He had to wait an entire week for an opportunity to visit the factory again. He anticipated with trepidation another one of his father's intrusions on his schedule, but when no restriction was placed on his time, he rushed back to his beloved factory, to see what happened to it in the meantime.

No wonder his father was impossible to please lately, the scene he came upon was simply surreal. The plant was growing in several locations now, immediately noticeable by anybody blessed with eyesight, it was as if spring had sprung in the factory and the pipes' leaf buds had started to open. The vine sneaked out of every crack and crevice, looking deceptively delicate, but harder to tear than tension cable, and then formed bridges and overpasses through the machine room, like a secondary system of sorts, bypassing the mechanical flow.

It was pleasantly warm inside the room, although the heat had been turned off altogether, and it was the middle of November. Richard wondered how come the machinery was still working, because appearances led one to believe that plant invasion would put it into an unmanageable state, but he hadn't heard anything to suggest that, and during the previous week the puffing dragon had been billowing smoke like nothing ever happened.

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