Page 44 of Aïdes the Unseen
After he left, I stood there a while longer, watchingRegrowthuncurl her petals again. Slowly, cautiously. Like she’d been holding her breath.
I reached out and brushed the stem with my fingers. “You okay?”
The plant didn’t answer, obviously. But there was a shift—just the faintest lean of green toward me. Familiar. Like a cat brushing past your ankle without looking at you.
I took that as a yes.
It wasn’t until I checked the visitor log later that I saw it scribbled in careful block letters.
Graven Skotos-Thanatek Industries.
Thanatek. The company was trying to buy up natural death like it was intellectual property. They dealt in digital memorials, grief engines, and predictive mortality models. And now, apparently, plant partnerships?
I should’ve rolled my eyes and moved on. But when I Googled him later in my office, not much came up.
No LinkedIn. No profile photos. No interviews. Just one blurry image from an old tech symposium, and his eyes. Watching from the edge of the crowd, not quite focused on anything that made sense.
My time to focus on him was fleeting as my afternoon filled up fast. A class of college students came through for a tour, led by Dr. Lane from NYU’s urban ecology department. He was in his late fifties, soft-spoken and always smelled faintly of cedar. I didn’t know whether it was his soap or something older, something earned.
He greeted me with a nod. “Ms. Bloom.”
“Doctor.”
“Your installation is stirring some very gentle arguments in the back row. Well done.”
He always spoke in that same dry, faintly amused tone. Oftentimes, I felt like he knew something that I didn’t.
“Tell them to come talk to her,” I said, gesturing atRegrowth. “She plays favorites.”
He gave a rare smile. “Don’t we all?”
The students scattered through the exhibit. A few waved their hands near the plants, whispering and laughing when they moved. One girl whispered something toRegrowthlike a secret. The petals twitched, and the girl jumped back, delighted.
I loved that part of my job. The reactions. The feeling that the world was more alive than most people gave it credit for. It was so easy to dismiss the flora of the world if you didn’t understand how it felt, how it reacted, and how it—interacted. Teaching others what the earth experienced was so vital.
Especially today.
Around four, the air changed again. I’d just returned from my break, but goosebumps rippled over my arms. It wasn’t cold. It was more like… pressure. I turned and saw Mara at the back of the greenhouse corridor, standing too still, the way people did when they’re trying not to be seen.
She worked in research and rarely came out of the analytics lab. When she did, she always wore black gloves—even inside. Her skin was nearly translucent, and likely to burn, so I could hardly blame her. Her voice was softer still, and you had to be close to catch it.
“Something wrong with the sensors?” I asked. That was the only reason I could imagine that would bring her up.
“No,” she said. “They’re just… picking up anomalies today.”
“Anomalies?”
“Biofield irregularities,” she added, like that explained anything.
I didn’t press. That was the same kind of language Thanatek had been using in their pitches—“biofields,” “liminal energy,” “predictive grief loops.” The sort of terminology that made art feel like something monetized with a spreadsheet.
Still, Mara lingered. Her eyes flicked towardRegrowth. Then to me.
“Has anyone touched the core stem today?”
“Just me,” I said.
A long pause. My stomach sank at the way she focused on me. I’d hardly done anythingwrong.
