A neighbor's garden plants are 'unscientifically' vibrant and growing too fast, causing minor property damage.
Mrs. Gable was a woman who thrived on two things: prize-winning petunias and neighborhood gossip.
Today, the two had converged into a perfect storm of suburban drama.
Leo saw her a block away, waving frantically from her front lawn.
Her garden, usually a source of immense pride, now looked… aggressive.
Vines with the thickness of pythons were actively strangling her picket fence.
Roses bloomed with a feverish, almost violent intensity, their petals a shade of red that seemed to vibrate in the morning light.
"Leo! Thank goodness!" she called out, her voice tight with panic.
Leo braced himself. He knew this tone. This was the tone of someone about to describe a phenomenon that would make a physicist weep.
"What's wrong, Mrs. Gable?"
"It's my petunias!" she cried, pointing a trembling finger at a patch of flowers that were pulsing with a faint, unnatural light. "They're growing like weeds, but… too fast! And they glow faintly at night! It's unnatural, I tell you!"
She leaned in conspiratorially, her voice dropping to a whisper.
"I think it's a curse! Or maybe… alien fertilizer."
Leo fought to keep his expression neutral. Alien fertilizer. Close enough.
"I saw a documentary once…" she continued, her eyes wide. "About cosmic radiation and giant vegetables. My tomatoes are the size of softballs, Leo! Softballs!"
She held up her hands to demonstrate, as if he couldn't grasp the scale of this botanical horror.
Leo peered over the fence.
The garden didn't just look vibrant; it hummed.
He could feel a low-grade, chaotic spiritual energy radiating from the soil. It was like the garden had downed five espressos and was now vibrating with manic productivity.
He discreetly touched the Codex through his pocket.
The book sent a faint, confirmatory warmth through the fabric.
Spiritual Contamination: Low-Grade. Source: Ambient Energy Leak. Effect: Accelerated, Unstable Flora Growth.
Just as he thought. Some minor spiritual anomaly, probably a leaky ley line or a concentration of residual energy, was turning Mrs. Gable's garden into a B-movie jungle.
"It's the vines I'm worried about," she fretted, pointing to where a thick tendril was prying a board loose from her fence. "They're trying to escape! What if they get my prize-winning gnome, Bartholomew?"
Leo glanced at the ceramic gnome, who wore a look of permanent, cheerful terror.
This was getting out of hand. The neighborhood association would start asking questions. Questions he couldn't answer with "alien fertilizer."
He needed a solution.
A subtle, 'unscientific' solution.
And he had just the goldfish for the job.
Later that day, under the pretense of examining her soil for "rare fungal growth," Leo returned.
In his hand, he carried a small bucket.
Inside the bucket, swimming serenely in its portable bowl, was Goldie.
"Just taking a sample, Mrs. Gable," Leo said smoothly. "My friend at the university is a leading mycologist. He'll know what to do."
Mrs. Gable nodded, relieved to have an "expert" on the case.
Leo knelt by the hyperactive petunias, placing Goldie's bowl on the grass.
Goldie, creature of meticulous purity that it was, immediately sensed the chaotic, 'impure' energy emanating from the soil.
Its tiny fins twitched with profound disapproval.
Such messy energy, Goldie seemed to think, its internal monologue a stream of serene disgust. Disordered. Inelegant. An offense to the very concept of balance.
Leo watched as Goldie began its work.
It wasn't a grand display.
There was no flash of light, no dramatic surge of power.
Just a faint, almost imperceptible shimmer that spread from its bowl.
A wave of pure, cleansing energy radiated outwards, seeping into the soil.
It was like watching a drop of ink dissolve in a glass of water.
The manic hum of the garden began to soften.
The aggressive vibrancy of the leaves and petals seemed to recede, like a tide pulling back from the shore.
Goldie's water purification ability, when applied to the soil, was neutralizing the over-stimulated spiritual energy.
It was working.
It was working too well.
Goldie, in its relentless pursuit of absolute purity, didn't just neutralize the excess energy.
It scrubbed the soil clean.
Spiritually sterile.
The next morning, Mrs. Gable was on her lawn again, but this time her expression wasn't panic.
It was utter bewilderment.
"Leo! Look!"
Leo looked. The rampaging growth had stopped. The vines had retreated from the fence. The petunias no longer pulsed with an otherworldly glow.
But the garden now looked… weirdly artificial.
The roses were a perfect, uniform red, each petal identical.
The leaves of the petunias were flawless, without a single blemish or insect bite.
Every plant stood in perfect, symmetrical alignment, as if arranged by a robot with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
They looked less like living plants and more like extremely high-quality plastic replicas.
They had lost their natural, chaotic vibrancy.
Mrs. Gable pointed at her prize rose bush. "They… they look like they're from a catalog. They don't even look real anymore! Did your friend's soil treatment… bleach them?"
Leo suppressed a sigh.
He had solved one problem only to create another, more aesthetically confusing one.
Now, how to explain why her prize roses look like plastic after Goldie's 'help'? This goldfish is going to make me a master of botanical fiction.
"Ah, yes!" Leo said, forcing a bright smile. "That's the… second phase of the treatment! It's an aesthetic optimization protocol. It removes all the… visual imperfections. Very cutting-edge."
"Aesthetic optimization?" Mrs. Gable repeated, tasting the unfamiliar words.
"Precisely. It enhances the platonic ideal of the plant," Leo continued, pulling jargon out of thin air. "It'll wear off in a day or two, and they'll return to their more… rustic charm."
He hoped. He really, really hoped.
He glanced down at his pocket, where Goldie's travel bowl was safely stowed.
He could almost feel the smug satisfaction radiating from the tiny fish.
Almost perfect, Goldie seemed to be thinking. Just a few more imperfections to smooth out. My work is never truly done.
Mrs. Gable squinted at her plastic-looking petunias. "Well… I suppose they do look very tidy."
Leo nodded, backing away slowly. "Very tidy. You'll be the envy of the neighborhood."
He made a mental note.
Never let Goldie 'help' with anything that required a touch of natural imperfection.
Which, he was beginning to realize, was pretty much everything.
The world, it turned out, was not meant to be perfectly pure.
A fact his fastidious goldfish seemed determined to ignore.
In its pursuit of 'perfect purity', Goldie makes the plants a bit 'too perfect', causing them to temporarily lose some natural vibrancy, adding another layer of humorous 'over-correction'.