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“Home is Where the Heart Is” read the cheeky decorative plaque above workstation 3-B. If that were the case, the Rocky Mount Harvest and Manufacturing Plant was home to many lost souls, waiting to move out into a little chest cavity of their very own. The entire building was neat, with low ceilings composed of speckled tiles in a shade of eggshell, which neither invited nor discouraged counting. The walls were a darker shade of cream, and the earth-toned carpet was knotted sensibly close, so the secretary could take her heels off and let her stockinged feet rest on the floor without any embarrassing feelings of luxury or sensuality.

Past the foyer, the workstations were sensibly free of the gratuitous stainless steel countertops and brilliant white that would let sensationalist visitors paint the legitimate manufacturing work the factory performed as mad science. The desks were beige laminate, with brown-painted metal legs on little silver disc-like feet. There were no cubicles, and each desk had three feet of space between its front and the reasonably comfortable swivel-chair belonging to the person in front of them. There were two rows of desks, pushed up against the side walls, with a moderate corridor between them. The false-crackle varnish of 3b’s sign seemed right at home, a mildly ironic personal touch to match 4b’s garfield page-a-day calendar. The elevator, located to the back and right, unbalancing the rows of desks by one, had false wood paneling and a grey carpet inside. The door was dull metal, and not particularly reflective. The exit to the fire stairs, next to the elevator, led to a concrete landing, lit with ugly fluorescents. The two easy flights enclosed formed the back of the building, and were only meant for emergency use. The exit to the second floor was on the left on the middle landing.

Through the slightly muted white door was the single room that made up the entire floor, identical to the first in tasteful appointment. Instead desks, however, were the columns filled with nutrient bath, lit from underneath with a full, harvest-coloured glow. Here, the specimens were cultivated. The tanks were six feet in height, but reached the ceiling because they were set in stained-wood bases about as high as a man’s knees. The control panels and information readouts were on the side of each pillar, just below eye level. The specimens floated in each tube, forming from less than a handful of cells into their full size and functionality in four months exactly, one per column. The effect overall was that of an ergonomic parthenon. The elevator was immediately at right of the stairs, and the outer door was identical to on the first floor.

The third floor was also a single room, oriented with the exits to the elevator and stairs towards the back. Around the walls, warm, brown, plastic moulding ended two inches from the floor, which was tiled in a cool, speckled tan. The walls were the same right cream as the first and second floors, and the light was plentiful and clean from the ceiling. The only item kept in this room was a table of the same dull metal as the elevator doors, seven feet by four feet in size, on which some frenetic specimen had managed to scratch with an excess of shaky, spider-thin lines, “Home is Where the Heart Is.”