Nothing Grows Here

Athan Raymond peeled his last synthetic fruit from its silicon mold at 19:00, 12 hours after he’d set foot in the Farm that morning. At 19:03, he returned his protective gear (a single pair of torn rubber gloves) to the floor boss at the door, and by 19:05 he had clocked out, knowing that his total shift time would be rounded down. Even if overtime was only a 5% increase to his normal wages, the Farm wasn’t going to be caught dead paying it.

There was a bit of a hold-up in the post-work processing line when a supervisor found a Harvester trying to sneak an apple out beneath his cap, and Ray caught the eye of Legs, who shook his head in disapproval. Ray didn’t know the tall Harvester’s real name—they only worked on the line next to each other—but the nickname had served him fine. Legs had proved more willing to talk on the job than Ray’s neighbor on the right, who hadn’t spoken a single word in the last 6 months of tedious work.

The line moved faster after the thief was removed. At 19:12 Ray was patted down, and at 19:13 he stepped into the busy streets of Portas’s lower ring, breathing free air for the first time in 12 hours.

In the lower ring’s case, free air was a hazy, toxic fog. Everyone wore some form of protection—cloth masks for the poorest, though most had scrounged up enough for a vent-box. Only the richest in the lower ring had true gasmasks. True kings and queens of the garbage, they were, and they never bothered to look in Ray’s direction, but he got plenty of sad looks from the others.

He knew why they stared. When they saw him walking around without even a cloth mask, they assumed he would be dead soon. It was a reasonable assumption, but it hadn’t come true yet, and Ray didn’t think it would. He had always been fine without a mask, and he needed to spend his money elsewhere.

At 19:17, Ray turned off the main street. He had been camping near his stash for the last few weeks, and the journey took him further down the tiers of the city, where the fumes rising from the Wastes were denser and choked all but the toughest and most desperate from the streets. To live this low you needed a home with incredible filtration or plenty of backup filters for your vent-box, and Ray had neither. What he did have was an abandoned utility shed that had proved big enough for him to sleep in once he had ripped the water filter out. He also had incredible privacy—all of his neighbors were glassy-eyed and near comatose from smoking too much synth.

Three minutes after he had stepped from the main thoroughfare, Ray reached the alley that hid his shed from prying eyes, and it was then, at 19:20, that he first saw a miracle.

In the center of the alley was something he had never seen before, but he recognized it from descriptions in old stories. The solid trunk was deep brown and thick, at least, thicker than the branches that sprouted from it. As Ray stared, his hanging jaw pulling his face towards the ground, small red balls popped up all along the branches. Within moments, they sprouted into white blossoms, and Ray’s dingy, fog-choked alley might as well have been heaven.

A tree! A real, organic, tree, and in Portas! If anyone had told Ray that there was a tree even in the upper ring of the city, he would have laughed in their face. The smallest weed couldn’t grow beneath the foul, oppressive fog. And if it was laughable for a tree to be in the upper ring, finding one in the bottom alleys of the lower ring was nothing short of impossible.

Yet there it was, brilliant white blossoms blinding against the drab alleyway.

“What’s wrong? Never seen a tree before?”

Ray twisted around. He was reluctant to pull his gaze away from the tree, but his instincts took over. It was never good to be caught unaware in the lower levels.

The speaker, however, wasn’t one of the unfortunate and desperate that he normally shared the streets with. Instead, Ray found himself staring again, as slack-jawed as ever.

The woman standing before him was taller than him and wrapped in a long silver dress that was stained at the bottom by the residue that the polluted air left on every surface in the city. Her feet were bare and stained in the same manner. Long hair, the same white color as the blossoms on the tree, fell in waves around her face, the lower half of which was covered by a new vent-box. Her green eyes sparkled with laughter, and Ray was transfixed.

She giggled and closed his mouth with a gentle finger beneath his chin. “Never seen a woman before either, it would seem.” She brushed past him towards the tree.

“I have seen one,” Ray said, turning around once more. “A woman, that is. Just…”

“Just not a tree?”

“Just not one like you.”

The woman laughed in full then, a clear, ringing sound that Ray thought was as rare as the blossoms before him.

“You’re too kind,” she said, “and most likely correct. There are no women like me in this city.”

“Did you grow the tree?” Ray asked.

“I did.” The woman waved Ray closer. “Come closer if you wish, and I can show you how.”

Ray did as she instructed, staring up into the branches as he stepped beneath them. The blossoms were a gorgeous swirl of white, like what he imagined snow had used to look like as it fell.

“What is your name?” the woman asked.

Ray let his gaze fall from the tree. “Athan Raymond,” he said, “but everyone calls me Ray. What’s your name?”

“You don’t need to know that now, Raymond. Later, perhaps.”

Ray frowned, and the woman laughed again.

“Don’t be so disappointed. Are you hungry?” She reached up into the branches above them and held her palm above one of the blossoms. The petals beneath her hand shuddered and fell, and in its place swelled a bright red sphere that the woman plucked from the tree.

Ray knew what the sphere was—he had spent 12 hours a day for the past six years peeling them from molds—but he couldn’t believe that the one before him was real. “Is that really an apple? A real apple?”

“Oh my, so you know what an apple is.” The woman pressed it into his eager hands. “Do you have them here?”

Ray bit into the bright red fruit and such flavor flooded into his mouth that he was too overwhelmed to respond. It was so sweet and fresh and had none of the plastic taste that was the trademark of its synthetic counterpart. He took another bite, then a third, unwilling to let the glorious taste leave his mouth.

“I’ll take that as a no,” the woman said.

“We don’t have real ones,” Ray said, finally taking a breath. “The factory makes synthetic ones. That’s where I work, I’m a Harvester, I pull the fruits out of the molding.”

“And is there nowhere in the city where real fruit is grown?”

Ray shook his head, his mouth full again, then decided to talk anyway. “Nothing grows here. The air is too toxic, and the seeds are illegal anyway.”

“Illegal?”

“Uh-huh. Because of the rarity, they say. The ORA, they own the factory too, made it illegal because there are only so many seeds, and they don’t want just anyone trying to grow them. Only qualified members can, so that we don’t waste all the seeds we have. That’s why you’re supposed to hand over seeds if you find them.”

“What is the ORA?” the woman asked.

“The Organic Regulation Agency. They control all of the food production in the city.”

“And I could get in trouble with them for this tree?”

Ray crunched through the apple’s core—it was a lot crunchier than the synthetic core—and swallowed his final bite. “Well, if they’d caught you with just the seeds, they definitely would have taken them from you, but I bet they’d be thrilled now. I mean, you grew a tree! A real tree! There’s no way you could get in trouble now.”

The woman’s brow furrowed over her vent-box. “Even still,” she said, “I shouldn’t chance it.” She placed her palm against the tree’s trunk, and the blossoms above fell in a pale flurry. Apples bloomed in their place along every branch, and the woman stepped back from her creation.

“It was lovely meeting you, Raymond,” she said. “Take as many apples as you need, and I hope to see you again one day.”

“Where are you going?” Ray asked.

The woman was already at the end of the alley, but she paused at the corner. “To sow more seeds,” she said, and was gone. Ray thought that she flew across the ground like a ghost, or maybe a goddess. He would have thought he dreamed of her if not for the bright crimson apples hanging above him.

***

“You what?” Legs asked, keeping his voice low.

“I just grabbed a bunch of apples and went back to my shed,” Ray responded in the same tone. The two Harvesters had mastered the art of talking on the job, keeping their voices quiet and looking as busy as possible when their supervisor was on their end of the line.

“Are you really still sleeping in that shed?” Legs asked, tossing a mold to the side and placing a synthetic apple into the proper vacuum tube. “You should just join me in Farm housing. The rooms are ventilated and everything, you don’t even have to wear a mask. Not that you do anyways, I suppose.”

“Is that really what you’re talking about right now? Legs, I just told you that I found a tree. A real tree!”

“And a beautiful woman who can grow apples from the palms of her hands. I heard you, Ray, I’m just worried you’re going to die. The fog is too thick further down, and you have no mask and no vents in your room. That woman was probably just a hallucination from the toxins.”

Their supervisor, a fat man with drooping eyebrows and a hairline that was running away from them, approached and Legs fell silent. He and Ray focused silently on their work until their boss had passed.

“I haven’t died yet,” Ray continued, “and I’m not paying half of my wages to live under the factory’s roof. I need that money for other things.”

“Ah, yes,” Legs said, “other things. The same other things that stop you from buying a mask?”

“How about this. Come with me after work and I’ll give you an apple. I left a couple in my locker outside, so we won’t have to go through the processing line with it. If I’m wrong about it being real, I’ll buy a vent-box. If I’m right, you have to come with me to see the tree.”

Legs sighed. “I’m just worried about you, Ray. The Farm will take care of you if you let it. Also, with the anniversary coming up, I heard that Council is going to try and clean up the lower circle. You’ll be taken off the street regardless, you might as well leave on your own.”

Ray shrugged. “Prove me wrong, then. If I’m wrong about the tree, I’ll move into Farm housing with you.”

Legs looked up from his work, and Ray knew he was smiling behind his vent-box. “You’ve got a deal,” he said.

***

“I can’t believe it,” Legs said. “I really thought you were hallucinating.” The tall harvester had taken a quick bite of Ray’s apple and pulled his vent-box back up to chew, but Ray saw his eyes widen above the device.

Ray laughed, leading the way into the lower levels of the ring. “I’m not sure I would’ve believed myself either. That’s why I brought the proof.”

“And there’s a tree full of these?”

“Fuller than full. We could feed the whole Farm if we could sneak them in.”

Ray heard a crunch behind him and knew that Legs had lowered his mask for a second bite. They were close to the alley and anticipation quickened their pace. Ray could feel his heart beginning to race. What if the woman was back? Would she give him her name this time? The mouth of the alley was just ahead.

“Here it is!” Ray pulled Legs around the corner and his racing heart dropped into a free fall.

The tree was still there, but it no longer soared over the dingy floor of the alley. Its trunk had been cut through and the branches were in a pile on the ground, the apples smashed into the grime. Standing above it was a hulking figure that looked up at the sound of Ray’s voice.

“Here what is?” it said. “Do you know anything about this tree?” The voice was gruff and filtered through a full-face steel gasmask adorned with sharp, curved tusks. The man behind the mask wore a combat exoskeleton across his shoulders and arms, and his chest was stamped with the golden shield logo of the ORA.

“Is that a tree?” Ray said, taking as deep a breath as he could without burning his throat. “I wouldn’t know. Nobody around here has ever seen one.” Beside him, Legs was furiously nodding.

“Don’t play dumb with me, boy,” the ORA agent said. He put a finger to the side of his mask, likely activating the comms unit inside. “I’ve got two suspects at the tree in sector four. No backup needed; I’ll deal with them accordingly.”

“I’m not playing dumb!” Ray said. “Where would I have ever seen a tree? We have nothing to do with this!”

“He’s telling the truth,” Legs finally managed, but his voice cracked.

The agent strode forward until he was towering over the two Harvesters, but Ray and Legs managed not to retreat.

“So, you two just stumbled across me here?” the agent asked. “Wrong place, wrong time?”

“Exactly,” Ray said, “and we can leave right away, too. We don’t want to get in your way.”

The agent chuckled at that. “No, no, we wouldn’t want that, would we. Still, before you get out of here, I have one more question.”

“Of course, sir,” Legs said. “How can we help?”

“It’s an easy one,” the agent said, leaning in towards Legs. “If this is all just an accident, and you have nothing to do with this tree, what is in your hand?”

Ray, who had kept his eyes locked on the agent, looked down in dread. Clutched in Legs’s hand, with two huge bites out of it, was an apple.

Legs dropped it from shaking fingers and fell to his knees. “I’m sorry!” he screamed. “I just found it, I’m sorry!”

“Save your excuses, lowlife.” The agent raised a fist to Legs’s forehead, and a four-foot blade shot out from the gauntlet of his exoskeleton, piercing Legs’s skull and cutting his pleading short.

Ray tried to run, but he was no match for the exoskeleton-enhanced speed of the agent. Before he had taken more than a step, the tusked man had removed his sword from Legs and plunged it through Ray’s chest. The grimy alley floor slammed into his back, and as his vision faded to darkness, he heard the growling voice of the agent make a final report.

“Clean-up crew requested for dead organics. Tree and human, sector four. I’ll mark the location, so be quick about it.”