Science fiction story: Where my children grow (Part 4)
The first week passed like a breeze. A water pipe had broken, and he had to spend a better part of the week trying to fix it. He had to redirect water from other sources to water that section of saplings He had checked their colour and texture against a chart given in his pad, and they seemed to be perfect so far. But there was a long way to go. The plants had been growing rapidly, developing large, rough petals that were grainy to the fingers. They somehow had the same texture as the bottom of Bob’s feet when he was a toddler. He loved it when he tickled them.
There was nothing special to mark the weekends except for the arrival of mail. The pads had to be connected to a network modem, and emails and other necessary documents were downloaded into them. One of the emails had a picture of Bob waving at the camera, with a mango in his hand. He did not look sick, but seemed to have grown thinner. He wondered if the doctors had diagnosed him well. He tried to remember how often Bob was ill in the four months he was home. A couple of times he had the flu, but that was it. Maybe he had nothing to worry.
The picture of Bob smiling took him back years ago, to his school days. He remembered the ghetto he had grown in – the broken roads that got patched up with mud during the rainy season, seasonal outbreaks of diarrhoea, the leaking roof of the house, his parents arguing.
He had been a good student, and wanted to be a doctor. But even with a scholarship, the fee at the medical school was too high for his father to pay. He could have been a contractor, but decided that farming had better benefits. The pay package was good enough for his family to rent a small flat and send Bob to a good school. With the savings, and the provident fund, he supposed he could send Bob off to medical school. If he managed to complete his twenty years of service, he would get a small house at the city border, away from the pollution and hustle of the crowds. His children would grow up in a better place than he did, and have a much brighter future. It was not a bad choice, even though it meant he had to spend half the year away from his family.
#
In the second week in, he began to get bored. The job was routine, with all of the equipment working properly. There was a standard issue deck of cards in his room, and he tried to play solitaire. He thought about George’s suggestion and started writing his first journal entry.
He thought he would write about the sunflowers and his day to day activities, but he realized that he was writing about his life – his first love, his unfulfilled dreams, and his hopes. He had started writing at ten o clock at night, but when he stopped, it was past twelve. He went through the notes, and realized that he must have had written twelve pages.
#
The first signs of cabin fever began to show themselves near the end of the third week. He was watering the plants in one of the sections manually. He was thinking about what he would eat in the next gathering, when he realized that he was talking to himself aloud. He stopped immediately and looked around. If the company decided he was unfit for work, it would be the end of his health insurance, school for Bob, and the small house at the edge of the city.
One of the plants in the section had started to grow a premature bud. He wondered if regular sunflowers could grow this fast. He checked his pad for the details, but found nothing that suggested they were genetically altered. The company and its secrets, he thought.
The next gathering was uneventful. He thanked George for sending his family the fruits. But he kept his conversations short, partly because he was too embarrassed for asking for his reader, and partly because he had not forgiven him for not giving it to him. George did not seem to notice; he was too occupied with chatting with his mates, and laughing, perhaps a little too often, and a little too loudly.
#
It was another three weeks before he noticed the oddity. The flowers had started to bloom – large, yellow ray florets surrounding black, tiny, circular ones. The flowers kept facing the light tube at the centre of the room during daytime, and at night, they faced the floor. With the floor, the wall and part of the ceiling carpeted with the black yellow flowers, it was quite a lovely sight.
He had been spending the weeks immersing himself with his work, obsessing with the tiniest details of the plants: a slight change in the texture, a slight wilt, a spot on the leaves. He did not want to let any hint of abnormality escape him. So when he found a little yellow flower staring at him instead of the centre of the room, he was startled indeed.
At first, he thought the flower was facing a random spot in the room instead of the light source. But soon, he realized that if he stayed at any particular point in the room for long, the flower turned to face him. Upon close inspection, it seemed no different from the others, except for the orientation of the flower. He recalled it being the same flower that had formed buds before all the rest. He spent an uneasy night that day, with nightmares where he was getting strangled by vines.
The days that followed were the longest he had spent. He thought of cutting the flower off. But it was illegal to snip off flowers unless they were infected. He thought of twisting the flower off to another direction, but chances were that it would break again. He thought of sending a message to his supervisors, but somehow, did not think that being afraid of a flower would be good for his career.
So he waited. The plant seemed to be ordinary in every other aspect, perhaps a bit frailer than the others, if he looked closely. No. He would wait. He did not even include it in his journal, no telling if the company was keeping an eye on it. No. He just had to wait.
(To be continued)
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