research into biological warfare. Early experiments with pesticides met with some success, but the great breakthrough came when the quinces unveiled their ultimate smart bomb: the maggot. Initially, its effect was cataclysmic. Whole strawberry beds were simply eaten away by the fly-borne projectiles, painstakingly designed in quince laboratories. But it also inspired a young generation of strawberry scientists, frustrated with their emperor’s archaic tactics. The maggot was the proof they needed—a new age of weaponry had begun. Frustrated and confused by the fast-changing world, Ranulph XXI abdicated—to be replaced by Ranulph XXII, who poured what funds remained into weapons research. Credit for the breakthrough is usually attributed to a scientist named Johnny Strawberry. This may, however, be largely propaganda. Certainly Johnny Strawberry was the perfect poster boy for Ranulph XXII’s new regime; heart shaped, thick-stemmed and pillarbox red. His realisation was that the maggot was thinking small—the strawberries needed to up the stakes dramatically. So his team, inspired by the quinces’ early pesticides, slaved away on what was eventually revealed as the Warfare Manipulation Device. The concept was simple; rather than create entirely new biological constructs, the strawberries would manipulate those already present. The device worked through chemical sprays, which contained complex blends of pheromones and hormones designed to alter the desires of nearby animal organisms. They just needed to choose a weapon. They needed something with the agility and greed to pluck and destroy quinces by the thousand, something fruit-eating yet inherently destructive that would continue to gorge itself long after it was full. Their research threw up a presumptuous African ape called Australopithecus. The rest, of course, is history. The strawberries dripfed the apes intelligence and motivation, and quinces were consumed in staggering quantities. Slowly, provoked by chemical hints, the apes developed stone tools, to reap quinces by the dozen. Australopithecus became Homo habilis became Homo erectus became Homo sapiens sapiens. The apes spread across the globe, unconscious that the urges driving them were the military machinations of some small, plump and now incredibly smug red fruit.
Led by their unknown masters, the apes developed cookery, and their ability to consume the bitter quince multiplied enormously. Previously unpalatable, it became a delicacy for the rapidly-evolving humans. An inspired strawberry anthropologist fed them the notion of combining quinces with cane sugar, and consumption rocketed further. Others prompted the apes towards metalwork, giving them ever-more efficient quince-harvesting implements. Victory seemed complete. Strawberries were now commonplace, the quince relegated to scattered strongholds in Western Asia, along with captive examples in orchards and botanic gardens. With the invention in the 1870s of the runcible spoon, Emperor George Strawberry CXLVII declared the war over, in his famous Berrysburg address: “The evil quince dominion of the past is no more. This world is a strawberry world! These fields are strawberry fields, and will be strawberry fields…”— he paused for effect—“…forever.” And there, things would have ended, if they had only known how to tell the humans to stop. The twentieth century whirred into gear, and brought with it human alteration of the world on an unprecedented scale. Equipped with the skills they had been taught, people created concrete and metal infrastructures, engines that belched megatons of smoke into the atmosphere, flying machines and automobiles. The population soared. Billions upon billions of ugly infants were brought, squalling, into the world. Crying for something to eat. The humans, armed with evil grins and plates of cream, turned on their creators. The strawberries desperately tried to reverse the effects of their manipulation, but it was far too late. They had taught the people greed, but they had not taught them satiety. Their sweet flesh, now, is rendered asunder by simian molars. Small refugee colonies in scattered country gardens survive, where they cluster together in fear of the sharp-eyed apes which they trained to destroy. Other than this, they survive only in mass slave camps, vast synthetic tunnels of hell where they are born only to die, plucked as soon as they reach maturity, hoisted upon their own petards. Huddling, doomed, in a pavlova, the strawberries curse their ingenuity. Aran Ward Sell
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