A NEW BLOOM FOR BLIGHTED SOIL?
by Amber Morgan, Psycho-environmental Reporter, Psytimes

Psyhigh's Scientia department has a green thumb.

"Well I wouldn't exactly call it green," says senior Trix Cadavre. "There's a lot of inorganic and synthetic compounds in it, but I guess you could call it 'life.'"

The Scientia department thinks it's a winner, and is funding a large scale experiment based on Trix's work in the gardens of Lower Campus.

"As we've learned," Trix says, "the soil beneath Psyhigh is pretty toxic. It got that way through over two centuries of exploitation, destruction, and genocide. And it's making the flowers nasty. But those toxins can be cleaned from the soil. Removed entirely. As if it all had never happened."

Trix has invented a new life form that feeds on the death and destruction of history, transforms it, and passes it back into the soil as nutritious waste. It looks like a big silver slug. About the size of a grapefruit.

"Even if the school continues to use blighted soil, imported from lands where the ground is still fresh with child slavery and ecological devastation, my Squirms can still clean it up, and create nutritious smelling waste to feed the flowers in our garden," Trix adds. "This way we can just forget about all that stuff that happened, or is still happening, in the world."

The Scientia department will be releasing 40 dozen Squirms in the gardens of Lower Campus this week.

PSYHIGH'S BLIGHTED SOIL
by Amber Morgan, Psycho-environmental Reporter, Psytimes

“You wouldn’t believe what goes into this soil,” Gardener Jo tells me, standing at the compost staging bins at the edge of the woods behind the gym. Gardener Jo has been head psychic gardener for just a few months, but has spent years doing field work and research on the subject.

“When these gardens were originally constructed, over two centuries ago, the fertilizer was almost entirely made from the blood of indigenous people,” Jo says. “It was cheap, plentiful, and the school was connected to the psychic power infrastructure in such a way that they had plenty of access. It still forms the foundation of what everything’s built on.”

As we talk, trucks unload fresh soil and compost into the bins behind us. The smell is intensely fecund. It causes a strange feeling to well up in me, like I am about to laugh or cry hysterically.

"Sure, it’s horrible. Beyond comprehension, really. But these gardens are built on it," Jo tells me.

Surely it's a different story today?

"We try to keep negative aspects out of the supply chain, but it’s really not possible. Wage slavery, actual slavery, ecological destruction, war. It all goes into what the garden is designed to use." Jo says. "It's really a conundrum."

Gardener Jo takes a whiff of the air coming from the steaming piles in the bins.

"Unfortunately it's been getting a lot richer lately," Gardener Jo says. "But the garden looks great, doesn't it?"