Stingray Shuffle, The
Chapter One
The race to invent the first mechanical orange harvester
was on.
Dreams and designs for a mechanized citrus picker had been bandied about since the 1940s. But back then, it was science fiction stuff. Anyone who seriously thought it could be done was a laughing-stock.
Near the turn of the millennium, Florida's postcard orange groves had exploded into a six-billion-dollar-a-year industry. Meanwhile, technology had marched. Nobody was laughing anymore. A functional harvester seemed just around the corner. The state's top citrus barons were now so rich that they had almost everything they wanted. They were unhappy. They wanted to be as rich as oil people. A mechanical picker would do that.
Research teams from various nations labored at a feverish pace. Work proceeded in secret, along several dif ... read full excerpt from The Stingray Shuffle ebook
