Peter was having a hard time finding his place at his new job. As a student at Harvard, he’d researched GMOs and plant life with Professor Stein. They’d take long breaks, chat about existentialism (all the time) and, sometimes, they’d listen to Billy Idol. Now, at the lab, all that could be heard was the soft, ever-present huffing from the mouth-breather seated next to him.
Where’s the camaraderie? Peter wondered. More importantly, where’s the fun?
This job hadn’t been in his plans. He’d wanted to maintain his research with Professor Stein, but after months of nudging, he’d finally gotten a definitive “no.”
“I’m sorry son, but I’m afraid there are current students who need research hours,” Stein had told him. “I don’t have the funds to hire you.”
Who knew graduating from Harvard would be such a pain, Peter thought ruefully, shaking his head at the memory.
He could have stayed to do the research, but he would have had to get his master’s and apply for a grant, which there was no guarantee he would get (Nor would he have. He wasn’t anything special at Harvard, just another big fish from a small pond who got relocated to the Pacific).
So, seeing the ad for the lab tech in the Harvard paper, Peter had jumped at the opportunity. What had really drawn him in was the fact that he could use the lab for personal projects. He’d been hired a short week after he’d applied (he would later find out that there’d been no competition, his boss was just waiting so he wouldn’t seem too eager).
That’s how Peter wound up sitting at his desk, clicking his pen, waiting for the mouth-breather Charles seated next to him to leave so he could get started on what he’d actually stayed after hours for, instead of playing Tetris.
After 15 minutes of vine compilations, Charles took his leave.
“‘Night, Peter,” he called out. “Seriously, you have to watch the video.”
“Will do, Charles,” Peter replied. “After I’m six feet under and maggots are crawling out of my eyeballs,” he mumbled once he heard the door shut.
“It’s showtime baby,” Peter declared, pointing at his plant, Audrey 3. (He was quite the Little Shop of Horrors fan. He had seen every production that had come into town, even the middle school performance in which only parents of the young actors had been present.)
He spun around in his chair, tapping his phone screen to start his Spotify playlist. Billy Idol’s “White Wedding” blasted out at max volume, and with a grand flourish, Peter leapt out of his chair, whisked Audrey 3 off his desk and glided toward the lab room.
“It’s a nice day to start agaaaaaaaain,” his voice rang out through the soundproof lab.
The janitor took one look at Peter jumping around, screaming at his plant, playing his air guitar, and walked out, shaking his head. They don’t pay me enough to deal with this crap. Bunch of freaking nerds. He left the lab and headed across the street to Taco Bell where he treated himself to an extra chalupa while waiting for the kid to scram.
Meanwhile, back at the lab, “Fractured” had started playing and Peter was getting down to business. He started tinkering with the lab equipment, trying to figure out Audrey 3’s progression.
He’d planted her just after he’d left his research gig about a three months ago. Inspired by the giant man-eating monster Seymour had made in Little Shop of Horrors (or LSH, although he was the only person to use the acronym) he decided to use his own green thumb and create a similar creature… minus the hunger for human flesh. His ultimate goal: to create a sentient plant.
After many trials and errors (then a few more errors and a few more) he’d started making headway.
His current specimen, Audrey 3, was his latest attempt (of 7). He had a feeling about this one. (He’d also had a feeling about all the other Audreys, but this one was “different” from her predecessors.) This one had grown.
It started off as a small weed, just budding out of the surface of the soil, barely noticeable to the human eye. Shortly after, it began to bloom at an exceeding rate, shooting up from the pot and into what it is now: a long, sad, green stem, with a large bulb at its top. The bulb was akin to a unripened tomato, but this bulb was no vegetable. The fist-sized sphere was a thick green skin encompassing what can only be described as an unfortunately disproportional brain, hence the sagging of the stem.
It was nothing like the sweet, gentle Picket of Fantastic Beasts, or the grotesque villain from LSH, Audrey 2. It’s downright melancholy, which Peter would know if he tried talking to it.
You see, he had in fact succeeded in his task--he’d made a sentient life form of a plant. No doubts about it. The little girl (yes, it’s a she) would sway back and forth when she was hungry, and bounce her overly large head up and down when she was mad. She’d even laugh at the videos Charles played, but Peter never asked her. Peter was more of what you’d call “book” smart, hence Harvard, yet, somehow, it never crossed his mind that Audrey 3 could be sentient and non verbal.
Due to this fault of reason, Peter had started to give up on the girl. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d only made an ugly plant, not a groundbreaking research discovery.
Why talk to something that couldn’t talk back? She had no tongue to form words, no teeth to grind, no way to voice her thoughts, and Peter assumed this meant she was any normal plant.
He didn’t notice anything she did. The times she’d silently screamed for him to watch her, doing whatever she could to get his attention. The times he’d felt so defeated that he’d forgotten her in the lab at night, in the dark, alone. She’d done all she could, but she quickly registered the truth: Peter may have been smart enough to create her, but he’d never be smart enough to realize he’d succeeded.
For the next ten years, Peter kept trying to make his plant “work.” He tirelessly and painfully poked and prodded, only to create more duds (legitimate ones) in the process. Eventually, he’d had to give up. The failures remained until he was old and grey (mostly). He ended up dying at 56 due to extreme bitterness. On his deathbed, the only thing he could think about was the fact that Audrey 3 had outlived him.
A stupid plant outlived me. I mean come on! It’s one thing to have failed, it’s another to have your failure stare you down on your deathbed.
Little did he know, she wasn’t staring him down, she was smiling from her new home with Charles (Peter had never been able to get rid of him).
It took Charles one week to find out Audrey 3 was sentient. He won the Nobel Prize.