The Block Votes on Air

The agenda had three items.

1. Fan direction.
2. The plant on the fourth landing.
3. Whether item 2 was actually item 1.

Sera Qun brought biscuits because biscuits prevent homicide in small rooms.

“We voted last month,” said 3B.

“We voted to discuss,” said 6C, who had filed the heat complaint that had become a short story in someone else’s mouth.

“That’s not a vote.”

“It’s Ashfall.”

The fan sat in its box like a candidate.

Civic Network had sent a comfort-circuit notice: AIR IS SHARED. ADJUSTMENT REQUIRES CONSENSUS OR A WORK ORDER. Consensus was cheaper.

Sera pointed at the diagram she had drawn on the back of a stall-menu.

“If it blows toward 3B, 6C cooks. If it blows toward 6C, 3B’s child can’t sleep. If it oscillates, everyone is a little bit betrayed, which is fairness.”

“Oscillate,” said the fourth landing, who only wanted the plant not to die.

The plant was a separate religion. Someone watered it with municipal water that was technically for drinking. No one would be the person who reported a plant.

They voted.

Oscillate won by two, which in a block of forty felt like a landslide and a wound.

3B said, “My child.”

6C said, “My stove.”

Sera said, “Your child can sleep in the twenty minutes the fan faces 6C. Your stove can wait twenty minutes to be a hero.”

It was not elegant. It was a city.

They installed the fan. It turned its head like a person trying to be liked.

The plant, in the new breeze, dropped one leaf as commentary.

Sera picked it up.

“Minutes?” someone asked.

She wrote: Air shared. Plant alive. Biscuits gone.

6C helped 3B carry the empty box down, which was not on the agenda and therefore the actual meeting.

On the street the precinct was warm in the way that made people invent theories. Sera did not invent. She went home, opened her window two centimeters—the legal courtesy—and listened to the fan do its diplomatic work.

Ashfall slept in shifts.

The air, for one night, was a committee that had adjourned.