The new apartment was dark. Two rooms and a small bath. The larger room was a kitchen/living room combination. The bedroom was eight by ten. It was on a lower floor with only a small balcony, barely large enough to stand on. Davide had been here a month and had only seen a sliver of sunlight during high noon. It was the judge's decision that he move from his grandmother's apartment. It was okay though, he could afford it and the apartment matched his mood.
Sigmund had spent the past day learning the new apartment's arrangement so that he could do his chores and direct the few house bots that came with the apartment. Davide had heard him talking to himself. Davide knew that Sigmund was just trying to speed his learning by repeating to himself but in Davide's present state of mind it made Sigmund seem as lost and confused as Davide himself felt. Even though he didn't ask, Davide reassured Sigmund several times that it was not his fault that they had ended up here. The door buzzed.
There was no viewer, so Davide looked through the peephole. He couldn’t see anyone. He opened the door slightly and saw a package. Retrieving the package, he saw that it was from a website with a name similar to the one that he had ordered the tomato seeds from. He was alarmed.
Why are they sending me something, what if someone finds out, where will I end up next?
Davide hid the package in his closet, telling Sigmund not to touch it, trying to forget about it.
Several days later when there hadn’t been any more knocks on the door Davide sat down in the closet doorway and took out the package. He opened it slowly and found an object in a brown paper wrapper. Removing the wrapper paper Davide found a slim book, a book about growing tomatoes. His eyes watered but he put the book away.
As time went on Davide and Sigmund became familiar with their new lives, Sigmund even stopped talking to himself. The book had sat on the wall shelf in Davide's bedroom all this time without being opened. It was late at night as he was struggling to sleep that Davide took the book down from the shelf. He opened it to find a picture of a fully formed mature tomato plant gracing the title page. The copyright page had an old date, but the book seemed newly printed.
Davide spent the rest of the night reading and looking at the pictures in the book. Especially the pictures of plants in the sunshine. Each picture in the sunshine stirred memories. It wasn’t long until he could hear his grandmother’s voice in his head. She loved to talk to him as they worked in the balcony garden.
He remembered using a short stick to create a shallow hole in the soil. She would follow him, dropping seeds and tamping the soil. She would tell him stories about her childhood and about the childhoods of her mother and grandmother. Davide remembered a story she had told him about past relatives.
A story about people living, not in the towers, but on the land in a small house. The story claimed that these people grew a lot of their own food. Grandmother said she didn’t know if the story was true or not, it had been passed down through so many. But she thought it was true. She thought it was a lovely idea anyway. And so did Davide.
Davide closed the book. He needed to get outside. The balcony was lit in the glow of the lights from the surrounding towers. It wasn’t satisfying. He needed to get outside.
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