Mission decides to visit his father before dropping off the pump because he wants his father to see him carrying the heavy load. In the planting halls, Mission finds his father working in a corn patch with Riley nearby. Riley greets Mission eagerly, asks what he brought, and briefly handles Mission’s porter knife while Mission and his father exchange small talk about the crop and about the cafe beginning to grow its own sprouts and, apparently, corn.

The talk about departments producing for themselves turns quickly toward the porters, because Mission’s father sees this kind of "up-sourcing" as a threat to Mission’s work. As Mission watches his father under the grow lights, Mission’s anger softens into sadness and guilt: Mission thinks about his mother’s absence, the damage farm work has done to his father’s skin, and the life his father once wanted for him. That leads Mission into a childhood memory of being stopped from digging in the soil, before he understood that the farms are fed by buried bodies beneath the crops.

Mission’s father then assumes Dispatch gave Mission the pump and resumes an old argument about labor, aging, and status. Mission’s father warns that porter work destroys the body and says seniority will eventually buy easier assignments, while Mission insists he understands his job, earns bonuses from heavy loads, and is looking out for himself. The exchange becomes tense because Mission hears judgment and control in his father’s advice, and Mission’s view of Riley already resembling their father strengthens Mission’s determination not to be pulled back into farm life.

Sensing the distance he has created, Mission’s father changes the subject, invites Mission to lunch, and asks whether Mission will make time to see Allie, who still asks about him. Mission declines without saying that seeing Allie would mean facing expectations that he return to the farms for good. After parting from his father and Riley, Mission walks toward the pump room thinking about farmers selling food directly, the cafe growing its own produce, and even plans to move heavy goods without porters. He realizes these separate efforts all come from the same fear: the silo expects violence to return, and everyone is trying to survive by needing one another less.