This Is Yr Life

Chapter Three

Kyle couldn’t concentrate. Normally, his job was simple enough to go throughout the day without needing to put too much effort in, but today he found himself staring at the screen and not even understanding what was in front of him.

Day-to-day, he worked inputting and correcting data for a branch of a multinational. When people asked who he worked for he shrugged, told them he wasn’t exactly sure, but he thought it was something do with Artificial Intelligence.

He had started this job one year ago, having been deemed surplus to requirements and failing to impress at a company that worked finding jobs for those whose previous occupations no longer existed. Every day, he had gone into that job wishing he didn’t have to. It wasn’t that he had purposely tried to get dismissed, he just didn’t care enough.

This was back when he had plans, though. And every day sitting and having computers analyse a candidate’s data only made him long to get away more. He didn’t want to help people achieve their dreams; he wanted to live his own.

After leaving his previous job, he moved back in with his parents temporarily, but they hardly spoke to each other. Both of them had retired and so spent much of their day sitting in the living room surrounded by screens watching movies from their youth. Occasionally, they would ask him about his job, and he would lie, and say that it was going great. But only occasionally.

It took him a long time to find this new job, and he had stumbled upon it by accident while browsing the most exciting places to visit. One phone call later he was summoned for a remote interview. Dressed in a shirt and tie, but still his pyjama trousers he answered questions, feigned enthusiasm, and, perhaps out of desperation on the side of the company, he was given the job.

He remained at his parents’ house for another month before moving out yet again. He rarely went back to visit and only sometimes would he get a call from his mother, just wanting to check in. But these conversations were infrequent and brief, and normally his mother seemed distracted by something off-screen.

It was expected of him to input up to fifteen gigabytes of data per hour, and today he was well behind. Since Friday, he had only thought of the girl at the cemetery, how she had achieved everything so young; she was three years younger than he was, how happy she looked on every video. The day after he had found her, he returned. He hadn’t planned to, but walking through the city, he found himself drawn towards the cemetery. This time, he hadn’t stayed long, there were too many people around visiting lost loved ones, and the snow from the previous night had risen high so that his boots had gotten damp on the inside.

When he had gotten home, his flatmates were still asleep from the night before. They had already left the flat before he had returned that Friday and the living room was cluttered with bottles and cans and cups and snacks. He left the mess for them to tidy up, and retired to his room.

But he wasn’t able to sleep. He was consumed by a jealous fascination of what he had seen in the cemetery. Chloe was unlike any girl he had ever met, but he didn’t know why.

Struggling to sleep, he had flicked through on-demand TV shows, watching a minute of each programme here and there but, ultimately, not caring what was on screen. He commanded the flat to heat up, wrapped his blankets around him and tried to drift off, but all he saw when he closed his eyes was the brown-haired girl with green eyes.

At some point, he did manage to fall to sleep. He knew this because later that night he was woken up by a crash and a bang and a clatter of glass and metal. From outside his bedroom, he could hear voices that weren’t full blown talking, but not whispers either. Their speech was slurred, but he was able to identify his own name, and then knock rattled on his bedroom door.

Kyle didn’t move. Normally, his bedroom door was locked at all times, but tonight he wasn’t sure if he had remembered to lock it. He lay still in his bed, the flat, he realised, had become very hot, too hot for him to be wrapped in blankets, but he was worried that any movement might alert them to him being awake.

Another knock came, and one of them called his name.

‘Are you alright, mate? It’s boiling in here.’

Kyle could never distinguish between their voices, and often he forgot that he lived with two people instead of one. His flatmates were so similar in so many ways that he frequently imagined them as just one person. They dressed the same, had the same haircut, even worked at the same company. Kyle glanced at the time, projected on the wall, it was quarter past four.

His flatmates didn’t knock again. He heard them shuffling and stumbling to their own rooms, and he heard the doors close and lock, and after that, the flat returned to silence.

Kyle couldn’t get back to sleep; he lay staring up at the ceiling. Aside from the light of the clock, the room was in total darkness. He counted seconds, tried to anticipate when the time would turn from four-fifteen to four-sixteen, and four-sixteen to four-seventeen, but he soon got distracted thinking about Chloe.

He picked his phone up from the bedside table and selected the casting feature. On his ceiling, the darkness was replaced by a search bar, and light filled the room.

‘Search: Chloe Kennedy,’ Kyle said, whispering.

Immediately, results appeared on his ceiling. There were articles about girls and women named Chloe Kennedy, but none of them was the Chloe he wanted. The search engine brought up information about women who were doctors, lawyers, teachers who had now either retired or died.

‘Search: Chloe Kennedy, death.’

But this didn’t do much different. Kyle stared at the ceiling, his eyes running over links and profiles of strangers. Some results came from before the millennium.

‘Search images: Chloe Kennedy, Nottingham.’

And this time, it worked. Kyle found her social media profiles and gazed at the images projected on his ceiling. He swiped through, just to be certain. A lot of the time, her face was obstructed by lens flare, or clothing, or someone else. But the photos she had taken herself showed off all her beauty in full view. He scrolled through her profiles, and read messages from people after she had died:

Lydia Solomon 5 months ago

RIP angel, gone too soon. XxXx

Shaun Brookes 5 months ago

I can’t believe what has happened. This world is so unfair. We’ll miss you, Chlo. RIP. X

Summer Doherty 5 months ago

My heart is broken. You were my rock and my right arm. Without you, I would not have had any of the experiences that have made me who I am. I will never forget you, RIP. Xoxo

There were more, but Kyle didn’t want to read them. Instead, he kept scrolling down and down. He went so far that he arrived at a time where Chloe was still alive, tagged as six months ago. There were albums for her big return party, after she had finished travelling. In these pictures was the girl she had parachuted with. They were surrounded by friends and family at someone’s house, and they shared drinks and food and laughter and played games. Kyle flicked through picture after picture, pausing every now and again to look for Chloe in the background of every photo where she wasn’t the primary focus. Eventually, he fell back to sleep.

Still sat at his desk, unable to go to lunch due to not fulfilling his duties, Kyle stared at the screen. What was normally a mindless task of inputting numbers and recording information turned into a babble of symbols that he couldn’t understand.

In his cubicle, he was isolated. There were only a few sounds of ringing phones and chatter around him, and each employee kept to themselves. But the progress tracker in the corner of his screen was edging ever closer to the red zone. If it got to the red zone, there would be an appraisal, and there was a chance for suspension.

But despite this threat of potentially losing his job, Kyle continued to stare at his screen and do nothing. He looked at the clock, it was nearly two PM, and there was still three hours left of work. So, as the clock crept closer and closer to calling it a day, Kyle elected to merely mash in data haphazardly, caring not for checking and double checking. Any errors would be picked up by the system and set to be corrected the next day, but Kyle didn’t mind this, he had little intention of being employed here much longer. Once five PM came, he stood up, shut down his computer and left the office. On the way out, no one said goodbye to him, and he didn’t say goodbye to anybody, either.

Outside, the sun had again already set, but it wasn’t a cold night as it was on Friday. Over the weekend, the sun had melted the snow and after the sun came the rain, which washed the sludge from the streets which was then collected and reused in all sorts of little gadgets.

Like Friday, Kyle went to the cemetery to see Chloe. He had no reason to avoid going home tonight, but he did have a reason to visit the cemetery. Searching through Chloe’s social media profiles to learn more about her, he discovered that she loved orchids. There was a florist that his father had often sent him to when living at home to pick up flowers for his mother for her birthday or his parents anniversary. He had not visited it in years and was not confident it was still in business, but he remembered that it was just one street over from where Chloe was buried.

When he arrived, the florist was still open, but it looked nothing like he remembered it. As a child, when he had gone alone or visited with his father, the exterior was adorned with hanging plants and plant pots, large cacti and bouquets. The paint had been green and blue and around the sign were intricate and carefully hand painted flowers blossoming. But now, he saw, that had all changed. The florist kept the same name, but the walls had been repainted white, and there were no longer hanging baskets or bouquets, but rows upon rows of plant hybrids, genetically modified to order. When he was younger, there had been soil covering much of the inside, with exotic plants hanging everywhere you felt as if you had taken a wrong turn and stepped into a jungle. Now, the walls were lined with little lockers with glass doors. Each plant, or specimen as they were now labelled, was standing solitary behind the glass. In some, a mist hung inside, in others, bright lights shone from the top of the locker. The soil was no longer there, and when Kyle asked the clerk working behind the counter what had happened he said that there was no need for soil anymore, everything could be grown in a petri dish.

Kyle nodded and asked him if he had any orchids.

‘Orchids? No, sir, we haven’t stocked orchids in years.’

‘Why?’

‘Loss of habitat way back. They only have those kinds of plants in the US, now. Their technology’s better. This is just a small business; we can’t afford the import costs.’

Kyle looked at his shoes and then around the shop. He didn’t want to see Chloe without bringing her something.

‘Do you have anything like orchids?’ he asked, but he could tell from the look on the shopkeeper’s face that they didn’t.

‘Afraid not, but we do have this hibiscus hybrid, fresh as a daisy,’ he said and chuckled to himself.

‘How much?’

‘Fifteen, normally, but considering it wasn’t your first choice, you can have it for twelve.’ The shopkeeper turned around and pulled a green and yellow hibiscus from the locker behind him.

‘Thank you,’ Kyle said. He paid and left, with his solitary plant in hand.