The Clockwork & The Spore
Arthur Penn is a man of absolute precision. He loves silence, tea brewed at exactly 100°C, and the rhythmic ticking of his collection of antique clocks. Cleo Vance is a woman of organic chaos. She prefers the dark, high humidity, and the slow, quiet growth of the bioluminescent mushrooms she cultivates in her closet.
They have nothing in common, except for one thing: they work at The Grand Archivum, and they both desperately want to be left alone.
But their solitary paradises are threatened when the company announces a mandatory transfer for single employees to the "Offshore Server Rig" a loud, rusty, crowded industrial platform in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. To Arthur, the salt air means rusted gears; to Cleo, the constant vibration means dead fungi. It is a death sentence for their lifestyles.
To save their sanctuaries, the two introverts make a desperate, logical pact: they will pretend to be engaged for exactly 365 days, just long enough to bypass the transfer window.
Armed with a strictly codified "Marriage Manual," a cheap silver ring, and zero social skills, Arthur and Cleo must convince their skeptical boss, their nosy coworkers, and their eccentric families that they are hopelessly in love. But as their carefully constructed lies collide with the messy reality of co-existence, Arthur and Cleo begin to discover that the only thing more terrifying than the noise of the world might be the silence of being without each other.
