Whenever Mortimer arrived home from the nutrient manufacturing plant, he paused beside the daisy bush before typing his password into the keypad at the apartment house door. He didn't know what the plant's real name was but its thin white petals radiating from a yellow dome resembled the flowers pictured in one of the forbidden books he'd taken from his grandmother's closets after her death. These flowers seemed smaller and, unlike those in the old book, bloomed in clusters on twisted wooden branches; Mortimer couldn't research the plant in the library or internet, couldn't ask what it was called, and certainly couldn't ask whether it was a varient of the ancient daisy.
The growth of daisy bushes, green blades and low floppy leaves on the silt which invariably settled between buildings and roads was permissible. But, with over fifteen billion people on earth and every non-mineable acre needed for housing them, gardening was a lost luxury of a less populated era; an interest in cultivating plants might mark one as a suspect citizen.
Mortimer trudged into his apartment - a living room, kitchen, bath and bedroom, the minimal allowed space for a single tenant after studies conclusively showed a high risk of claustropsychosis in those living chronically in cramped quarters; similar research had noted a high prevalence of acropsychosis in those residing more than ten floors above ground, making skyscrapers ill-suited for housing. Mortimer checked his computer for the day's news, then downloaded his mail; he trashed the ads and perused some of the trade journals:
"Hydroxy-ethyl-blah-blah-blah," he read, "Stimulates hypothalamic pleasure centers and soon will supplement top-line synthetic fruits, vegetables and meats. If obtained, patent rights will significantly boost profits to Nutrotang, an established pioneer in flavor synthesis and modulation."
Mortimer had tasted many new, improved versions of synthetic foods before their market release; often, they were first served to workers in the plant cafeteria. Last week, he'd eaten synthetic strawberries - small bright red orbs filled with a sweet fluid that bubbled slowly to stimulate salivation. This week, the meal preparers had served upgraded chicken - uniformly tan slices which cut easily, tasted salty, and smelled like a combination of amino acids, minerals, dyes, chemical binders, flavoring agents and aroma enhancers.
"People should be able to taste the real thing," he thought. "Even if we don't have the land for farming and grazing animals, they should be able to taste real strawberries and real chicken once in their life, as a gourmet treat, to know what theyre missing, to get a sense of history. The way we get a sense of history by looking at Notre Dame or Stone Henge."
In Grandma's boxes he'd found crinkly, vaccum-sealed bags of hard-tack candy made by companies bankrupted fifty years ago; when he sucked on the orange and cherry lozenges, he found the candies' flavor identical to that of the fabri-berries and orange balls marketed as fruit on modern menus. According to the forbidden books and Grandma's letters, such lozenges didn't look or taste like real fruit. They were gaudily colored, overly sweet and smelled fake; real fruit was succulent, pulpy, juicy, subtly sour, with combinations of textures for the tongue. Mortimer knew what "succulent" and "pulpy" meant, but he could match no life experience to the definitions.
Then he'd found the seeds.
Mortimer punched a series of digits into each of the ultra-secure, high tech locks he'd installed on his bedroom door, contrary to the landlord's policy. He glanced furtively behind and around him, even though he knew that no one could see through the windows and recalled latching shut the front door, before entering. Then he inhaled the gentle scent of moist topsoil and growing stalks. He knelt under the wide spectrum lights and infrared bulbs, which the forbidden books had recommended for simulating outdoor conditions in indoor planting, and stroked the leaves; they arced, supple and deep green, off delicate branches. He squinted through his magnifying glass at the patterns etched by veins in the leaves' top surface and the ridges on their undersides, at the grooves indenting the main stalk, at the loops and arabesques drawn by wandering tendrils; the photos in Grandma's books were blurry and yellowed, and never showed every detail of a plant. He crawled up and down the aisles of soil-packed bins in which he'd planted seeds from that ancient sealed packet labeled "Burpee's Garden Vegetables and Fruits".
"The greatest sculpture in the world can't compare with a single leaf," he thought, then sighed; people of today's technologically advanced society had to live in a man-made world.
He plucked a strawberry, then paused. One of his Grandmother's early letters had described picking wild strawberries and blueberries in the woods, while simulataneously snacking on the fruit. He couldn't imagine what "the woods" might look like; however, the description suggested that the berries could be eaten raw. Were some parts poisonous or inedible? Would he crack his teeth on a central pit if he bit in too enthusiastically? He rolled the fruit, roughly textured and shaped like a three dimensional heart, across his palm. When he gently dug a fingernail into the surface, to test whether he should peel away a rind, juice squirted on his finger and perfumed them with a tangy aroma. He licked the finger, then popped the berry in his mouth. Tart liquid teased and invigorated his tongue; the real strawberry didn't taste like the candies and fabri-berries, which coated the tongue with a clinging chemical sweetness.
"People should taste this, people have been missing so much!", he asserted in an awed whisper.
He picked a ripe tomato and caressed its smooth roundness, dimpling at the central axis where it had been attached to the stalk. He squatted beside a pepper plant, admiring the individualistic curves and twists in each boldly yellow form.
"This is art, as much as anything in the great museums; people have to see this!" He breathed quickly and his heart raced; all his senses seemed sharpened. "Maybe there's no land for outdoor gardens, but people could grow these in their apartments. Grow their own sculptures, their own treats for the tastebuds. Most people don't even know that this can be done. They should be told what's possible!"
The next day, Mortimer made appointments to see the regional Director of Arts and Chief of Cuisine, both certified as experts in beauty. He brought a ripe tomato, a pepper and several strawberries to the office of each, ceremoniously sliced each in half to display its interior and invited the expert to taste. The experts solemnly thanked Mortimer for sharing his discovery, and told him that they would contact him with their assessments of his product. After Mortimer had left, the Director of Arts and Chief of Cuisine called for an emergency meeting of prominent scientists, historians, lawyers and politicians to discuss the problem.
"For over half a century, we've known exactly what amino acids, vitamins, minerals, fats and other chemicals are necessary for human health," one scientist declared. "Factory synthesis of foodstuffs is far more efficient than farming; nutro-synthesis has rendered agriculture obsolete."
"And it's an unaffordable luxury, with every acre on earth being used for housing." The historian, given special permission to read hundreds of forbidden books while pursuing his Ph.D., sipped a flavored drink of caffeine and ephedrine and worried about what might happen if someone rediscovered flowers. In more primitive periods, people had spent hours each week digging, tilling and fertilizing huge front yards, merely to watch irises sprout in spring and roses blaze throughout the summer. Irises and roses weren't even edible; they merely attracted bees and made ancient back yards reek..
"What worries me," one politician drawled, "Is that this guy might be some kind of terrorist. Or that his finding could be used by terrorists to upset the equilibrium, start people doubting that our way is the best way."
The others nodded, thought, and drank chemical brews.
"We can't permit gardening inside apartments," a health expert asserted. "Vegetation attracks insects and insects spread disease. An indoor garden is a danger to other tenants."
"Maybe he's not right in the head. Graying around the temples, a few wrinkles - could be early dementia," a lawyer suggested. "And isn't an indoor garden itself evidence of mental disorder?"
Police escorted Mortimer to the local psychiatric hospital, for court ordered assessment and treatment. A cleaning crew dumped the plants into a chute leading to the apartment's garbage incinerator, and swept the bedroom floor free of mud and leaf fragments. The scoured floors gleamed like new steel and the acrid smell of detergent replaced the obsolete, tart fragrance of cut leaves.
Mortimer enthusiastically devoured fabri-berries between very long naps under very white sheets changed daily by very dedicated nurses. Several weeks later, cured by blue capsules and red pills, he didn't even remember the ancient packet of seeds and Grandma's old boxes full of temptations.
