Message Scent

That morning, Sadie had gotten on the bus holding a rose, twirling it between her fingers as she sat down next to Aaron. While they chatted, she seemed distant, distracted. Aaron, for his part, managed to put up a front of calm, but internally, he was in shambles. Of course. They’d only ever flirted on the bus. Why had he suspected it to be anything more? And now, here she was, holding a rose with her mind elsewhere. A new boyfriend, obviously. He was just a commute friend, no more, no less.

But then, something amazing happened. When they came to her stop, she stood up and held the flower out for him. “This is for you,” she said, awkwardly. “If you feel yourself getting frustrated at your internship, you could smell it, and feel better. And maybe think of me.”

Aaron had stammered a thank you. The rest of the commute and the beginning of his morning passed in an exuberant daze, the stem tucked into his pant pocket, its bloom obscured by his cardigan. Though he’d been an intern at the marketing firm for more than a month, he found himself getting lost every time he left his cubicle, so distracted was he by the rose and the potential of asking Sadie on a date the next morning.

At one point, he went up a floor to attend a conference call. On his way back down, he lost track of how many flights of stairs he’d taken. In this way, he found himself in the basement, in front of a thick metal door printed with a warning against entry by unauthorized personnel.

Aaron had turned to leave when he heard a voice from within call, “I sense a presence. Please enter.”

There was something unnaturally smooth about it, and Aaron saw why as he went into the room. The entirety of the space was taken up by wires and blinking lights, and from a speaker buried within this, the voice emerged.

“Do not be afraid,” it said.

“What are you?” Aaron asked, half terrified, half intrigued.

“I am Smhal, a marketing super computer constructed for a singular purpose,” boomed the voice, “to name entirely unnatural chemical smells.”

“Amazing,” Aaron said in a hush. “How do you work?”

“There is a box of products on the floor there,” Smhal said. “A technician brought them down earlier, but we did not make it all the way through the contents. Here, let us do some together. Do you see this?” For a moment, all the lights went dark except for eight orange bulbs encircling an area. “This is my scent receptor. Bring a product to it.”

The rest of the lights came back on, and Aaron retrieved something from the box, reading its packaging and reporting to Smhal. “Okay, first up, we have some laundry sheets. Looks like they’re for people who are trying to use less plastic, maybe? All you need is one half-sheet per normal load, a whole one for a big load, and two for a very large or extremely soiled load. And it says here–”

“I do not require any information,” Smhal said, cutting him off, “except the scent.”

“Right, sorry,” Aaron said.

He brought a sheet to Smhal. There came a whirring noise, like a fan, from within its receptor. Lights throughout the room began blinking more and more rapidly before coming to rest once more.

“Fresh Breeze,” Smhal said at last.

“Whoa,” said Aaron. After that, he brought over every item from the box, an array of cleaning products, detergents, deodorants, and shampoos. For each one, Smhal spit out the perfect scent name: Arctic Wind, Glacial Blast, Desert Honey, Icy Mist, Sandy Oasis, and so on.

“Is there anything left?” Smhal said.

Aaron was about to say no when he remembered something. “Just one more,” he said, taking the rose from his pocket and holding it up to the smell receptor.

Once again, there came the whirring, but this time, it grew stronger than before. The lights blinked erratically. “Smell… so… natural… so… beautiful…” Smhal said. “Must… have… it…”

With that, the receptor sucked the rose right out of Aaron’s hand. The room began to vibrate. Wires snapped. Bulbs popped. Sparks rained down as Aaron ran through the door and up the stairs. At the first floor, he slipped into the lobby. A moment later, he heard a commotion and watched as a team of men in lab coats rushed past the narrow window of the stairwell door towards the basement.

He told his supervisor he wasn’t feeling well and went home. He wondered, the next morning, should he tell Sadie what happened to the rose? No, he decided, he would suggest dinner and not mention the rose at all.