Defiantly Optimistic

She hadn't planned to actually do it, really. It'd started as a theoretical project, that's all it was meant to be- a test of her skills, just to see if she could code something that complicated for a standard phone.

Maybe she should have thought further ahead when she started. Just a little.

It had started, like many things, with an idle conversation at Bella's house. Sprawled on the mossy carpet next to Maggie as she worked on flash cards, the faint piano music playing from the other girl's phone had gotten her attention, a hand coming up to flash an inquiring sign.

"Huh? Oh- it's this little idle game, Mini-Terrarium. You plant a bunch of little plants in these fish bowl things, and feed the animals that come visit."

"It's not fantastic, but at least it has more than one subspecies for each animal."

From her spot at her desk, Bella looked up from her homework to glance over at the younger girl's screen. "How realistic is the gardening part? I've been trying to look for a good one to play at school for a while now."

A grimace answered her. "Not. You have to pull weeds, pick up trash, and water the plants, but that's it."

"Well that's crap. Just once, I'd like a game that handles it more like it really is- an actual pocket garden."

Lain pushed herself upright, head tilting just slightly as she signed. "What do you mean?"

"Stuff like planting dill and fennel near your roses, to lure ladybugs to keep the aphids away, or making sure the plants have enough sunlight and aren't crowding each other out, or that they're getting the right nutrients. You know, the complicated parts."

Next to Lain, Maggie nodded in agreement. "I want a game that lets me design a fully bioactive enclosure, not just gives me an animal to feed and water. That's like, the bare minimum. Where's the enrichment? I want to decorate the enclosures!" She huffed, wings flapping irritably, until Zan rolled over in the hammock, letting an arm dangle down to scritch at the dark green feathers.

"Is this your way of saying you're going to take up coding out of spite, little bird?"

"I fucking well might!"

The conversation had turned, then, to the new topic- spite as a motivating force, and ridiculous things they'd done because of it- but it hadn't left Lain's mind. A game like Maggie and Bella had described couldn't be that hard to code- could it?

A ride home and a few hours later had found her sprawled out on her bed, wikipedia page up on Spice's holodisplay, and a separate window full of notes.

"Best of both worlds... Ball pythons, maybe, to start with, they're easiest to find info on, and that'll give me a rainforest to pick plants from..."


A week had passed. Two. Figuring out the display settings for the enclosures had been easy- offering two cage orientations to match the phone dimensions, designing the 3D environment to look like it was looking through the glass into the tank. She'd played with a few shaders for a while, before settling for cell shading- it looked best with the low poly environment, and used the least processing power.

(That had been the real stumbling block, honestly, processing power- if she'd been building it just for her devices, or even ones her aunt had built, it wouldn't have been one at all. How could anyone stand having a phone with such a weak CPU? Madness, pure madness.)

(Maybe she should take over the handheld device industry when she grew up. The people currently in charge clearly weren't doing a good job of it.)

Modelling the humidity settings had been a little challenging- but working out the equation had been kind of fun, honestly, figuring out what variables to link to which aspects of the decor.

Then there was the model rigging, the animation- figuring out how to model the shedding and eating without it looking flat out bizarre had left her pulling her hair in frustration.

It still wasn't done. It wasn't able to simulate a fully bioactive enclosure yet, despite Lain's efforts- there was research she'd have to do on springtails, other aspects of bioactives to look into- but it was playable.

The bioactive functions could be added in later, anyway- it's not like apps didn't release updates all the time-

But there was the problem.

"How the hell do you publish an app, anyway?"

Pumpkin Spice, helpfully, projected a page on publishing laws- and Lain's eyes crossed trying to parse the legal jargon.

"...You know what, Spice, I think I'm just gonna ask Dad for help." The robot tarantula clicked understandingly, shutting the display down as he climbed up the girl's sleeve to settle in on her shoulder.

As she left the room, Lain couldn't help but muse that as far as consequences went, an accidentally functioning app was far from the worst possible result for when the scientific process goes oops.