Blood Oranges

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The Jason created Blood Oranges as a tribute to his mother and sister, both of whom are registered nurses. There are two varieties: the Sharon strain, and the Beth strain. There are characteristics common to both - they are dwarf orange trees, with very sturdy trunks and branches, usually growing no more than four or five feet tall, and can be grown in tubs. The branches have to be heavy/sturdy, because the oranges themselves are large when compared to normal citrus. Unlike normal citrus, the fruit are filled with fluid, not pulp - approximately one pint in a single orange. And yes, the oranges do contain human blood as one would gather from the name. A single tree can produce any of the normal human blood types, and black markings on the orange rind tell what each fruit contains. If left on the tree, the blood will remain fresh and usable until the fruit falls from the tree. If picked, the fruit will need to be treated as a regular blood donation, kept refrigerated, and when the blood is unusable due to age, the markings fade to reflect this. Fallen fruit or picked fruit will eventually shrink and harden as the blood coagulates within until a large nut-like pod remains. This can be planted to start a new tree. The trees grow rapidly, most starting to bear fruit as soon as two or three years, though only a couple of fruit at a time until they mature. The trees are ever-bearing, with blossoms, developing fruit, and mature fruit all present on a tree at the same time. Only mature, usable fruit will show the blood type labels.

The differences between the two varieties has to do with the presence of handwavium. The Beth strain was developed first, and contains enough handwavium within the blood to initiate an emergency biomod. As a warning, the rind of the fruit is a bright, safety-cone orange. One useful property of this type is that blood-typing does not need to be performed if the person receiving the blood does not have a biomod yet (though it's safest to do so unless it's an extreme emergency, since it's possible that exposure to handwavium might have created a minor biomod that has not been noticed). This will have the effect of shifting the person's blood type to the type used, unless the rest of the biomod is so extreme that the blood type changes to something exotic. The Beth variety will also occasionally produce an orange marked with an infinity sign instead of a normal blood type. These are rare - usually only one on a tree at any given time. The fluid contains handwavium, but is not normal blood; instead, the fruit is filled with a bright white liquid. Usage-wise, these are reserved for emergency biomodded patients, because when administered to a patient with an exotic blood type, the handwavium present doesn't act on the patient. It actually acts on the fluid, biomodding it to match the patient's blood type. It's still best for exotic types to store their own blood for emergencies due to the rarity of the infinite blood type fruits, of course.

The Sharon strain, named for the Jason's mother, took longer to develop. This is actually a filtered variety - while handwavium is present in the tree proper, the blood does not contain any, and can be given to unmodded humans without triggering a biomod. To reflect this, the oranges are actually colored as normal blood oranges - citrus-fruit orange with a red mottling/blush over the rind. The blood is perfectly normal, and will need to be treated as any regular blood donation would be when administered to a regular patient. It can be given to any unmodded patient, and any biomodded patient as long as the biomod has not altered the patient's blood to an exotic.

The trees do have several quirks/needs. The most obvious need is a requirement for an iron-rich soil, which will need to be supplemented with mineral/iron-rich fertilizer during the tree's lifetime. If this is not met, the number of fruit decreases, and any fruit produced will actually be anemic. Beth trees will actually need fertilizer that is rich in other metals as well, such as copper, in order to produce the infinity-variety fruit. The varieties share one quirk in common: both are afraid of needles. The sight of hypodermic needles will actually cause a tree to shrink back from the needle in fear, similar to the reaction of a sensitive plant though somewhat slower. Once the needle is removed, the tree will gradually relax, and return to its normal position. Due to the additional work needed on the Sharon strain to filter the handwavium from the fruit, that variety has a separate quirk; it needs at least one medical thriller or vampire story read to it a week to thrive. If a tree doesn't get its stories, it will stop blooming until the stories resume. Fortunately, books on tape or even computer-read stories are perfectly acceptable; there does not need to be an actual human reading the stories.

Blood Oranges are widely available throughout Fenspace. Both Yggdrasil and Wonderland grow them by the quarter-acre to give away, and most hospitals and Heinlein Society offices have at least one Blood Orange tree on the premises by 2014.