus, it gives you time to study your words.”
Jeh sighed. “Right, right, fine, fine, let’s get the pain waiting over with.” She set the tray in her hands down onto the blankets within the jar. Then she threw herself in, knocking everything over.
Blue tapped her hoof and raised an eyebrow.
With a sigh, Jeh set up the plant, caged mouse, crystal, and rock onto the tray, flat and with only mild panic from the mouse. “Good?”
“Good.” With some effort, Blue levitated the metal lid and pressed it to the jar, screwing it on, achieving an effective airtight seal.
“I’ll be at the outdoor desk,” Blue called, her voice muffled due to the glass wall between them. “If you need anything, just scream.”
“I’m a great screamer,” Jeh said. She watched as Blue headed back to Vaughan’s backyard, taking a seat at a desk covered in crystal objects, models, and a lot of loose papers and pens. She was probably trying to figure out the best way to design the floater—the unofficial term for the ship they were trying to create.
Of course, Jeh knew Blue was ignoring the very thing she was demonstrating in this jar.
Air.
But Jeh didn’t have to think about that yet—this was not the first time she’d been in the jar. It took about two hours for it to fully take its course, and every time she lasted a little longer. For the first little while all she had to deal with was an awkward muggy sensation.
Already bored, Jeh took out what qualified as her “entertainment” in this jar: a book literally titled How to Read. An ill-advised idea for a book, perhaps, but it was working just fine for Jeh.
“You know, you’re remarkable, right?”
Jeh looked up to see Suro standing outside the jar. “I’m sorry, remarkable?”
“Oh, right. Remarkable has to do with being… amazing, unique, and surprising. All in a good way.”
Jeh grinned widely. “Why haven’t I heard that before? I’m remarkable! I can cut off my hand and grow a new one!”
“That certainly is remarkable, yes, but I was referring to your eagerness to learn.”
“I’m not learning,” Jeh said, looking at the How to Read book. “I’m remembering.”
“Have you…?”
“I don’t remember anything before the forest for sure,” Jeh said, shaking her head. “I remember pain. It was worse.”
“You weren’t used to it yet.”
“Obvious.”
“Obviously.”
“Yes, right.” Jeh sighed. “It’s just… when I look at these letters, I know I’ve seen them before. I’ve known what they are, what they do. Or try to do. Or…” She tilted her head to the side. “It’s all still in here, somewhere.”
“But no memory.”
“Yeah. Makes no sense…”
“I think it does,” Suro said. “I know how to do many things I don’t remember learning how to do. I can’t, for the life of me, remember who first showed me how to use a fork-holding ring, but now I eat with one every day like it’s nothing. Memory is not a requirement.”
“It’s memory. Different kind.” Jeh glared at the book as if it had betrayed her. “I need more.”
“You already have more than enough to communicate with people, the rest can come naturally from experience—like this.”
Jeh nodded in appreciation. “Thanks.”
“For taking you out of the forest and sticking you in a jar?”
Jeh let out a snort. “Yes! And being nice while doing it. You didn’t have to be nice. You also didn’t have to make sure I understood… but you did! Or, Blue did. Blue’s great.”
Suro nodded, taking the compliment with grace. “It is you who we should be thanking. I do not think progress would be possible without you.”
“Then aren’t you lucky? Jeh, not-bear of the diamond oak, is your… your…”
“Savior?”
“Maybe? I want to help. Helping is good. Space is cool, I think.”
“What did Eifa tell you about starting sentences you don’t know the ending of?”
“Uuuuugh...” Jeh groaned, flopping her head onto the blankets. “But I have so much to saaaaaay.”
“Heh… you certainly do.” Suro glanced over at Blue. “Try not to die of boredom.”
“That’s exactly what I’m dying of,” Jeh said with a chuckle. “But hey, even dying of boredom can be fun!”
“I think you have your definitions confused.”
“Which ones?”
“It’s… hard for me to tell.”
Jeh gave him a smile. “Don’t worry about it, I’m sure we’ll figure it out eventide.”
“Eventually.”
“Right.”
“Well, have fun with your dying of boredom.”
“I will!” Jeh waved goodbye to Suro and returned to her book.
Time wore on. She continued to breathe, but at a slightly increased rate. A headache began to form in the back of her mind, but it was so pathetically tiny she wouldn’t have noticed it had she not been feeling for it. Her focus upon her book began to drift and her arms began to feel vaguely like jelly.
And so it begins…
At this point she would have considered falling asleep, but that messed with the precious data and she still wanted Blue to have reliable information. So she forced herself to stay awake—though made no further efforts to learn more words. Her concentration was shot and it took a lot out of her to think on those things.
The headache continued to increase in intensity, and to a normal person it would have caused something akin to agony and potentially panic. For Jeh, it was enough to be mildly annoying—the first time she’d been stuck in the jar, her body’s demand that she start breathing faster had been more concerning.
The mouse was not Jeh and started to freak out, letting out squeaks and scampers: it knew something was very, very wrong.
“Sucks to be you,” Jeh managed with a voice far softer than her usual one.
Time dragged on. Jeh’s thoughts only became further muddled and her breathing rate increased—becoming gasps for breath. The mouse was in panic. Jeh treated the gasps as excuses to stretch and yawn. The jar may have been person sized, but she was small and had room to shift around.
She began to see sparks in the edges of her peripheral vision.
Ah, yep, won’t be long now…
“Wheeee…” Jeh mumbled to herself, bobbing back and forth in tune to a song she couldn’t quite remember the beat to. She was vaguely aware Blue was standing outside the jar—probably waiting for Jeh to keel over so the test could end. But there was someone next to her—a bearded human that wasn’t Vaughan. Vaughan was red, this guy was black. There weren’t black wizards. This didn’t make any sense…
Jeh soon stopped being able to pass the gasps off as yawns, taking them in so quickly and with such force that it sounded like she was trying to say something. Finding the sounds her lungs were making annoying, she forced herself to stop breathing for a second, at which point her entire awareness became a spinning wheel of colors.
Pretty…
Jeh felt that she wasn’t going to be able to do much of anything very soon, so she held up her hand in a thumbs-up gesture. Then, and only then, did she pass out.
~~~
“…She okay?”
Blue nodded to the man next to her—a bearded individual slightly older than Vaughan and covered head to toe in the dust of the mines. His name was Michael Garnet, or ‘Big G’ as the other miners called him, so named because of the absurd muscles that dominated his mid-tone skin. He oversaw most of the mining enterprises in Willow Hollow.
“She’s fine,” Blue assured him. “This is the sixth time we’ve done this.”
The man tapped the glass jar. Neither Jeh nor the mouse moved. “Shouldn’t you…?”
“We need to watch for her to stop breathing.” Blue pointed at the rapid lifting and falling of Jeh’s chest. “She’s just unconscious right now.”
“And then she’ll be… dead?”
“Well, uh, the closest she can be to it.” Blue clicked her tongue. “I don’t understand how an attribute can be so powerful, but it’s constantly regenerating any damage done to her. However, her body reacts just like ours in all situations, barring things that draw blood and… yeah she’s very confusing.” Blue rubbed the back of her head, chuckling. “But, but, she proves that we need air to survive. We breathe it in and, in a sealed container, eventually use it up. Or whatever it is we breathe out of the air.”
Big G continued looking at Jeh. “She’s not breathing.”
“Really?” Blue looked closer—thinking there was still a barely perceptible rise and fall in Jeh’s chest. However, Blue could tell Big G was getting concerned, so she relented—using her telekinesis to take the lid off.
Almost immediately Jeh gasped louder than any human being had a right to, her body taking in as much air as it possibly could as quickly as it could. She didn’t awaken—a known quirk of her regeneration was that it didn’t seem to consider unconsciousness something to be remedied—but a smile soon formed on her face and she looked like the family dog taking a pleasant nap.
“Well, I’ll be…” Big G scratched his head.
“And just to prove the point…” Blue levitated out the cage with the mouse in it. The mouse wasn’t moving at all.
“As impressive as your forest girl is… this is nothing new.” Big G folded his arms. “Divers in their bells run out of air too, you’re just showing us the end result.”
Blue’s pleasant smile vanished. “Well, Suro said you might be interested in our findings. Sorry that our investigations into going up didn’t help you go down.”
“Hmm…” Big G scratched his beard. “Still, you might find something. If you get any ideas on how to help the miners who run out of air down deep, let me know.”
“Get more air down there, obviously.”
“Yes, how?”
Blue smirked. “Well, just get a big jar like this, fill it with air, then open it. Presto, over two hours of perfectly good air.”
“For one person in a container larger than he is. You don’t understand how tight of a squeeze it is down there, do you, pony?”
I am not a pony you racist little— “I work on going up, you work on going down, mmk?”
“Hmm…” Big G folded his arms and looked at the jar. “That’s a pretty big jar. Hope you don’t need more air than that.” Without another word, he walked away.
How dare he waltz in here, pretend like he’s here to get help, step over everything we’ve done, and then insult my knowledge! Of course I know it’s not enough air! She glanced at the jar, grimacing. Nowhere near enough air…
While the “going slow” method had simplified the actual design of their craft considerably, the new discovery that they needed to bring air with them had not. Blue had been hoping that simply sealing a container would be good enough, so long as the amount of air was constant the occupant would be fine. But no, something in the air was consumed over time.
It was another type of fuel. They needed fuel in the form of food, crystals, and now air. She was spending more time trying to design around carrying all that fuel than anything else!
The air was the worst, though. The size was simply absurd. The slower they went, the more air they needed…
With a grunt, Blue took out the other parts of the experiment. The granite was unchanged, as expected, rocks didn’t care about air. The Blue crystal was much the same. The plant was fine as well.
…Wait.
Blue stared at the sunflower sprout with wide eyes. It, a known living thing, was fine. Blue knew plants needed air—there were a few spirited plant races, they breathed like almost everyone else. But here it was, perfectly fine, as though nothing had happened to it at all.
At this juncture, Blue had no idea what she’d just discovered. She just knew it was unexpected and that she needed to do more tests.
~~~
A few days later, Jeh came back from lingual education with Eifa and found Blue standing in front of her blackboard, drawing large symbols for “air” everywhere with lots of lines crossing between them.
“Figure anything out?” Jeh asked, jumping on top of the blackboard, somehow managing not to knock it over.
Blue took Jeh sitting on her blackboard in stride: it had become a common occurrence as of late. “Well, uh… no, not really. I’ve learned a lot about air but found no solutions.”
“Well, what do we know about air?”
“One: air is everywhere around us, you feel it when you wave your hoof—hand—around. Two: the vast majority of life breathes air to survive. Three: for animals at least, something in the air is consumed when breathed, causing it to ‘run out.’ Four: maybe not plants.”
Jeh put on a smile and pretended that she’d followed all of that.
“Other properties of air… it’s not weightless, it moves around like liquid, you can compress it if you squish really hard but that tends to explode, and there’s less of it up high.” She let out a whinny and tapped her hoof on the ground several times. “We need to take a lot of it with us to get to space, but that takes up a lot of space. And compressing it is way too explosive…”
“Those sound like a lot of problems,” Jeh said.
“You think?”
“Yes, I do!” Jeh said without a hint of the sarcastic defiance usually associated with that combination of words. She just sounded like someone stating an exciting fact.
Blue sagged slightly and let her ears hang loose. “It’s just a list of obstacles to be surmounted!”
“…Sir mount Ed?”
“No, uh, surmounted, it means… to accomplish something difficult. Because, you know, getting to the top of a big mountain is hard*.”
*Naturally, some concepts in English and Karli are built in similar ways. I will not be noting every case, but “surmounted” is a notable example. There’s just something inherently formidable about climbing a mountain.
Jeh tilted her head to the side. “You guys flew up there.”
“Yes, well, it wasn’t easy, just fast.”
Jeh tapped her chin. “I got there first. No effort. I win.”
“I, but…”
“Decision: ‘surmount’ is a stupid word.”
Blue rolled her eyes. “Language is stupid, but it’s what we have.”
“Wish I was a tele… tele…”
“Telepath?”
“Yes, telepath, that’s what you called them.” She clapped her bear mitts together. “Just imagine… maybe we could use Yellow for that…”
“Yellow is purely empathic, communication with it is limited except in the hands of an expert.”
“Which I am!”
Blue stopped for a moment. “I… suppose you are quite a little magic prodigy, aren’t you?”
“Prodigy?”
“Really good at something, born with more talent than anyone.”
“Ah.” Jeh pondered this for a moment. “I mean, makes sense… I think.”
“Yeah, sure does…” Blue started tapping her hoof against the blackboard. “At least we know how the drive works.”
“How?”
“Well… This might take a while…”
~~~
Vaughan unrolled a scroll on Suro’s workbench. “We’ve got the drive.”
“Oh?” Suro adjusted his glasses, leaning in to examine the design. As usual, Vaughan had drafted it up in amazing detail, giving special note to the crystals Suro would have to cut and set. The drive, or “ship driver” as it was labeled on the diagram, was a spherical orb about the size of a human head. Most crystal cores were encased in bronze or glass, but this one was explicitly encased in pure Yellow crystal smoothed to a nearly perfect sphere.
“…Why?” Suro asked, gesturing at the casing.
“Crystals are one of if not the slipperiest materials in existence,” Vaughan said. “It’ll be easy to rotate even under duress like that.”
“Why Yellow?”
“If something goes wrong, well, the only empathy that would be possible is annoyance with my original preparations for the push spells.”
Suro sniffed at the drawings, pouring over them with his expert eyes. The oddity of the exterior had caught his attention, but it was the interior where all the magic happened. The vast majority of the sphere’s size was devoted to Magenta storage, dominated by long and thin Magenta shards designed to permanently remember various different strengths of the Orange’s push spell. However, looking closer, Suro noticed that there were actually two sets of Magenta stones; one with large values, one with small.
“Vaughan, this isn’t a standard counter…”
“No, it’s not. It’s not designed to increase in increments.” Vaughan pointed at the larger stones. “These provide the big force, the one that will balance out the weight of the ship, whatever it is.”
“You’d have to be exact…”
“I can always load more sandbags onto the ship to make it perfectly balanced.”
Suro nodded. “That would do it. And the smaller crystals?”
“Once the ship is balanced, the smaller push spells will take the ship upward, and will be what is adjusted in flight. Take a look at the gears below: the big one can be set and locked while the small one is adjusted.”
Suro tilted his head. “I thought you wanted to have the pilot operate the small part consciously?”
“Naturally, that’s an option, but since we have no idea what form the ship is going to take we’re just creating a general drive.”
“Could be used in anything,” Suro mused. “I suppose you could attach it to a rowboat and make it a skyboat.”
“It’s not stable, Suro, all it does is push itself. To get anywhere significant with this, you need to place it exactly in the center of mass of the ship.”
“Exactly?”
Vaughan gave a noncommittal shrug. “Well, there’s some room for error, clearly, but that’s neither here nor there. Fact is, most boats aren’t round. Makes it hard to figure out where to put this.”
Suro nodded, continuing over the designs. The two gears rotated which Magenta memory set would be in contact with the treelike crystal wires, which would carry the signal to the main driver of the core: an utterly massive Orange crystal core cut in a combination of the urchin and donut styles that was subdivided into eight segments.
Suro whistled. “That’s going to cost you.”
“Psh, I can sell stuff.”
“It’s also a very breakable cut, given the spines. But… well, it’ll work, it’s got enough surface area to maintain anything you throw at it for quite some time.” Suro’s whiskers twitched as a question came to him. “Vaughan, straining as much will as you possibly can, what is the largest thing you can lift with Orange?”
Vaughan stroked his beard. “I could probably lift a small house if I wasn’t trying to adjust the spell to keep the house intact.”
“Right, so, if you could get that under control, the matrix you have here… you could set your cabin afloat if you did it perfectly.”
Vaughan chuckled. “That’s not gonna fly.”
“Of c—“
“I mean, working with Blue, it’s become obvious to me that you want to over-design. The drive should be able to push something much much heavier than it is, make it easier to get other parts precise. Have to be safe and make sure it works, you understand.”
Suro slowly took off his glasses. “Eights, where did the old ‘I’ve got this’ Vaughan go?”
“He came crashing back to Ikyu. Hard.” Vaughan stood up, folding his hands behind his back and letting out a contemplative hum. “Plus, this is turning out to be expensive. If we lose our ship we probably won’t be able to make another one.”
Suro glanced at the scroll design. “Putting everything into this one?”
“Not everything, I’ll still be able to service Willow Hollow even if it all explodes. Just… yeah, any hopes at doing other projects are going out with this one.”
Suro nodded slowly. “And you’re sure?”
“I…” Vaughan shook his head and turned to look at a wall of cut crystals. “I’m afraid of being stuck with nothing, but I know if I don’t take a risk then the very thing I’m afraid of is what I’ll get.”
“There are other impactful ways to make use of one’s life that aren’t quite so… extreme.”
“Yes. There are. But… then there’s Blue.” Vaughan grinned. “Do you know how excited she is about this, now?”
“She does seem invested.”
“She’s been given something to apply her mind toward.” Vaughan pointed at the ceiling. “She’d never been given that opportunity before. All she was given were courses and tests; never an opportunity. Now she has one. And I can see how much life it’s given her. She rarely talks about being a messenger, doesn’t call the idea of ‘going up’ stupid anymore, and works long into the night trying to come up with new ways to do things.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“So, you’re doing it for her, now?”
“No.” Vaughan turned and grinned at Suro. “I’m doing it because I think it’s awesome.”
Suro put a paw over his eyes and sighed.
“The fact that Blue’s invested just means I can rest easy knowing I’m not being a selfish little hermit.”
“…That’s not how that works.”
“Mmm, yes, but if I wanted a lecture on the nature of ethics and self-image I’d go to your wife.”
Suro blurted out a laugh at this. “You… you’ve never consulted her in your life! She had to hunt you down to give you help!”
“What did you expect? I’m a wizard, she’s a Keeper!”
Suro’s smile slowly vanished as old memories came to him. “Yeah… what did I expect?”
Vaughan let out a sigh. “Suro, that’s all long gone. You’re here now, she’s here now, and I’m in a cabin trying to go to space. You’ve got a million kids, I’ve got a great project. Life is good, Suro.”
“I’m not saying it isn’t. Not a day goes by where I don’t give thanks for all of… this.” He gestured around at his workshop, but he meant to include the whole town. “But the past means something, Vaughan. Even when it’s done and dealt with.”
Vaughan folded his arms and nodded solemnly. “Yes… it has its place.”
Silence fell over the two friends. With a slight cough, Suro put his glasses back on and returned to the schematics. “Well, at the very least, this device will be able to move itself at alarming speeds. If it’ll drag a ship with it, well, that’s another thing entirely.”
“I knew you could do it!” Vaughan patted the cat on the back.
“My only suggestion is that you allow me to order the Magenta cores from elsewhere, they’re complex enough that you need a jeweler-wizard to craft them by hand.”
“…This is going to be expensive…”
“Very. You’re making a custom major device. This isn’t just some levitator, Vaughan, and those are hard enough to make.”
“Then it’s exactly what it should be,” Vaughan said with a chuckle.
“And you still need a ship to put it in.”
“Blue’s working on that.”
“How’s she doing?”
“…Well, see, there’s this slight problem with air…”
~~~
Plants.
Plants were different, somehow. That was obvious at this point.
Blue wasn’t entirely sure how, though. Just that her experiments were showing a clear difference. When she put little sprouts inside small jars, sometimes they lived and sometimes they died. However, when she put mice or bugs in jars, they always died. The obvious conclusion was that plants didn’t need air, but something told her that wasn’t right. If they could survive with no air, why did the plant-based spirited visibly breathe? They must have needed it for something, just in a different way from animal life.
She’d have to test this to be sure, however.
She was just going to have to do something backward.
Trotting to the table where she and Vaughan kept all of their small jars, Blue used her magic to levitate out a completely normal set of bellows; one of the primary tools she had been using in her earlier experiments on the properties of air. The bellows were a relatively simple device; when expanding, air would come in a hole in the back, and when contracting the air would rush out the front. This had made pressurizing air relatively simple, though they had rudely discovered the bellows had a maximum pressure tolerance.
The question now was if it had a minimum pressure tolerance…
Blue took out a special jar lid with a little hole in the top designed for the bellows to poke through. She placed it on the plant-jar and attached the bellows, realizing that there was a problem.
The bellows were designed to push air out, not to pull it in. She’d have to reverse the nozzle to get that to work—or, alternatively, design a new jar lid that could interface with the bellows’ intake valve. The intake valve was a rather simple device: a flap on a hinge. When air wanted to go in it pulled the flap in, but when it pushed out it sealed the flap against the bellows’ rigid edges. If she could just…
She got an idea. They’d used clay to seal up the hole after pressurizing jars. What if that could help them here? She ran into the cabin at a full gallop, passing Vaughan by. He was currently engrossed in a massive astrological chart he had recently obtained. Unlike most, it did not fixate on the arrangement of the stars, but on the various objects that moved across the heavens. Ikyu dominated the center, of course, but it was minimized since it was not the purpose of the chart. The sun and moon held the most prominence, their images naturally the largest. The planets also had their own sections, though with much less detail drawn on them.
But there was some detail, enough to make Blue stop what she was doing and backtrack to examine the star chart. “This had to be expensive…”
“I traded multiple old ones I had, and ones that focused on the positions of the stars.” He chuckled. “We have no idea how far away the stars are, but it might be possible to get to the planets.”
“Think of how long we said it’d take just to get to the moon!”
“Still, it’s something to plan for. Consider.”
Blue rolled her eyes. “You’re delusional…” She returned to examining the chart, finding the most up-to-date records of the planets’ appearance to be most interesting. Those telescopes were really showing impressive things out there! The planets had color and mild texture. Hexi was the strangest, though, for it wasn’t round like the others, but oblong. However, since it was so far away, telescopes couldn’t see it very well so the illustration was rather fuzzy. In the notes to the side, there were a lot of questions asked and very few answers.
Blue had already known about Hexi’s unusual shape. What she had not known about were a series of dots next to another planet, Qi. The notes to the side did not know what they were, but it identified them as “mini-planets” never seen far from Qi.
“Strange…” Blue said, rubbing her chin.
“I know. The only way to find out what it means is to go up there, right?”
“There are… probably other ways.”
“But the best is to explore!”
“If you want to die terribly. The sun is a giant ball of fire. Tell me, how are you going to go there to find out more? You’re not immune.”
Vaughan scratched his beard thoughtfully. “Hmm… I wonder what happens if Jeh goes to the sun…”
“That… that’s horrible, don’t even think about that.”
“It’s a legitimate question!”
“Her attribute saves her life. But it does not stop her from suffering the negative effects. If she burns to a crisp she will continue burning to a crisp. Forever.”
“Right so… no sun launch.”
“No sun launch.” Blue turned around, leaving him to his chart. She took a moment to remember what she had been doing—right, no air. She galloped deeper into the cabin until she found what she was looking for in the attic: a box filled with little glass tubes, originally intended to hold small volumes of crystal powder. She had another use for them, today.
Returning to the backyard, she placed the glass tube in the jar lid’s hole, surrounding its base with clay to seal the edges. Now her plant was in a small jar with a straw, essentially. She stuck the other end of the tube in the bellows’ valve, sealing that with clay as well. Levitating the entire apparatus upward, she couldn’t help but chuckle. “I really am a genius.”
She grabbed hold of the bellows’ handles and pulled them apart. As intended, air was sucked out of the little jar and into the bellows itself. However, after pulling out only a small amount of air, it became difficult to pull more out—the laws of pressure went both ways, it seemed. Unlike when they had been blowing a lot of air into jars, which had made the bellows’ bag puff like a marshmallow, this time the bags were attempting to implode, the effort stretching the bag into a shape that resembled cobwebs.
Blue pushed down. Some of the air returned to the jar, but some of it was ejected out the nozzle. She attempted to open the bellows all the way once again, but the strain became so great she was concerned she was going to break it again—so she only released a half-load of air, noticing that what came out made a lot less noise than the previous gust.
The next part needed to be fast. She had to disconnect the straw from the bellows and seal it before air could rush back into the jar. With a quick rip, she broke the connection. After a brief moment of loud hissing from escaping air, she covered the glass tube with more clay, sealing it. She watched with fascination as the clay she’d just placed was sucked into the straw, prompting her to add more clay just to make sure it stayed sealed.
Now she had a plant in a jar with… she wasn’t going to kid herself, there wasn’t no air in there, just a lot less.
Currently, the plant looked fine. But if her theory was right, that plants did need air, this one would die faster than the others. Probably. Then again, some of the jarred plants didn’t die, so…
She shook her head, setting the plant down on an experiment shelf with numerous other jars: some open, some with plants, some with bugs on them, and a few that were just filled with pressurized air.
Plants… Blue shook her head, she didn’t know enough about plants. She was shooting in the dark here. Problem was, people who actually knew about plants—say, farmers—wouldn’t know much about their relation to air since that was one of the things plants always had access to. Even on the highest mountains, there was still air, albeit less. Not all plants could grow there but that was probably because of the cold…
“Oh, what the heck, I need to get out and stretch my legs anyway, might as well visit town, see what I can find.” She picked up her saddlebags and tossed them over her back. “I’m heading out Vaughan! Don’t touch the plants!”
“I won’t!”
“Actually mean it this time!”
“…Fine…”
Blue left him to his chart and trotted along the path back to Willow Hollow. It was late morning and the birds were singing amongst the various evergreen trees. As she walked along, she paid special attention to the various calls. Bluebird, dire woodpecker, falangralish*, and… what was that call?
*The falangralish might be more fish than bird, but the falangralish never swims despite having fully functioning gills. It flies through the skies, its laugh-like call mocking all those in the sea and land below. Notably, it never laughs when higher-altitude creatures, such as balloon whales, are within its sight.
She swiveled her ears around, trying to pinpoint the deep sound she’d barely heard over the birdsong. It sounded like a distant roar, but not like any creature she’d ever heard. Then again, it might just have been a mountain lion that she wasn’t able to hear very well.
Mountain lions didn’t roar that deeply, though, at least not so far as she remembered.
She shook her head—her mission was to go to space and learn about magic. Strange wild animals didn’t help her in that regard. Best to just ignore it.
Entering town, she noticed Seskii first, waving cheerfully at her. Blue purposefully took a wide arc around the annoyingly cheerful gari who almost definitely wanted to scam the town out of something.
“Hey!” Seskii called, slightly indignant.
Blue continued to ignore her, making her way to one of the more interesting farms in Willow Hollow: a smaller one situated near the town square that didn’t specialize in any one type of crop, like most of the others, but grew a variety of more exotic plants—though “exotic” is a relative term. No dragonfruit, shimmerfruit, or kracklebark to be found here. There were some vines with vibrant blue fruits, a large number of pretty wildflowers, and a central patch dominated by pumpkin-sized peaches with faces on them that grew straight out of the ground.
The “happy peaches” as they were called were a somewhat common source of food on Ikyu. They grew quickly, produced a lot of edible flesh, and could be consumed by almost anything, barring rigids*. However, they were a little difficult to farm in large quantities since there was a large amount of randomness inherent in where they grew and why. There was also the fact that their faces were actual faces. They always smiled adorably and had the ability to let out a hum that sounded a bit like a cat’s purr. This ability persisted even after they were chopped up, and thus devouring them was more than a little unnerving to some.
*We are familiar with the general ways to classify macroscopic life: animal, plant, fungus. All other forms of life we know of are microscopic and generally not important to our day-to-day affairs. Ikyu has a few more broad classifications in addition to the aforementioned three: plasts and rigids. There are a couple races that don’t fit into any of these categories, but they are well-known outliers. Rigids are mentioned here because they generally cannot gain sustenance from traditional crops.
Currently, the entire patch of happy peaches was humming, which meant their farmer was in the field. The individual in question was a short but muscular human woman tanned rather harshly due to her constant work in the sun and absolute refusal to wear a hat to shade herself. In her own words, “this hair of mine needs to be free or it’ll turn into a literal bird’s nest.”
“Hey, Mary!”
Mary looked up from the happy peach she was stroking gently. “Oh, Blue? What brings you to my little patch of insanity?”
Blue was careful not to crush any happy peaches as she approached Mary. “I need to ask you… about plants.”
“You mean actual plants or just things you can grow in the dirt?”
“I… huh?” Blue shook her head. “Isn’t… that the definition of plant?”
Mary chuckled, standing up. “Haven’t you ever heard of fungus?”
“…I momentarily forgot.” Blue briefly wondered if fungus would have yet another way to interact with air. But she knew how to easily sprout plants, she had no idea about mushrooms. They would be harder to test.
Mary continued. “There’s more, though. Just because it ain’t growin’ in the ground don’t mean it’s not a plant. Dryads move around, as do levitatin’ clovers. Nah, the thing that makes a plant a plant is the leaves. Usually green, but not always.”
Blue gestured at the various green, leafy things all over Mary’s fields of variety.
“One of the things I’m growin’ here ain’t a plant, see if you can find it.” Mary grinned. “Consider it a little game, Blue.”
“Mary I have questions…”
“Ah, then if you find the non-plant I’ll answer your questions!” Mary winked. “Now the game has stakes!”
“Mary…”
“This’ll be fun.” Mary put her hands on her hips and grinned. “You should just go with it, enjoy yourself.”
“How can I enjoy myself when I’m being toyed with?” Blue asked—but she was already searching, poking her snout into various bushes and plots of land, finding nothing but leafy greens and sprouts. Not even a mushroom.
Mary followed her as she did this, looming a bit like a vulture. She said nothing further as Blue kept up her search, only occasionally stooping down to take care of a small weed or tend to one of her plants. The longest she stopped was at the levitating clover; digging the tiny green plant up to reveal a massive tuber beneath the ground. She cut the link between the tiny plant and its tuber, putting the leaves back in the ground.
“Don’t those taste horrible?” Blue asked.
“Absolutely, but levitating clover tubers might be the densest food in the world. So much packed into such a small space. Such a shame that if you let the clover fly they eat it themselves for the energy.”
“Mmm…” A thought formed in Blue’s mind, but she pushed it aside for later—right now she had a non-plant to find. She stroked her hoof across several other plants, finding leaves, leaves, leaves, leaves, rubbery smoothness, leaves…
Blue came to a stop and took a few steps backward. There was a small patch of teardrop-shaped green things growing out of the ground with no sign of leaves at all. When she touched them, the sensation was one of smooth rubber. Definitely not a leaf. “Is this… a plast?”
“Eeyep!” Mary said with an overly exaggerated nod. “Gotta have at least one plast growin’ y’know? Gari need to keep their gauntlets and hair at their best! The ones in the mines get damaged all the time and without a plast nutrient it’d just take too long to grow back.”
“Plasts…” Blue prodded the green drop again. “What’s this one called?”
“Marra’s tears. Don’t ask me who Marra is, ain’t the foggiest idea. They ‘bloom’ by unwrapping. The ‘fruit’ inside is actually inedible, you eat the stuff that was the wrapping. Well, not you, you can’t digest that, but you know.”
“I… am afraid biology is not my strong suit.” Blue turned to Mary. “Actually, that’s why I’m here. I’m trying to figure out how we breathe and how plants need air. Or don’t need air, maybe.”
“Can’t tell you much about air, since that’s the one thing I’ve always got.” Mary let out a coarse laugh. “All life needs energy, even rigids. All life gets this by eating—even plants eat. I’m not talking flytraps, I’m talking eating things from the ground through their roots. What they eat varies, but everything has to eat.”
“I think part of the things we need to eat is, well, air.”
“But air doesn’t go into your stomach if you’re doing it right.”
“Maybe lungs are just another type of stomach.”
“…I can’t tell if you’re makin’ Vaughan crazy or if he’s makin’ you crazy.”
“The relationship is mutual,” Blue deadpanned.
“Sure… anyway, plants need good soil so they can eat properly, water that they drink from the soil, and sun. Or, well, a good Purple wizard that can give the plant exactly the kind of light it needs, but it’s much easier to just use the sun. Nature’s sometimes perfect all on its own, y’know?”
“Yeah, but like…” Blue frowned. “Ugh, I’m not sure how to ask it since I’m not even entirely sure what the question is. I want to know how plants deal with air, but nobody’s ever grown plants out of air before.”
“Plants made of air…”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Still, a fun concept.” Mary pointed at the levitating clover. “Some plants can fly for a while, or move. Some even float up there with the balloon whales indefinitely. But made out of air?”
“Pretty sure you need magic to be made out of air,” Blue said. “Thus, only spirited races can be. And… well I suppose there are air elementals.”
“You ever seen one?”
“No, just read about them. Elementals aren’t very common.”
“I think you’re bein’ a bit of a stick in the mud,” Mary said. “Life takes many fancy and bizarre forms without relyin’ on any sort of magic. Y’know how people are talking about those fancy meatball vines? An animal that roots to the ground and grows like a crop…”
Blue blinked. “People are talking about that?”
“Oh, you haven’t heard? The cows keep dissapearin’, the amount of meat in town is starting to get a little short.”
“Disappearing cows? Is someone stealing cows?”
Mary shrugged. “No idea. I’m not worried, my livelihood doesn’t depend on cow meat. Plants forever, Blue, plants forever.”
“Mary, you don’t have to give me your sales pitch, I’m an herbivore.”
Mary only laughed at this and returned to her work. Blue, deciding this entire trip was rather pointless since she didn’t learn anything helpful, walked off with a slight slouch.
~~~
Jeh took off her bear mitts, revealing her bare hands. “Ready!”
“All right, Jeh, so, let’s test this out.” Vaughan handed her a levitator and a large Orange chunk. “So, w—“
Immediately Jeh tried to fly as high as she possibly could as fast as she possibly could. While she was able to launch into the air at an exceedingly fast velocity, she did not have the finesse required to instinctually keep her trajectory steady. She crashed almost immediately into a tree just behind Vaughan’s cabin.
She fell out of the tree, regenerating all her wounds. The levitator was undamaged, strapped tightly to her wrist.
Vaughan couldn’t help but laugh at the immediate punishment of her impatience.
“One day, I’ll fly the best,” Jeh said, dejectedly trudging back to Vaughan. “What do I do?”
“We’re going to see how functional ‘going slow’ is, if you can manage that. I want a baseline.”
“Go slow.” Jeh nodded in understanding.
“So, the levitator is the one calibrated for you, so try activating just it.”
Jeh held the umbrella-like device over her head and activated it. She pushed off the ground and started drifting into the air.
“Now, use only a small amount of force from the Orange.”
Jeh did as requested, pointing the orange chunk at the levitator’s disc, using only a small amount of it to push herself a little faster. “Up I go!”
“Let me know how it goes!”
Jeh nodded down at him. “You’re tiny!”
“You’re the small one.”
“What!?”
“I sai—nevermind! Just keep going up until you want to come down!”
“Come down!?”
“When you want!”
“Oh!” Jeh nodded in understanding, but Vaughan could barely see it—she already had a significant elevation.
After this, no communication occurred between them. Vaughan watched the Orange spark go higher and higher into the sky until he could no longer visually discern if it was going any higher. He suspected if he kept watching long enough he’d watch the Orange spark grow fainter until it became too distant to see at all.
He decided that would be kind of boring, so he went back inside the cabin, walking right into the midst of Blue’s wall of jars with plants in them.
“Aha!” Blue declared, holding up a jar in her telekinesis.
“You’re sure getting excited about these plants…” Vaughan noted, tapping a jar with a perfectly healthy-looking plant inside. “How long have you been at this?”
“At least a week, look at this!” She held up a jar with a dead plant and a dead cricket in it.
“Mmm, yes, I see you’ve discovered another way space can kill us.”
“What? No.” Blue shook her head. “This jar proves something. See, I’ve been checking by the hour how long it takes crickets to die in fresh jars of air. Then I put this cricket in with a bunch of plants. Something killed the plants—no idea what, maybe heat or something—but the cricket survived much longer than it should have.”
“Plants help us breathe?”
“Yes!” Blue nodded vigorously. “I’m… not sure about the mechanism. I think that when we breathe, we ‘eat’ something from the air. But when they breathe, however they do it, they put that something back into the air.”
“So we breathe different things in the air.”
“I… maybe? Problem is…” She took a plant down from a nearby shelf. “This plant was sealed in this jar over a week ago, and it’s still fine. You think it’d run out of whatever is in the air if it breathes something different than we do… but it does need air.” She held up a jar with a very dead plant inside. “This jar had as much air removed as I could manage. Plant died in less than a day.”
Vaughan frowned, tapping his foot.
Blue continued. “Anyway, even if I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, this puts us on the right track. However it works, plants do restore the air that’s already been breathed, allowing the same amount of air to be used longer. I’ll need to run a lot of experiments on different kinds of plants to find the right mixture, but I think it should be possible to not have to truck up a ton of air.”
“Restore…” Vaughan scratched his beard. “Restore…” Slowly, he removed a Green crystal from his robes. “Blue… do you think… we could use this on the air itself?”
Blue stared at the Green crystal, dumbfounded. “It can’t be that simple.”
“If the plants are restoring the air as you say they are, then air can be restored. Green can restore anything…”
“Restore anything so long as parts to do so are nearby. May I remind you of the disasters that occur when idiots try to repair ships at sea incorrectly?”
“Mmm…” Vaughan said. “You’re right, whatever we’re breathing is probably used up and consumed, not able to be accessed.”
“Probably,” Blue said. “…But we should still test that theory, just to be safe.”
“Soon as Jeh gets back—“
There was a loud crash outside followed a few seconds later by a “Woo-hoo, that was awesome!”
“Speak of the fake bear and she shall appear,” Vaughan chuckled. He left the cabin once more to find that Jeh had shattered the Orange crystal and terribly bent the levitator’s handle. That would be a pain to fix. Jeh, naturally, was fine. “So, what did you see up there?”
“Mountains, fields, river, the entire forest! Then wind got me. Need more practice.”
“You’ll get some later. Right now, I have a new idea…”
“We had an idea!” Blue huffed.
“Pretty sure I came up with it first!”
“You never would have thought of it had it not been for my plants!”
“Hey, hey,” Jeh said, holding out her hands. “Calm. Tell me: what do I do?”
“Well, you know that large jar of yours?” Vaughan asked.
Jeh let out an annoyed groan. “I thought we were done with that…”
~~~
Vaughan slapped together the simplest crystal core design. It only contained five crystal components: two Magenta crystals to set up the spell storage loop, another Magenta to receive the will from the user, and a final Magenta cut in a particular shape so that it would ‘catch’ the spell as it was released from the loop to duplicate it. One duplicate would return to the loop while the other would go to the last component: a large chunk of Green.
The stored spell was simple: restore a spherical area directly in front of the Green crystal. Normal Green spells automatically sought out living objects, but Vaughan knew enough to ignore that in crafting the new spell.
It took him about ten minutes to set it all up. The four Magenta crystals were already cut—it was always good to have a basic crystal core setup or two on hand for use in situations like this. All he really had to do was set the spell by trying to cast it on the loop with the right timing. Then he affixed the Green to it. In the end, it looked like a lump of Green crystal with a small Magenta protrusion that served as a handle. Awkward and clunky, but it would do the job nicely.
Jeh put one of her mitts back on but left the other hand empty for the fresh device. Even though crystals were light objects, it was still very front-heavy and took some care from Jeh to hold.
“That’ll have to be refined,” Blue said.
“Obviously,” Vaughan agreed.
“And refining it will cost money.”
“…Yes. Quite.”
“Maybe you could just teach her to target the air?”
“Ah, but this way, it’ll work for anyone.”
Jeh clapped her hands—threatening to drop the device in the process. “Everyone!” She then tilted her head dumbly. “This… fixes air?”
“Yes,” Blue said. “Well, maybe. We don’t know. Just… keep pushing your will into it and it will try to restore the air in front of you. Do not try to use your own spell on the Green.”
Jeh took a few seconds to process what had just been said. “Right. So… jar time?”
“Jar time.”
They took her outside to the jar in the shade with the blankets. Like last time, Jeh went in with her book, but no tray of objects this time. Blue sealed her inside and Jeh activated the device.
“Make sure to keep it pointed at empty space, not your blanket,” Vaughan called in.
“Empty space,” Jeh repeated with a nod. The glittering Magenta and Green sparks were rather bright, indicative of a very inefficient device—but this was something hastily slapped together.
And so they waited.
And waited.
And waited.
The waiting was rather annoying. There was no real way for those outside to tell if anything was happening because air was invisible and Jeh was exceptionally good at looking completely fine even when everyone else in her situation would be screaming in agony.
Eventually, Blue couldn’t take it any longer. “Are you—“
“The air’s not stuffy,” Jeh said, nodding to herself. “I feel… normal.”
“It’s working…” Vaughan grinned, rubbing his hands together. “It’s working!”
“We don’t know for sure, let’s give it a while,” Blue said.
“Blue, come on, this is a breakthrough! We can breathe!”
“Maybe the effect runs dry eventually!”
“Hmph! It won’t run dry until the crystal itself fades, and that’s a very large crystal for a simple spell.”
“Vaughan, we still need to test further. Don’t be more of a moron than usual.”
Vaughan folded his hands behind his back and turned back to the jar. “…Go slow, restore the air. It feels… so close, now.”
“We still have to finalize the ship design, get that core built, and… a lot of other spendy things.” Blue looked up to Vaughan with a frown. “Even if this works and we end up with a ship that can go up basically forever…”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Vaughan said. “As it is, this discovery gives us much more leeway. We won’t have to make a floating garden or carry up tons of air!”
Blue couldn’t help herself—at this point even she believed in the little “air restorer” device they’d just made.
Just restore the air.
How simple! How absurdly simple!
Her mind didn’t let her rest completely easy, however. She did not know what the Green was restoring. What did they breathe? Why did plants breathe differently? What was the point of it all?
She had the nagging doubt that she wouldn’t be the one to find the answers to those questions. But she wanted to. She wanted to figure out what it all meant and prove to everyone… well, everything. That you didn’t need to be a stuffy old person living in a tower that hated students to discover things.
Jeh tapped on the glass. “So, I can stay forever. How long do I stay?”
Vaughan shrugged. “A few days should remove any possible doubt in Blue’s mind.”
Jeh twitched. “Days!? I, wh… um…”
“Ignore the old coot,” Blue said. “I’m thinking a full day will do it, Jeh, twenty-four hours. Can you do that?”
“…Yeah. I can do that. Unless I fall asleep.”
“I’ll stay up with you.” Blue sat down outside the jar. “And shout at you when you need it.”
“Shouting match?”
“Wait, Jeh, not right n—“
Jeh started screeching at the top of her lungs, trying not to laugh the entire time. Blue found that pressing her ears flat only blocked some of the noise. Not enough.
It was going to be a long night.
~~~
“Suro, I already saw this,” Big G told the cat that led him to the jar with Jeh in it.
“You did,” Suro admitted.
“Then why are you dragging me here?”
“You’ll see.”
Big G folded his arms and kept his mouth shut. Once he was at the jar, he noticed a very tired looking Jeh and Blue talking to each other. Jeh had a device in her hand even he could tell was primitive.
“Ah, Big G,” Blue said, blinking a few times. “How nice of you to join us.”
“Suro insisted. What is that device she holds?”
“Air restorer!” Jeh said, holding it up. “Makes air good again!”
“…What?”
“She’s been in there since last night,” Blue said with a large yawn. “No signs of any problems whatsoever.”
“I breathe!” Jeh declared.
Big G unfolded his arms, staring at the jar blankly. “She could stay in there forever?”
“She has to sleep eventually, and the device requires awareness,” Blue said. “But if you can stay awake, I don’t see why it couldn’t last until the crystals give out. Or have two people take turns on it, that might work.”
Big G turned to Blue with wide eyes.
“What?” Blue asked, her confident smile wavering slightly.
“Do you have any idea how useful this device will be?”
“I mean, it’s solved our air problems. And it’ll probably help in the mines.”
“You have no idea how much it will help in the mines. Help divers. Help…” He stared at the device in disbelief.
“I’m sure Vaughan will make some for you if you ask, he is still Willow Hollow’s wizard.”
“You don’t understand.” Big G pointed at the device. “This device will be worth a fortune.”
“Don’t be… ridiculous…” Slowly, Blue’s smile dropped and her tired eyes became much more alert. “Wait…”
“Think of how many mining towns there are in the world.”
“Holy Eights…” Blue turned to Jeh with wide eyes. “I think he’s right, Jeh.”
Jeh tilted her head. “The device is good?”
“The device is worth money. And lots of it.”
“…Does this mean I can come out now?”
“…Sure.” Blue unscrewed the jar’s lid and then took off in a gallop back to the cabin. “Vaughan! Vaughan! You need to refine that design right now! Vaughan! Where are you!?”
Suro chuckled, looking up to Big G. “I told you it would be worth your time.”
“Willow Hollow’s mines will be the first to have these,” Big G said. “This… may put us on the map.”
“No doubt.”
Jeh walked out of the jar, brushing some black dust off her feet. “Egh, what’s this stuff?”
“Hmm…” Suro sniffed it. “Not sure…”
Big G leaned down and put some of the dust on his finger, licking it. “Hmm… graphite.”
“A problem?” Jeh asked.
“No, it’s harmless stuff.” Big G tilted his head. “Why does your purifier leave that behind?”
Jeh shrugged.
“…Never mind, I do not need to know. I simply need to know it works.” He nodded courteously to Suro and Jeh. “I will order as many as your little group here can create in a reasonable amount of time.”
“Good.” Suro said with a smile that was more than a little smug. “Now, we should probably go tell them there was a byproduct of graphite.”
“Byproduct…” Jeh tilted her head. “Thing that shows up by doing a thing?”
“More or less.”
“I’ll ask Eifa later.” With a spring in her step, she rushed to the cabin—making sure to tap Suro on the nose as she passed.
Suro hissed. “I swear, she wants to drive me insane…”
Big G had no comment—he simply walked off, returning to the mines. He needed to think of some new procedures…
~~~
Some time later, a male gari with blue gauntlets slammed his pickaxe into the rock deep beneath the earth, revealing a Purple cube the size of his head.
“Got a Purple down here!” he called. “It’s a biggun!”
A human woman poked her head down from the hole in the ceiling. “I’ll trade with you to get it out.”
He nodded. He climbed up the hole into another little cavern where a few other miners were working. The woman had been sitting on a single chair with a Magenta stone on one of the armrests. When the gari took his place in the chair, he made sure to press his hand into the crystal and push his will into it.
This prompted the Green section to start glowing: a simple square frame made of brass hanging from the back. Every bit of air within the square was restored, allowing the miners working this deep to continue their work with fresh breaths.
On the back of the chair was a small, hastily-slapped-together symbol of a wizard hat with an upward-pointing arrow on it.
~~~
SCIENCE SECTION
Breathing is freaking complicated.
In a basic sense, we take in oxygen that reacts with our bodies. This gets exhaled as carbon dioxide, or CO2, a waste product of several reactions that occur all in a chain. This is highly simplified—I haven’t even gone over why this gives us energy to move—but it gets the idea across.
When the Green is restoring the air, it’s rearranging it into what it was previously. So the carbon dioxide that is released is turned into oxygen. Then the carbon that’s left over has to be pushed away; leaving behind a black powder. Graphite. This does imply that there will be a point where the cycle has to end because too much carbon has been taken out of someone’s body, but carbon is so readily available as to make this a non-issue. Just have someone eat a sandwich to resupply.
Blue and the rest of the program know nothing about any of the chemistry. They just know that they’re “resetting” the air back to when it was breathable and the black stuff comes out afterward. Discovering chemistry is going to be a little difficult so long as they focus on results rather than explanations.
The answer really was that simple though, they only had to realize that air doesn’t run out, it changes. Just change it back! In the real world, this is difficult to do, but it is possible. We use a variety of technologies to accomplish this, some of which are based on using algae photosynthesis to revert carbon dioxide to oxygen. Green just provides a shortcut.
Though, there is one thing readers may have noticed: some of the plants Blue sealed in jars didn’t die. How is that possible? They take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, surely they should run out of carbon dioxide, right?
Well, first of all, when we pass out in a sealed container it’s because of carbon dioxide poisoning, not a lack of oxygen. There’s still plenty of oxygen in the air when we pass out. Secondly, and here’s the kicker, plants don’t just breathe in carbon dioxide. They can take in oxygen as well, and often do in the night when the sun can’t power their photosynthesis. In certain situations, if a perfect balance of nutrients exists in a sealed jar with a single plant, it could live until the end of its normal lifespan. Plants in Blue’s jars are likely going to die from overheating, over-humidity, or something else, though.
Unfortunately, I am not a biologist, so I actually don’t know what the exact ratio of carbon dioxide to oxygen intake is for each plant. Clearly, some are capable of producing more oxygen than they need in some situations since we can use algae* to clean the air. But you don’t just automatically give yourself air by standing next to a tree.
*Technically speaking, algae is considered a protist, not a plant. This is largely due to the fact that individual algae organisms are single-celled.
In the end, using plants to recycle air can work, but it has to be very meticulous and careful since there are a lot of hidden complexities in them. So just use Green, the easy way out.