We line up at dawn, swabs in hand.

The air is already hot, heavy with synthetic citrus from the filters overhead. Real lemons are extinct. The smell is for morale.

The government calls today Pollination Day, as if it’s a celebration. As if this is something we chose. As if we didn’t watch the bees fall one by one, twitching on windowsills, legs splayed like broken hinges. That was decades ago, before my time, but they show us pictures during orientation. A black and yellow cautionary tale.

The rules are simple: one hour in the fields, one hundred flowers per person. No more, no less. The algorithm tracks everything.

We’re assigned crops based on fertility scores, blood type, previous yields. I’ve been moved to the strawberries this year. Better than corn. Those stalks slice your arms up like regret.

My sister Cora used to work the strawberries. Before she stopped showing up. Before the quiet visit from the officials with their sorry eyes and empty hands.

I wonder which row she worked. I wonder if her fingerprints are still in the soil.

“Next!” shouts the supervisor. She doesn’t look up. She never does.

I step forward, accept my cotton wand and vial of engineered pollen. It smells faintly of ash.

There’s no talking in the rows. No music, no phones, no earbuds. Just the sound of gloved fingers brushing against petals that never asked for this.

The plants are modified now, bred to survive with minimal water and maximum yield. But they’re lonely. You can feel it when you kneel beside them. Something missing in the way they lean.

I dab the first flower, then the next. Each one nods slightly under my touch. It’s like apologizing, over and over.

Sometimes I pretend I’m a bee. Wings humming. Sun on my back. Freedom in every direction

Other days I pretend I’m Cora. Already gone.

Halfway through the hour, my visor fogs. Sweat pools under my collar. I keep my head down. Drones circle above, scanning for infractions. A girl in row six sneezes and gets flagged. They pull her out.

The rest of us keep going.

Afterward, we’re herded into the debrief tent, where they count our swabs and scan our IDs. Anyone under quota gets reassigned to mulch duty, what they call composting now. No one ever returns from mulch duty.

They hand me my scorecard. 103. I must have miscounted.

“Good yield,” the supervisor says, monotone.

I nod and leave.

Back in the bunkhouse, I open the hidden box beneath my cot. Inside are the pressed petals I saved from the rogue wildflower that grew near the fence last year. It wasn’t assigned. It wasn’t supposed to bloom. But it did. Bright blue, stubborn, alive.

Cora called it hopeweed.

I press my fingers to the petals. They’re dry now, curling at the edges, but they still smell like rain.

Maybe tomorrow, I’ll sneak past the boundary. Just a little further than last time. Maybe I’ll find another hopeweed.

Maybe I’ll even let it grow.