Science fiction story: Where my children grow (Part 5 (END))
In the gathering that followed, he looked around for George, but could not find him anywhere. May, the woman he had seen George talk with, approached him instead. They talked for about half an hour. It turned out that she had an ancestry of farmers. Claud thought it safe to tell her about the flower that stared at him.
“First time with sunflowers, eh?” she asked him, smiling.
He nodded.
“Don’t worry, what you’re working with is what they call a Watcher. It’s locking onto your infra-red radiation, some distinct frequency you emit. Nothing to worry about.” she waived it off.
Claud could not express the enormous sense of relief that he felt. He laughed at himself for worrying. Even if the flower was an anomaly, what harm could it possibly do?
Right before entering his dome, the guard told him that George was diagnosed with the cabin fever and was sent on leave. But he had passed him his eBook reader.
#
A wave of emotions hit him as he returned to his duties. George being sent off so close to retirement was more unnerving than the fear of cabin fever itself. He erased all his logs from the digipad, as if they would somehow incriminate him with something that would get him fired. He did not dare open the reader, as looking at it drew up a sense of guilt in him that he could not while away. For some time, he considered if he should quit while he was still young.
But then he looked at the field of young sunflowers. He could not leave them. After spending so much time with them, the sunflowers were a part of him now, and he could not part from them until they were grown. It was something beyond the contract he had signed with the company. It was something the company would never understand.
He tried to divert his angst by working extra hard. A cloudy weather outside gave him the opportunity, and he spent the next few weeks adjusting and optimizing the lighting system.
He paid more attention to the watcher now. To his dismay, he found that the plant was noticeably thinner than the others.
One bad plant in an entire batch was not an issue of concern, but he could not shrug it off. He recalled his lessons from his training year, and tried different fertilizers, pesticides, clipping dead parts, but the plant did not change. The shoot bent, and the leaves sagged. But still, it continued its daily routine of staring at him. The petals were adopting a greenish hue, and the leave turned black slowly.
He had a couple of weeks left in his shift, but he was a man possessed. He knew that George was an avid reader and a keen farmer. So he went through his reader. It had a book on plant development, and he went through all the details he thought relevant.
Sunflowers need a lot of water. Apart from the sprinklers working thrice a day, he watered the plant himself.
Rots. They can spread from leaf to leaf. He clipped off leaves that showed the smallest sighs of rotting.
But the plant was dying. Leaves were falling every day.
Magnesium. A lack of it would cause yellowing of leaves. But they seemed to be turning black, and continued to fall. Nevertheless, he applied a magnesium reach mix into the soil.
He wished he had more time.
#
The last day of work arrived much sooner than he had expected, and before he knew it, he was tidying up his cubicle and packing his backpack. He made sure all his logs were deleted from the digipad, hoping no one had read them in the meantime. He had no intention of giving the authority a reason to fire him.
He put his sunglasses on and climbed out of his cubicle. The sunflower plants were in full bloom, but he had eyes for only one. The plant was standing a little taller, and a couple of green leaves were beginning to form among the remains of the wilted, blackened shoot. In his last few minutes, he sucked up the extra water from the soil around it, and put in a support rod to straighten it. But it was all he could do.
He went up slowly to the station. The train was already there. Martha was standing inside the compartment, smiling. She had gained a few pounds in the last months and did not look stressed, which meant the baby was healthy. Bob, who was wearing a pair of sunglasses too big for his eyes, ran up to him and wrapped his arms around him in a strong hug. There was no sign of any illness. Claud patted him on the back and tussled his hair. They sat on the same bench, his arm wrapped around Martha, and Bob on his lap. He looked outside, and just as the train turned and the domes were out of sight, the image of a small plant with two tiny leaves upon a black shoot flashed in his memory. A sigh escaped him, and he hugged Bob tighter.
END
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