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“Hm,” Dylan said, scratching his chin with an air of careful thought. He leaned back in his chair. “Yeah, I’ve got nothing.”
“Oh, come on,” Irving scowled. He kept his voice low, even though they were the kitchenette’s only two occupants. “You don’t have any idea at all?”
He was loath to lend any credence to Dylan’s fantasies of expertise, but he had precious little choice in the matter: Mark, though technically superior within the department’s hierarchy, lacked any true leadership qualities, and was, frankly, a bit of a drip. Poor Helly had scarcely yet found her own bearings, and after the welcoming present she had given Mark above the brow, Irving was still hesitant to accost her too directly. That left him with Dylan, who was currently tearing into a packet of sunflower seeds.
“I don’t get it,” he was saying, at the same time popping a handful of seeds into his mouth. (Talking while chewing was, regrettably, not a punishable offense in the Handbook.) “What’s even the big deal?”
“That is the big deal,” Irving said. He gestured to the table, whereupon sat the object of his distress.
Though the knowledge afforded to innies regarding the world outside of Lumon was inherently limited, it was deemed beneficial for them to have some exposure to the more curative aspects of nature. Therefore upper management took care to grant them such opportunities in Perpetuity, where the sight of verdant life might inspire new yearning for growth and greater productivity.
But these flowers were not like anything belonging to Perpetuity. Their petals were ragged at the edges, like paper too hastily torn, and they were an odd green color; not the lush, deep green of MDR—meant to invigorate the spirit and instill a sense of serenity—but rather a pale, sickly hue, reminiscent of snot. The sight of them made Irving ill.
“Maybe your outie got hungry,” offered Dylan. “Some kind of vegan thing?”
Irving scoffed at the thought. “My outie is not some sort of—goat, grazing all willy-nilly,” he said. It didn’t have quite the pejorative impact for which he had hoped, but he didn’t know of many other animals that grazed.
“My outie had some kind of breakfast salad once,” Dylan went on, heedless of Irving’s indignation. “It was like a jungle in my back teeth.”
Irving sputtered—“Breakfast salad!”—before stopping to compose himself. “This is serious,” he said urgently. His repeated lapses in consciousness were bad enough; another failure to demonstrate appropriate health and cheer could have serious repercussions.
“Look, man,” Dylan said through a mouthful of seed-mush. “If you’re that worried, just take it to Milchick.” It was the first sensible thing he’d said: any psychosomatic distress should be reported to one’s superior so that a Wellness visit can be scheduled as needed.
But Irving hadn’t gone to anybody. He’d hidden the first petals in his desk, back when they were only petals. Intuition was a refiner’s most valuable asset.
“I don’t want to take this to Milchick,” he said.
Dylan looked at him with a steady current of concentration. Then he looked at the clock, and exhaled. He pocketed the rest of his seeds and stood. “That’s my time,” he said. “But hey”—he gestured into the air—“it’s probably nothing. Maybe your outie will get a few sick days out of it.” He spoke with a great deal of confidence for a man whose greatest possession in life was a finger trap.
Regardless, Irving nodded. It was good to encourage amicable relations with one’s colleagues, even when reserves of goodwill wore thin—such was the wisdom of Kier. And so Dylan returned to his desk, and Irving was left alone with his miserable bouquet.
It was then, alone, that a new thought trespassed his mind, and in his vulnerable state he was helpless to stop it: there was somebody else he could talk to. Someone kind, and well-reasoned, and versed in the Handbook, and—
A terrible cough seized him at once. It started deep in his lungs and forced its way up his chest with violent momentum. He scarcely had time to cover his mouth before the worst of it tore through his throat. And when it was over he uncurled his palm, and stilled. He couldn’t tear his eyes away.
There, cradled in his hands, sat a whole flower: pale, perfect, awful.
***
The trip back up always brought with it a certain level of discomfort: fatigue rushing in to fill the vacuum left by missing hours, the body remembering what the mind had willed itself to forget. But the return had changed sometime in the past month; the exhaustion was different now, deeper in some invisible dimension. It sat motionless in his chest, weighing him down as if it were real and made of metal. He pictured an anchor down there on the subterranean levels, tethered to someone who never left.
Once he was clear of the threshold he paused to let out a cough, and frowned. He ought to stop by the pharmacy.
The cold always made his eyes water.