The Biodome Track

The sun hadn't yet reached its highest burn, but already the air had weight. Dry, crackling with static. The kind of heat that wrapped itself around every limb, every breath, until it felt like something alive riding your skin. The fields stretched wide around the small farm not far from Wichita Falls, Texas. The land baked flat and gold and patient, crisscrossed with dusty tracks and tangled hoses, like veins running through a sleeping animal.

Chris stood in it like he belonged. His boots were dusted red at the edges, his T-shirt clung to his back and sweat clung to the inside of his hat. He squinted upward once. Blue sky, merciless. And then knelt by the melon patch.

Watermelons. Dozens of them. Dark green, thick-skinned, coiled at the ends of brittle vines. He tapped one with the backs of his knuckles, listening. The sound was dull and satisfying, like a heartbeat through hardwood. He rotated it slightly, brushing away a curl of dirt, then twisted it free with a practiced hand. The stem popped clean. He set it down beside two others.

Then to the peach trees. He moved slow, respectful. You didn't rush peaches. The trees were gnarled and strong, their fruit small this season, sun-softened, dappled with gold and pink. He checked for mold. Checked for wasps. Fingers light. Calloused. Some were ready, most weren't. He filled half a crate and carried it to the shade of the barn.

Then, the hydroponic system.

The greenhouse stood just beyond the rows, a long ribcage of metal and glass. Inside, the air was damp, the earth smell replaced by plastic tubing and nutrient solution. Lush growth sprawled in vertical towers. Lettuce, kale, basil, strawberries flowering too early.

Chris crouched by the water lines, tracing pressure valves and nutrient tanks. A slow leak had turned one corner of the system sluggish. He could hear the imbalance in the way the pumps clicked. He unhooked the panel, wiped a thin layer of grime from the pressure gauge, twisted the knob just a quarter-turn. Listened. Waited. Balanced. It wasn't hard work. But it was exacting. The kind of thing that made time thin out, made thoughts slow down and stretch into focus.

This was just part-time. A patch-job for the gaps. His real work, playing music in dive bars, roadhouses, and off-the-map open mics, paid in drinks and compliments more than dollars. But Portland was waiting. He could see it.

The future unspooled in his mind like a reel of film: cloudy mornings, thrift store jackets, playing slow ballads to damp-eyed crowds under red light. Coffee in corner cafes. Buskers on Hawthorne. People who might understand the strange, folded way his mind worked.

He smiled, just slightly. Just enough.

Then he stood, wiped his hands on his jeans, and stepped deeper into the greenhouse, toward the hanging vines and rows of delicate, growing things.

Somewhere else, Linn boarded the train, the light thin and silver and cold at the edges. It was one of those small, immaculate regional routes that ran between countries without fanfare. The platform had been almost deserted. The train itself, new, streamlined, silent in its movement, was nearly empty.

She placed her bag beside her seat and sat. Window seat, out of habit. The countryside began to slide sideways in slow, deliberate motion. Fields. Forests. A horizon misted with sleep.

And then it came. Sudden, distinct.

A smell.

Hydroponics. Manure. Wet stone. Chlorophyll.

Linn inhaled slowly, almost warily. It didn't make sense. The train smelled like stainless steel and filtered air, but underneath it, there was something unmistakably organic. Sharp. Rich. The precise scent of nutrient-fed roots, fresh compost turned with gloved hands, young leaves unrolling under grow lamps.

It tugged at her memory, but not personally. Not from her own life. Someone else's.

She looked around. The carriage was silent. Clean. Only two other passengers in sight, both absorbed in their own interior worlds.

Still, the smell persisted. Faint, then gone. A sensory ghost.

She frowned but didn't speak. Just reached for her phone, thumbed to her calendar. Another conference. Another keynote. Another room full of polite tension and coffee machines humming in the background.

She leaned her forehead briefly to the window and watched the scenery dissolve into blur.