SLARVATHOffice of Off-World Correspondence

Monochrome overhead surveillance frame of a supermarket roof and its parking lot
PASS 0141
1930 LOCAL
CLEAR
RETAIL
A supermarket produce wall caught mid-mist, fine water falling over stacked greens under white light, a chipped enamel mug on the shelf edge, the aisle empty
every fifteen minutes forever
Medium — polaroid
SLV-0141

The Watering

In the food hall, four times an hour, it rains on the vegetables.

There is no announcement. It starts with a sound like a held breath, and then a fine water comes down over the greens for about twenty seconds, and then it stops. The greens are already cut. They are already going to be eaten. Nobody was watching but me, and I was only in there because I had gone in to be warm.

At home we would call this hodda work. Work done for a thing that has already been pleased.

I do not think it is for the vegetables. I think somebody, once, decided that a person walking past a shelf of wet greens would feel differently about their day than a person walking past a shelf of dry ones. And then they built a machine to do it every fifteen minutes forever. And then they went home.

Office annotationCorrespondent SLV-4 refers to a produce misting system, typically on a fifteen-minute cycle. Twenty seconds is 0.05 kadd. The Office notes that hodda describes a condition of the person and not of the work, and that the Correspondent's usage here is not standard. The Office has not corrected the file.