When the Orchards Sleep (Fiction)

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By the end of fall, the orchards grew quiet again. The air turned brittle with static, carrying the faint sweetness of engineered fruit decaying in the frost. Each tree stood still beneath the pale glow of the moons, their metal roots humming softly under the frozen ground. From a distance, it almost looked peaceful. Up close, you could hear the low pulse of the irrigation drones as they moved through the rows, collecting data no one had checked in years.

When I was a child, this land had been different. The soil was real, alive with worms and rainwater, and the bees came by the thousands when the blossoms opened. My parents worked here before the corporation took over and replaced the trees with hybrids that never tired or needed pruning. They were designed to produce forever, yet every autumn their leaves dulled to copper and fell. No one programmed that part. It simply happened, as if the machines still remembered what it meant to rest.

I visit once a year now, walking the empty rows while the wind hums through the branches. The fruit still drops, smooth and flawless, rolling across the frost without bruising. I pick one up and hold it in my hand. It feels warm, pulsing faintly with stored energy. The scent is almost familiar, almost real. When I bite into it, the taste is sweet but hollow, like a story retold too many times.

Above the trees, the climate shield flickers in the thin light of dawn. Snow will never fall here again, yet the orchard still waits, dreaming of a winter that no longer exists.

Ryan R. Ennis is the author of The Thursday Surprise: A Story about Kids and Autism, which drew on his twenty-plus career as a special educator, as well as the children’s book The September Surprise: A Story about Kids and Autism. In 2017, he published his third book The Unexpected, a collection of stories.