When I started at Optionality, they put me in a cramped condo with three other newish employees, one of whom insisted on assigning each roommate a different burner on the stove. I was the last to move in, so I got the smallest burner, which means I no longer make pasta.

Six months into the job, which mostly involved data coding for biometric solutions, I still hadn’t found my own place to rent. Every apartment I could afford required a terrible commute, even if I left home at an ungodly hour to catch the train. But at lunch one day in Optionality’s main cafeteria, I found a flyer for a nearby housing development called Orchard Village. Fifteen minutes away, by shuttle.

I didn’t even take a tour of the place. I just opened the website and applied.

The application required my employee badge number and salary. Which made me think Orchard Village was owned by Optionality, like the Willow Park condo community they’d built ten years earlier, which includes office space and drug stores and, I think, a skate park. But when I asked my team leader about the odds of my application going through, he only said Optionality was always looking for ways to “better support healthy eating” for its employees, which I guess means he assumed Orchard Village is an exclusive new lunchtime option.

I went back and looked at the website—lots of photos of young professionals walking down sidewalks dappled with shade, admiring wood and glass storefronts. A pop-up let me know that I would pay far below market price for rent, with a matching payment coming from my employer. Also, that the whole development had been built using a sustainable technique involving mass timber construction. Which I assumed more than made up for the destruction of whatever actual orchard they had razed to build the place.

Within a week of applying, I got a catalog in the mail, along with a card that said, You’ve been selected! The other side of the card instructed me to choose my housing unit by entering the lot number on a page of Orchard Village’s website.

That was surprising. It hadn’t occurred to me that I would be making any kind of choice. When I’d applied for Optionality’s temporary employee housing, they’d had only one condo available. Before that, in college, I’d lived in a school-assigned apartment, where the plumbing had overflowed so regularly that we were loaned an industrial fan for an entire semester, to combat the spreading mildew.

So the catalog was thrilling. I flipped through it the way I had the Target catalogs that came in the mail at Christmastime when I was a kid. Every housing unit in Orchard Valley might as well have been a LEGO set destined to appear under a pre-lit PVC Blue Spruce.

I quickly realized that every single one of Orchard Village’s eight hundred forty different housing units had its own separate listing (four to a page). Each unit had several unique features, spelled out in minuscule type. I would need at least a week to study it all and make an informed selection.

I had until the next morning at eight a.m.

Apparently, they were eager to get people moved in? Fine—I was eager to get out of my condo, where my books were, according to my roommate, taking up so much space on the narrow built-ins that she had nowhere to display her 3D printed goose figurines.

I skipped to the middle of the catalog and scanned the one-bedroom units. I figured if I tried to select anything nicer, any of the multi-floor units toward the back of the catalog, the management would be annoyed (offended?). But I didn’t think I belonged in the cheapest apartments either, the tiny studios with the pocket-sized bathrooms. Those had to be for interns. Or subcontractors.

Around midnight, I finally decided on a unit with a Wi-Fi mesh system and some interesting crown molding. Dog-eared the catalog page, slept like a kid on Christmas Eve.

Eight a.m. on the dot, I entered the lot number.

But when I checked the webpage again a couple of hours later, something had gone wrong. Selection failed, it said, just above a button labeled “more info.” It was suddenly painfully obvious to me that I wasn’t the kind of employee who had earned a Wi-Fi mesh system. I was the kind who should plan to bring along my own router at move-in. And to forgo crown molding, probably.

I clicked on the “more info” button, anticipating a polite scolding. A pop-up declared that move-in would be delayed until all prospective residents had made “non-conflicting selections.”

My desk-mate, Veronica, got a glimpse of my screen and got so excited she almost knocked her paper calendar off the desk we shared. (She brings a different desk calendar to work every day. Today’s showed a summer-themed art print called Oh Buoy!) “You’re moving into Orchard Village?” she asked.

I should explain that Veronica and I were sharing a desk that day because we hadn’t come in early enough to find individual workstations. Optionality had let go of half its office space to save on rent costs while everyone was opting for work-from-home. But now we’re all required to be in-office five days a week, which means we have to get creative with the floor plan until a new lease is negotiated.

I very quickly closed the pop-up window. I didn’t want Veronica knowing that I wasn’t good enough for the crown molding that I didn’t even really care about.

Veronica didn’t seem to have noticed the pop-up. “Which unit did you select?” She’d reached down to get something from her bag, and now she set it down on her keyboard: the Orchard Village catalog. “The one I picked has all these surfaces made from kitchen packaging waste. It looks kind of like marble but weirder. Like marble painted by Van Gogh.”

She showed me the listing, which I vaguely remembered skimming the night before. The swirled blue countertops held an eerie charm.

“It’s nice to have counters like that if you can’t afford art.” Veronica was sitting cross-legged in her chair, having taken the side of the desk with the bank of drawers. I had all the legroom.

“I think I picked the wrong unit,” I told her.

She squinted at my screen, which still read Selection failed. I could tell it made her nervous. She quickly pulled up the webpage on her own laptop and found the same message. Clicked the button. Frowned at the pop-up.

“What do you think non-conflicting selection means?” I asked her.

She was already searching for a contact page on the website, and then typing furiously into a chat window. I started to feel a little better. Veronica was the one who had convinced the admin team to order breadsticks for everyone, not just team leaders, whenever we had Alfredo’s brought in. She’d told them that too few breadsticks put her into a “scarcity mindset” that threatened her productivity. And that a second bag of breadsticks would only cost five-fifty.

“Apparently, no one has moved into the development yet,” she said finally, “because they can’t let anyone move in until the selection process is finished. We have to try again on Friday.”

Three more days to study the catalog. I was okay with that, mostly. More time to find a unit I liked.

In fact, it was nice to flip through so many listings. Overwhelming, but in a good way, like the moment I would dump an entire plastic bag’s worth of LEGO pieces onto the carpet on Christmas morning.

I realized, when I looked more closely at the listings I had read with bleary eyes the night before, that the unit I’d first selected was located above Orchard Village’s café. The apartment was probably supposed to be for the café manager, which would explain why my selection had failed.

This time I used the map printed at the front of the catalog to check the location of the listings I liked best. The apartments facing the wildflower trail at the west end of the village had electrochromic windows that went from transparent to tinted in late afternoon sunlight. The units that bordered the wetlands had carbon-filter HVAC systems that removed odors from the air. No one could begrudge me electrochromic windows or carbon filters if I had to deal with blazing sunlight or marsh funk—surely?

And if I chose the unit with the tiled entryway in a cherry-blossom mosaic, I would be justified in that the tile was made from recycled glass bottles. If I took the ground-floor one-bedroom closest to the shuttle stop, that only meant I was a responsible employee, eager to arrive at the office on time. Touchless faucets meant I was hygienic, a boon to society. A beverage center in the kitchen wasn’t that luxurious.

In the end, I chose a unit with modular furniture, which seemed like the most junior-employee-coded option in the catalog. The unit also had geothermal heating and cooling, but I decided in a city where the daily average temperature was a mild seventy-two degrees, the thermostat would rarely kick in anyway.

And then, Friday morning—

Selection failed.

Veronica got the same message. So did another fellow employee, Tory, who stood looking over my shoulder while a cough drop clattered around behind his teeth. (He swears the menthol is going to make him live longer.) “Which one did you choose?” he asked.

“The one with the modular furniture.”

The cough drop clattered raucously. “You don’t want modular furniture. Someone’s ass is going to sit where your head will end up later.”

I had taken up station in the copy room that day, the only unclaimed corner of the office. Laptop balanced on the sturdiest of the paper trays. Tory nudged me aside so he could make a copy.

“Besides,” he said, “that’s way further into the catalog than they want us to be. You need to stick closer to page twenty.”

I scoffed. “Page twenty.” I don’t think he heard me over the clack of paper copies hitting my laptop.

Later, when I got home from work, I found my roommate stacking my books on top of the TV to make more space on the built-ins for her goose figurines. “They’re magnetic,” she said. One goose had a tiny knife dangling from its beak. “They’re from that video game with the goose that chases people with knives.”

“My books are going to fall.” The TV was barely wide enough for the paperbacks.

“Then stack them on the floor. Or do you think everyone is always supposed to accommodate you?”

When I found one of the other miniature knives in my toothbrush cup later that night, it felt like a vague threat.

I decided Tory was right. Optionality had me in a cramped condo with carpeting so thin it squeaked when I walked on it. They weren’t going to let me rent an apartment with an indoor garden space or an aromatherapy shower.

By ten p.m., I had circled a listing that made more sense. Walls that hid drop-down tables and chairs. Floors made of hempcrete (concrete mixed with hemp—eco-friendly, fire resistant).

By ten a.m.: Selection failed.

“You’re still aiming too high,” Tory told me, his teeth cherry-red.

“Which one did you pick?” It came out aggressive. One of the team leaders had put up dividers to create makeshift cubicles, and people kept shimmying past my desk as they made their way through the divider-maze, their thighs brushing my chair.

“I picked the converted refrigerator truck,” Tory said. “Small, but really well insulated.”

“Selection failed, though, right?” I said smugly.

He shattered the cough drop between his molars.

After that, I tried a unit with rice-straw floor coverings, couches made from end-of-life carpet.

When that failed, I figured I might as well try a unit from the back of the catalog instead: pink quartz bathtub, meditation nook, biophilic entryway, human-centric lighting that supported circadian rhythms.

Failed again.

“Have you seen Reddit?” Veronica asked me while we camped on the floor of the supply closet with our laptops perched on boxes of printer toner. I’d been staring wistfully at her desk calendar, which now showed a print of Summer Chairs. “People are saying non-conflicting selection means if you choose the same unit as someone else, your selection fails.”

“But that’s ridiculous,” I said, slapping my hand down on my makeshift cardboard desk. “How are we supposed to coordinate our selections?”

Veronica looked at me with the disappointment she usually reserved for the protein shakes we got for dinner when we were required to work late. “On Reddit. Like I said.”

She showed me the subreddit for Orchard Village. One of the moderators claimed to work for the housing development’s management. It’s not like we can give two different renters the same unit, she’d posted.

Unfortunately, only around eighty people seemed to have discovered the page. They’d dutifully shared the number of the unit they planned to select next. But that left seven hundred sixty question marks.

Still, it was starting to make sense. Someone in management had created an overly complicated plan to divvy up the units, and all I had to do was choose a unit that I was sure no one else would ever select.

I didn’t bother with any real work for the next few days, just flagged the pages of my catalog with sticky notes. Hurried home to mark it up. Avoided the house meeting my roommates had called to decide whether anyone was using more than their fair share of the toilet paper. Hardly slept at night.

By Thursday morning, I had honed in on the most unsettling listing in the whole catalog, a unit no sane person would select. All-glass interior walls. Living room with artificial salmon run. Porous bedroom furniture for the sweaty or incontinent sleeper. Ceiling mural depicting the lifecycle of a hornet moth. Pickle ball simulator (and holographic backhand coach).

Did I like the idea of living in such a unit instead of, say, one with a saltwater swim spa? Obviously not. But I could hang curtains around the glass walls. Paint the ceiling. Dump the mechanical salmon into the stream that meandered past the development’s more desirable units.

Anyway, it didn’t matter whether the unit was good or bad. I’d been promised my very own living space at Orchard Village and I wasn’t going to be cheated out of that.

One final moment of doubt: when I opened my laptop bright and early at work, I realized I’d misplaced my catalog.

But not to worry. I’d memorized the unit number. Absolutely buzzing with anticipation of my impending victory, I entered the number into the website.

Veronica opened the door to my office space for the day, the walk-in fridge that housed the cases of sparkling water Optionality considered an attractive employee perk. (I kept a fleece-lined jacket at the office for just such an eventuality.) “You heard about the theory, right?” she asked me. She had a bright-eyed look that day, as if she’d stepped out of the July Delight page of her desk calendar.

“Yeah, Reddit, got it,” I said. “I picked a unit no one else would ever pick. Literally the most bizarre one I could find. Only a borderline psycho would choose the unit I just entered into the website.”

All trace of delight left Veronica’s face. Her eyes widened to the size of blackberries and looked just as dark. “No. The new theory.”

If my skin could have gone any colder in the walk-in fridge, it would have. “What theory is that?”

“There is no Orchard Village,” Veronica said. “It’s all a corporate personality test.”

“A what?” I thought back to the catalog listing. The phrase egg-larva-pupa went through my mind.

“Like a new Myers-Briggs or something.” Veronica pressed a hand over her mouth, as if to apologize for blurting out such bad news.

Tory shouldered into the doorway. “HR wants to have a word with you,” he said, pointing a neon-lemon cough drop at me and then sliding it between his teeth.

“We’re going to need to draw a sample of your blood.”

This from Rian, who had his own desk, his own office, shelves that held his collection of Victorian bookends. No books in between them, just employee manuals.

“My blood?” I inched away from the woman standing near the door with a syringe in her hand. “Is this about the unit I selected? I swear I’m not on drugs or—”

“You into moths?” Rian gave me an incredulous look and held up an Orchard Village catalog. My catalog, with the listing I’d circled in red ink.

“I mean.” I swallowed. “Aren’t they an important part of the biosphere?”

Rian signaled to the woman with the syringe. “We’re going to analyze your blood, figure out what’s going on with you.”

The woman took hold of my arm and tied an elastic band around it. I wondered if I should protest or whether it’d be better to prove I was a tractable employee. I really didn’t want to get fired and lose my shared condo, since I had nowhere else to live.

Rian drummed his hands on his desktop in a quick little rhythm, as if in an attempt to lighten the mood. “Optionality is developing a new diagnostic tool. The consumer submits a blood sample and we send back a breakdown of their personality type. You know—so they can figure out if they’re a Judger or an Eater or whatever.” He frowned at the listing I’d circled in the catalog. “I’m very interested to see your results.”

“Don’t tense up,” said the woman who was jabbing a needle into my arm.

“So Orchard Village is really a personality test?” I asked Rian. “Just some new metric Optionality designed?”

“What? No.” Rian waved a dismissive hand. “Optionality doesn’t have anything to do with Orchard Village. The blood-slash-personality test is a new idea. Thought you’d be a good candidate for early testing when I found your weird catalog next to the coffee machine this morning.”

I was very confused now. “The website said Optionality would contribute to my rent.” Hadn’t it? “It was at least very heavily implied that someone would pay half my rent.”

Rian flipped through the catalog, grimacing with what seemed to be second-hand embarrassment. Mumbled to himself, “Sound oasis, floating shelves, al fresco experiences.”

Damn, I hadn’t even seen that one.

“Listen.” He let out a sigh that signaled his disgust. “Your employer is under no obligation to make your dreams come true. You know?”

The blood-drawing was starting to make me feel lightheaded. And I was still cold from sitting in the walk-in fridge. “I just want to state for the record that a holographic pickle ball coach is not my dream.”

“All I mean is that you might want to keep your feet on the ground. This—” He flipped a few more pages in the catalog. “—is a fantasy.”

The elastic band released its hold on my arm. I stood, slowly, five milliliters of blood lighter. “So, Orchard Village doesn’t exist? It’s not real?”

“Oh. Hell if I know. I’m in a three-story condo at Willow Park.”

When I got home that evening, I found my roommate had eaten my last frozen pizza. “It was a hard day,” she said. The website that sold the figurines she liked had sold out of the goose that came with the soup ladle.

“You can’t just buy a tiny soup ladle from someone who sells doll furniture?” I asked, barely masking my exasperation.

She was actually really sad, though. “It feels like the website is telling me I don’t deserve the official ladle.”

The geese she already owned were lined up so nicely on the shelf. I don’t know why she liked them so much. “Well, you do deserve the official one.”

She thought for a moment, nodded. “When it’s my turn to vacuum, I always do the stairs too.”

“Right, but I mean, you deserve it anyway. If anyone does.” I wondered if I was wrong to get her hopes up. It was anyone’s guess whether Goose With Ladle would ever be back in stock.

She was deep in thought again. “Does anyone?” She spotted the Orchard Village catalog sticking out of my work bag. “Are you moving out?”

I couldn’t answer either question.

The next morning, I took a rideshare out past the turnoff for Optionality, way out past the tiny airport only small planes ever used. Tucked away like so many of the area’s gems was a brand new development, wood and glass buildings, hummocks of wildflowers. I told myself it must be Orchard Village. Seeing it there, silent, unoccupied, good for nothing at the moment but absorbing sunlight, I remembered something I’d seen on a walk I’d once taken along the top of the nearby reservoir. I’d spotted a single golden poppy along the edge of the trail, the first flower of the season, a lonely, unaccomplished bloom. On a whim, I’d gone to take a closer look and saw, sprawling over the edge of the embankment, a hundred more golden flowers.

At eight a.m. I opened the Orchard Village webpage and entered the number of a unit I thought I might like to live in. Sun-tunnel skylights. Stained glass entryway window. Flooring made from cherry wood reclaimed from the old orchard.

I didn’t expect to get it.

At ten a.m. I checked the webpage—

Selection approved.

Editor: Hebe Stanton

First Reader: Angela Hinck

Copy Editors: Copy Editing Department

Accessibility: Accessibility Editors