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Autumn Trees by Alexander Saxton. From early on in its use, Greenhouse Twelve had been nicknamed the Brownhouse,

because all the so-called plants inside were his spallied homo sapiens, each one bound and pruned from a

fetus into the desired shape. You could stand at the raised catwalk along the south wall

and look out upon row, upon row, upon row of them, like a dead orchard stretching into a vague

distance underneath the arching roof of gray, translucent

plastic. Jack worked there as a sort of arborist. After shifts, he and his co-workers would sit

outside on old wooden pallets stacked up on the grass, drinking lukewarm bottles of 3FG and talking

about how they got there. The story always seemed to be the same.

Went to school for restorative agriculture or zoology or veterinary medicine and graduated

to find the market wasn't kind in the types of world-saving jobs you wanted to do. But

Astorium was always hiring.

Here's how you made an espalier.

Start with a sperm and egg cell, usually cloned,

allow fertilization to happen in a neutral, gel-like medium,

allow cells to divide solely along preordained channels,

surgically redistribute cardiac, neural, skeletal, and aviolar tissue while still preformed and plastic. Saturate with nutrient until it achieves a weight of roughly seven pounds and then

deliver into incubation tent. Surgically intubate and infistulate, then feed and water until

...