One day, a head executive at Bio Corps called the engineer up to his office and gave him an ultimatum: if he couldn’t design a single decent fruit varietal in the next three months—one of quality or, at the very least, one that could actually be sold to the public—he’d never step foot in Bio Corps ever again. Like it or not, that was that.
Obviously, the engineer didn’t want to imagine being thrown onto the street, where he’d surely live as a drifter and with a bottle in hand, no less. So, he spent the first week of his trial period drawing up plans—plans, plans, and even more plans—hoping he might avoid all of the formulas and methods that had inevitably led him to such intoxicating final products. It wasn’t easy, but it’s not like he had any other choice. Weeks passed, and he moved onto planting his bioengineered seeds. By the time he reached the third month, he’d finally created three new species of fruit that tasted acceptable. Sure, they weren’t about to be Bio Corp’s crown jewels, but at least they were passable enough to mollify his superior, he thought.
The engineer was pleased.
He wanted to kick back for a while. Since he was relaxing, he thought about getting tipsy; it’s not as though he needed to get completely blasted, just half-drunk would do, or even a quarter-drunk, since three whole months had passed since he quit. But alas, he’d thrown out all of his boozy fruits and not a piece was left. Engineering and planting new inebriating produce would take a long time, far longer than he was willing to wait; alternatively, he could just alter normal fruit into the kind that gets you drunk. So, he picked up a piece of fruit that he’d already harvested for the company: it was a cross between a seedless green grape, a pomegranate, and a sycamore fig. He tinkered with it a bit, mixing this and that, injecting it here and there, until – voilà! – his drunken product was ready. He wolfed down the fruit, then blinked a few times. He was already a quarter drunk. What about another fifth? Another sixth? He hadn’t yet reached the right level, he felt, so he grabbed another piece of fruit, and then another, and another, another, another . . .
He was ninety percent smashed when he realized that there wasn’t any fruit left on the plant he’d grown. He was done for. What could he possibly present to his boss? He only had two weeks left! Idiot. He shook his head hard, trying to spur on his few brain cells that were still functioning; with a mere ten percent of his mind at work, his hands started moving, drawing up plans, messing around with the cutting-edge machines and gadgets in the lab, pouring one fluid into another, adding ingredient after ingredient . . . his head was still ninety percent in a drunken haze, making it difficult for the engineer to measure precisely or think clearly, but he had no choice but to push through . . .
And then came the long-awaited day—or, better put, the day he so greatly feared. A few members of the executive board came to his lab, and the engineer reported with a heavy heart that he’d failed the Corporation’s request. He begged that they be lenient with him, that they offer him just two more months, one even, or if nothing else, two weeks would do.
“You failed after three months, what could you possibly do with another two weeks?” a boarded member snapped at him.
“From this moment onwards, you are no longer an employee of the Bio Corporation,” announced one of his other superiors.
The drunk engineer didn’t have another chance to plead his case. That very same day, he was kicked out of his lab (and I mean that literally, since the employee whimpered and whined about how much he wanted to stay until security guards were forced to throw him onto the street).
Around two months later, when the engineer was heading home from one of his weekly meetings for alcoholics (which he consistently attended about half the time), someone was waiting for him at the entrance to his apartment building. He recognized the Bio Corps uniform. The man passed along a brief message: the company wanted the engineer to come back to work.
“What more could the Corporation possibly want from me?”
The messenger didn’t have an answer, so the ex-engineer headed to the lab and met with the executive board. He tried to control himself, to not appear or sound as infuriated as he was, as he immediately asked his former superiors the same question.
“What do you know about this plant?” one of the higher-ups asked him in return, pointing into a nearby room with his index finger. The engineer peered over and saw a tree so tall that its trunk was nearly twice his own height, its branches bearing large yet buoyant leaves and lots of fruit. Slowly, he approached the plant and examined it carefully. He felt as though he recognized it, as though he’d seen it before . . . but had he?
“You don’t remember?” the same board member continued, but this time with a fat, mocking grin spread across his face. The engineer didn’t get the joke.
“That’s what you grew in the lab right when you left Bio Corps.”
“Hold on, boss. Just a second. You said, ‘right when I left Bio Corps’ . . .” Before he could finish claiming innocence, the engineer’s memories of that night flooded back. “Hey, that’s . . . Yeah, that’s my plant! I made that when I was completely blasted. Hahaha. Hey boss, what could you possibly want with a drunk man’s fruit?”
Whispers rippled across the board room, one executive muttering to another, until one finally stepped forward, plucked a piece of fruit from the tree, and handed it to his former employee. “Try it. The taste is unusual, unique, complex, layered . . .”
The engineer nibbled and swallowed in disbelief, then took another bite, and another. He shrugged and said, “Alright, then. Sure.” To be honest, he didn’t have much of a taste for fruit that wouldn’t get you tipsy. “So, what do you want me to do with this fruit?”
“The Bio Corporation has already made several attempts to replicate the plant, first using a simple, traditional approach and then with the most sophisticated and refined methods. Nothing worked. The board of Bio Corps has concluded that perhaps you alone hold the secret formula, and we would like you to give it to us. In other words, Bio Corps wants you to return to work.”
“I was fucked up when I engineered those seeds, boss.”
“Then you better start drinking,” a different board member replied, “Black out again! Work while you’re drunk! Drink while you work! Or whatever it is that you do.”
“Hah. You’re joking, right?”
“Drink,” another superior jumped in, “but don’t forget to take notes. We’ll need you to walk us through how you did it once you’re sober.”
The engineer shook his head, then rubbed his temples. The board kept on persuading him, persuading him, persuading him—or rather, pressured him persuasively, that’s probably a more fitting way to describe it—until finally he gave in: he’d accept the Corporation’s proposal.
*
That night, the drunk engineer got drunk. Before swallowing the intoxicating fruits he’d prepared for himself, he repeated the following mantra: write notes, write notes, write notes. He made sure he had a notebook and pen on hand, and then he also tucked more pens and pieces of paper in every corner of the lab, since he might lose his notebook in his altered state.
Then he ate the fruit.
The following afternoon, the engineer woke up sober but dizzy, with a pounding headache. With no memories of the previous night, he couldn’t even recall if he’d engineered anything after blacking out. He looked around the lab, then spotted a metal box filled with seeds on one of the tables, next to some unusual instruments. New seeds! He must have made them. He grabbed his notebook and flipped through the pages: each one was blank, painfully blank. He dashed from corner to corner, checking every piece of paper in the lab, until finally he found one spare sheet with the following notes:
Mangosteen, famed as the most alluring of all fruits in the garden, came to the conclusion that something was off about her lover, Pineapple. One day, she decided to follow her fellow fruit, only to discover that her companion was having a secret affair with Apple, one of Mangosteen’s closest friends. How dare they! Of course, based on what she’d observed about Apple, not to mention everything that her dear friend had confided in her up until that point, Apple seemed to be in love with Pear. Ironically, Pear had a partner of her own, Blueberry. But it was no secret that Pear had a bad habit of sneaking around, and Blueberry was no different; the latter was seeing Snake Fruit, who was a real catch because of her coarse skin etched with patterns that many fruits found exotic. But Snake Fruit had feelings for one fruit and one fruit alone: Guava. Unfortunately, the feelings weren’t mutual. Once, long ago, Guava had fallen for Mangosteen; while Guava nursed those feelings over time, Mangosteen considered their time together nothing more than a one-night stand.
One day, a fruit called Rumpulum appeared, claiming to be the offspring of Mangosteen and Pineapple. But Mangosteen refused to recognize the new fruit as her child. Rumpulum began questioning her identity and suggested that her parents might be Pineapple and Apple instead. When Pineapple denied the affair, Rumpulum developed a new theory—that she was born of Apple and Pear. Pear rebutted the accusation, stating that she’d never dream of going near a fruit like Apple. “So, maybe you and Blueberry?” But Blueberry snidely cut in: “Hah, you sure about that, kid? You know how many fruits Pear has messed around with?” “What about you and Snake Fruit, then?” “You know,” Blueberry replied, “that’d make a bit more sense. Snake Fruit isn’t anything like Pear: she’s loyal and loves just one fruit at a time. But did you know, she’s slept with one fruit who isn’t me. Guess who? Guava.” “So, you’re saying my parents might be Guava and Snake Fruit?” “Go ask them!” Rumpulum went and found Guava, but this is what the fruit told her: “Oh child, did Snake Fruit and I make you? Do you really think so? Because I did have one glorious night with Mangosteen. It’s also possible that she is your mother. Have you asked her?”
And so Rumpulum tried to find Mangosteen once again . . .
*
The engineer planted his new seeds. Seedlings had already started sprouting after a few days, but they didn’t look anything like the trees his superiors wanted him to replicate. Still, he carried the plants to the executive board and presented them, together with his notes.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Less than a minute after the engineer handed out copies of his notes, one of his superiors rose to his feet, yelling. “Are you trying to make a joke out of the Corporation?”
“Oh, Gentlemen of the Executive Board! So sorry, I’m sorry. You asked me to get drunk, make up some new plants, and take notes. What did you think would happen?”
“We want tables, we want algorithms,” snarled the chair of the board from the opposite corner of the room. “We want blueprints, we want empirical formulas, we want numbers, consistency, and quality! This—what even is this? An old treasure map? Fruit constellations? What could Bio Corps possibly do with the useless scribbles you’ve handed us?”
“Wow, boss! You might actually be right. What did you call these just now? ‘Constellations’? Look at how I mapped out points on the fruit like stars in the sky,” the engineer said with a bit of humor, gesturing wildly at the holographic version of his chart, blown up twenty times its original size and projected in the middle of the board room.
Extracting any more information from their drunk employee seemed absurd. The board determined that the engineer had failed, but they collected the seedlings he’d produced as company assets.
The Corporation offered their engineer one more chance to replicate the seeds of the mystery fruit. Once again, he blacked out on the orders of his superiors and got to work. This time, his notes were different:
Envious of Nectarine’s peel, which was smooth, slick, and glossy, Peach decided she’d polish her body, which was rough and covered with tiny hairs. Using sandpaper and oils, she rubbed her skin until it became a lustrous husk, just like Nectarine’s. Meanwhile, Nectarine wished she looked more akin to Apple, who was sturdy and strong, and so the soft fruit started to swaddle herself in thicker and thicker layers. Apple, in turn, couldn’t stop thinking about how she’d look if she were more like Pear; indeed, she imitated the fruit’s posture and mimicked her movements. Back when she was still a seed, the fruits around Apple would ask her, “What kind of apple do you want to be when you grow up? Fuji? Pink Lady? Gala?” and she’d answer, “I want to be a pear.” Now, all the fruits suspected that Pear harbored the dream of being like Quince, but they were wrong: Pear really yearned to be as huge and perfectly oval as Watermelon. As a result, she spent most of her days inhabiting a large green shell. Watermelon was in turn fixated on Melon, simply because Melon seemed like a more fun version of herself; the former painted her body to appear more similar to the latter. Then one day Melon got into an accident that left her bruised. Ever since, she had burned with jealousy over her neighbor, Cantaloupe, who greeted the sun’s rays each morning with skin that was bright, white, luminous, and smooth. So, Melon purchased a variety of cosmetic brands that promised to brighten and whiten her own skin and applied the creams each and every day. Meanwhile, Cantaloupe wasn’t pleased with the size of her body and daydreamed about cute, petite forms like that of Plum, which she felt would make her more chic and charming. Cantaloupe had already tried a few different weight-loss regimens, starting with a combination of aerobics, calisthenics, and weightlifting, then went onto a variety of medical solutions, first imbibing slimming tea, then popping pills that supposedly burned fat before finally taking a drug that made her puke first thing in the morning and right before bed. Nothing worked. As Cantaloupe struggled, Plum was thinking about what life would be like if she looked like Mirabelle; technically, the Mirabelle plum was just another plum, but it was no secret that the fancier varietal had started distancing herself from all the normal plums, since she saw herself as the first-rate, perfected version of the fruit; ah, well . . . What choice did Plum have but to stalk Mirabelle every minute of every day—every second, even? And Mirabelle? Deep down, she was fed up with being treated like a golden fruit. Sure, she was graceful and beautiful, but her supple form was also fragile and weak. The other fruits praised her constantly, but she knew she was soft and squishable; if she could choose the perfect fruit to be, she’d answer Ribes aureum, also known as Golden Currant, also known as Pruterberry. Mirabelle liked the name Pruterberry best, but the fruit in question had a preference for Golden Currant, so that was that. Mirabelle was close friends with Golden Currant and knew for a fact that her idol suffered from low self-confidence, too; the currant had once confessed that she wished she’d been born a peach. One day, Golden Currant saw a falling star and put her wish into words; when she woke up the following day, her body had morphed, though she wasn’t anything at all like Peach. She’d become a strange fruit, a new one at that, and if you took a second to think about it, she was more stunning than the fruit she’d originally hoped to become. From that day onwards, Golden Currant went by the name Cerismos. She originally wanted to call herself Trelometaschimatismotousomatos, but the other fruits protested, claiming that name was too long and bothersome. And so that was that.
*
A few days later, the drunk engineer faced the corporate board again, this time with his new notes and his new plants, which had already sprouted from the seeds he’d created. The execs’ reactions to this presentation were similar to those of the earlier one, but angrier. For a second time during his time at Bio Corps, the employee was given a three-month ultimatum: “We regret to inform you that if you fail to produce another specimen of the variant the Corporation requested within that timeline, Bio Corps will no longer be in need of your services.”
“Don’t you remember telling me that the last time I worked here?”
“We won’t call you to come back again, I can assure you.”
“Boss—I’m pretty sure it’d be more accurate to say ‘beg.’”
The new threat didn’t make the engineer feel too nervous or helpless; he knew he was prepared to leave Bio Corps if he had to. But when he got back to the lab, he still tried to think hard about what he’d done during that first night of drunk engineering. For two months, he made serious and fully conscious attempts to crack the problem without coming close to reverse engineering the fruit. Nothing worked, and he was running out of time. For his last attempt, he tried to recreate the conditions of the night in question (but, of course, all he could recall were the types of alcohol he’d injected into his fruit, how many pieces he’d eaten, and so on).
And so, operating with a mere ten percent of his memories, he started engineering. The next day, he woke up to find yet another set of notes:
The engineer knew that the two types of seeds he’d just created weren’t about to produce the fruit his superiors wanted. But he didn’t give up: he planted them anyway.
He presented his two sprouts and his messy notes to the board. The result was no surprise: he was asked to leave Bio Corps for the second time.
A few years passed, and the drunk ex-engineer was still a drunk. Nothing helped, not even therapy and weekly meetings. He wasn’t able to access the ingredients to craft intoxicating plants of his own; resorting to other methods, he ended up a “cheap drunk”—the term he employed to describe getting trashed off inexpensive liquor.
One day, when he left his new job and walked down the street, downing a beer—he had three more in the plastic bag he held in his other hand, and with every step the glass bottles hit one another, making a clink-clink-clink sound—a huge holographic billboard caught his attention. It was a Bio Corps billboard, the fancy kind that advertised the most exclusive, expensive fruits—crazy expensive! But it was strange: slowly, the wheels in the engineer’s mind started turning shakily as it dawned on him that he recognized the fruits in the image. He stopped and scrutinized the ad in more detail, scanning the text popping out from the image in bold letters: “RUM-PU-LUM! CE-RIS-MOS! QUE-TTA, QUEC-TO!” He knew those names somehow, and oddly enough, they made him seize with giggles.
He walked past the billboard, continuing on home. In between swigs of beer, he ruminated on the fruits. Where had he seen them before? He’d figure it out tomorrow, he decided, when his brain wasn’t so foggy. If he could remember what it was that he needed to figure out. If he didn’t forget everything.
He downed the bottle, then popped the top off his next beer.
