Quoted By:
The fruit is heavy in your hand. An engineered variety, seventh generation drought-spliced seed stock. You can perceive this from the texture of the smooth, compact cuticle, in the way the fruit’s loose rind peels from its sweet parenchyma like foam packaging. The pigment-highlighted logo is an extraneous detail.
It tastes like cotton candy – a faint reminder of home. You finish it while you lean over the tiny, sweltering balcony of your outpatient practice. The rind goes straight into the medical incinerator. Spliced varieties were contraband here: deemed twice forbidden for import and cultivation by the Ministry of Environmental Purity.
Before you leave, you catch the final hint of the equatorial sunset – twilight sweeps through the sprawl of the refugee slums, the chattering market-docks, and the massive seawall protecting the city from the looming Pacific. Sluice pumps spaced below the salt-scaled concrete emit a low, reverent drone.
And beyond that, in the glittering crescent of the bay, the city’s ancient Buddha statue turns its gaze outwards, towards the disk of the setting sun. Her carved hands are set in a beckoning Mudra, but her eyes are blinded and empty – bidding welcome to the last city where nature retains authority over the base arrogance of man.
07 – 04 – 1999 | SOUTH SIAM | WEEK 2
[PATIENTS SCHEDULED: 215/210]
>PREPARE. Your HOSAKA suite is dated, but it can synthesize essentials that the Ministry of Health cannot consistently provide. Small molecules, large molecules, and simple bispecific antibodies. Retroviral vectors and engineered phages if you invest a measure of time. [MEDS +2]
>HIRE. Your office is small, but perhaps you can find someone to help process refills and take vitals. You have no shortage of patients. Perhaps some of them would be interested in a job. [STAFF +1]
>REPORT. The Ministry of Environmental Purity is keen. The infection auditors appreciate all reports, but those written to corporate standard are held in especial esteem. You have slides from your last patient, and her specific strain of mycoplasma has yet to be logged. The Ministry will appreciate such information. If you are fortunate, they may reciprocate on a future date. [FAVOR +1]
[PHAGE QUEST IS INTENDED AS A ONESHOT. THANK YOU IN ADVANCE FOR PLAYING]
