Science Fiction: Drabbles and assorted babblings

An Acquired Taste

It was an uncommonly hot autumn day when Yulia Lebedeva first tasted fruit.

By the standards of New Seoul, the phrase 'uncommonly hot' seemed naive. From the great hydro-powered pumps and dams working around the clock to keep the Yellow Sea at bay, to the multicoloured throng of fans whirring from roadside bazaars, the city of twenty-six million was shaped, moulded, created by heat. It may not have been Hell, but there was no denying both places had a connection to the same feverish warmth.

The teeming thoroughfare of Sambong-ro yawned before her. Rickshaws shot past lumbering solar landbarges, the cacophony of pedalling legs and hydraulic whines drowned out by the background hum of sheer humanity. The pavements and main roads were supposed to be a pristine, reflective white: years of wear underfoot had turned them into a dirty ochre. It reminded Yulia of videos she'd seen about the Amazonian savannah, and the humans crawling across it of the late wildebeest; flowing like sand through fingers. Despite each individual destination, the masses kept an unconscious, graceful totality quite unlike anything she'd ever seen.

Nevertheless, it was a little overwhelming. Shuffling left past a haggling seaweed-seller and kicking aside a discarded plastic bag, Yulia eased her way into a claustrophobic canyon. Her first thought was that the sun had been inexplicably cut off; the staggering heights of the surrounding buildings had plunged this narrow alleyway into a strange twilight. Whereas before she had been sweating in the stagnant humidity, now an artificially funnelled breeze was at her back.

The light was bluer here, relying more on artificial lighting than the meagre strip of sky daubed overhead. Faded, mottled walls, a pervading sickly stench and a collection of ramshackle vendor's huts conveyed the area's poverty. A window-mounted softscreen overhead flickered and buzzed, sending a trail of boron-green sparks skittering down like ash from a cigarette's tip. Music quietened as she walked further; the clang of metal gantries echoed above as inquisitive inhabitants rushed out, peering closely at the presumably lost foreigner.

The stench grew stronger as she reached the vendors and their wares; the faint, leafy scent of algae vats, the spicy, cloyingly sweet tang of soy-beef and the metallic stink of blood and assorted bodily fluids. An old lady, perched behind what looked to be a fruit stall, yelled a few words in what sounded like Mandarin. Yulia smiled back in what she hoped was an encouraging way and pointed to the translator device looped around her left ear. A moment later, the fruit seller's words were whispered in perfect, monotone English, directly into her ear.

"Hey! Lost lady! Try some fruit? Real fruit, from Hokkaido, no vat-grown, no soy-fruit! 60 Sphere-yuan each!"

Real fruit? From a real tree? I'll believe it when I see it, thought Yulia. The few remaining fruit plantations were guarded and tended to by corporations or the ultra-rich; not piled in front of a stall in some backwater New Seoul alley. She peered closer; the fruits were pear-shaped and a deep ruby red, with small green seeds rippling their skin. It was probably just another vat-grown scammer, she rationalised to herself.

Yet, her curiosity was piqued.

"Can I..." Yulia said slowly in English, pointing to herself, "...try one first?" she asked, pointing to the fruit and miming a bite. The woman nodded, and held out her right index finger to transfer the funds. Yulia's fingerpad pressed against the old woman's for a moment, then down, grabbing a fruit from the topmost row. A sharp word was uttered by the seller as Yulia brought the fruit to her lips.

"Enjoy!" said the translator as she bit down.

Her first thought was confusion. The flesh of the fruit was moist but not juicy, and had a surprising amount of thickness to it. It was almost...chewy? Crisp sweetness rolled around her mouth, a sugary taste so unlike the food tubes she was used to back home at the Institute. The seeds stuck to her teeth and cracked: they filled her mouth with a tart, sour tang. It seemed similar to the flavour pouches she'd once eaten marked 'passionfruit' yet a world away in execution. Delicious had never before seemed so ordinary a word.

"What is this called?" Yulia asked, pointing at the fruit in an almost reverent way.

The fruit seller smiled, straightening her apron as she talked. The grin splitting her face made it seem as if she was chatting to an old friend.

The translation device filled in the gaps: her son was a genesplicer in Hokkaido North, and had sent his mother a bag of his corporation's newest crop. Bad reviews had sunk the fruit's commercial rating while thousands were still to be harvested; therefore, her son could send these discarded fruits to New Seoul for a very low price.

Yulia nodded. "How much for the rest?" she said, pointing at several fruits and then at her index finger.

"If you want a dozen, I charge 550 Sphere-yuan. Save you some money."

Yulia shook her head and swept her arm in a wide arc, over all of the fruit. The old woman's eyes widened and she ducked below the booth, muttering too faintly for the translator to hear. A moment later, she resurfaced with a fabric bag clutched tightly in her gnarled right hand.

"3,000 Sphere-yuan for the lot. You sure? I'll tell my son: his fruit may not be successful in Hokkaido, but it certainly is here!"

Yulia nodded. Taking the proffered bag and briefly touching fingers again, she placed each fruit into the plastic bag, taking meticulous care not to bruise it. If she could return to the Institute with some of this... reverse-engineer it in the genetics lab... why, the fruits would be worth their weight in gold. No flavour pouch, no algae, no soy-meat would ever come close to the taste she had just experienced.

Smiling, she bowed to bid the fruit seller farewell, and continued further into the artificial canyon she found herself in. As the stall receded, the translator picked up one last, garbled whisper from the old woman's direction.

"Tourist." it said, and Yulia thought she could feel the contempt, hidden somewhere in its impersonal tone.