The Last Tree

The last tree in the world will be a willow tree.  After it has grown and died there will be no more of its kind and the world will have changed forever. The tree begins its life in 2010 just before the beginning of the first major oil crisis; it is a cutting from a tree found in Scotland. The three ladies who take the cutting will travel across the great sea to the west to a place called America. They do this to save the tree from its greatest enemy - the Tiamat Foundation - who have been working to degrade the roots of our universe since its creation. The tree will be placed in a park near Algonquin, Brooklyn, in remembrance of an old battle lost and a scar not healed. Every day the ladies will come to water and tend its roots but to no avail, this battle was lost a long time ago.

In the following five years the world begins to change, the sea rises a little more each day and toxic rain seeps into the land. Even now the animals and plants in the world are beginning to adapt, the subtle signs of stress acting upon them, manifesting like cracks in an ice flow. They are not the only ones affected: humanity too is starting to show signs of strain as food, water and space are slowly but surely eaten into. Buildings become taller, fashions chang, and an increasingly fascist state begins to rise. All through this the willow tree grows, flourishing even despite the increasing hostility of the world that supports it. There is patience and purpose to it, almost as if it knows that it has a special place in the world. And where it grows people say the sunlight falls more gently and the rain a little less harshly. In other words the world is a better place where it stands, if only for a little while.

It is ten years after the tree began its life and the time lapses between the ladies’ visits start to become more pronounced and each time they come they bring less of their precious water to nourish its roots. They know the tree will need their care less and less once it reaches its prime and begin saving their strength for the approaching storm.

For humanity however a major future conflict has just begun: it is discovered that America has been covertly funding an extremely right wing organisation in Europe. The majority of the allegations are denied and quietly a number of corrupt senators are made scapegoats to save face, but the racism and xenophobia that inspired the movement has not gone… it is only suppressed. Not all of humanity’s near future holds war and horror however, technology has been flourishing under some of the greatest minds that the 21^st century will ever know. A better understanding about the nature of the universe and biological principles coalesces out of the stresses of this new world. This leads to techniques such as advanced genetic engineering, nanotechnology and a better understanding of ecological principles. This, and a newfound sense of ethical responsibility, give the world a brief respite from the changes that are taking place. It gives people a real hope for a future where hard work and decency are mirrored by man’s efforts to protect the ecosystems around them.

It is 2036 and New York City has just been caught in the blast of a biological weapon designed to destroy the human body by introducing thousands of deleterious mutations into its genome. The first victims are twins celebrating their seventh birthday who die in the arms of their rapidly degrading parents. The weapon’s effects will spread outwards from there and only about five percent of the city’s population will ultimately survive. Despite this and other atrocities, America takes the least collateral damage from the war. It suffers only about 200 million casualties overall. Europe, on the other hand, is one of the worst hit. Half of its populations will be left dead or dying by the end of the year and the land will literally rot under the influence of billions of microscopic machines. The world will then slowly be drawn into the conflict as issues such as race, sexually, religion and freedom of speech are either suppressed though social cleansing or repressed via genetic manipulation. By the end of the war four years later, a third of the world’s population will have died out and large tracts of both the land and sea will be left as ecological dead zones.

In 2043 the park in which the last tree is situated is officially declared an area of remembrance for those that lost their lives during the war. On the day this is officially declared there is a vigil held in its grounds. People are invited to come and read out lists of friends or family who died or were cleansed in the city during the last decade. The only tree alive in the park is chosen as a focal point for the event and a small stage is erected there. As the first stars emerge over the city candles are lit and eventually all that the people reading out names can see is a field of lights that glow and flicker like fireflies dancing in the night.

In the following years humanity rebuilds and heals itself.  It is a slow and painful process but one that is helped by the very same technology that almost destroyed it. These scientific techniques also help soothe the earth itself. As a result, for the first time in decades the domes that were set up in the earth’s atmosphere to reduce incoming UV radiation can be dismantled. The nanotechnology that was used as an ecologically based weapon is now used to restore and reform the earth’s oceans and ecosystems. Unfortunately a focus on the martial applications of nano-science has left the project filled with uncertainty and risk.

Despite the events of the last few decades the last tree has grown by all appearances into a more or less healthy adult - it stands majestic and commanding in the centre of the park. Almost all the other plant life in the area has died out, so it is more or less alone. It is only when the tree next attempts to reproduce that a problem becomes apparent.  It is sterile.

The official history of the Tiamat Foundation is that it was set up, and is still run to this day, by a unique family called The Nidhoggs. According to its handbook one of the long-term goals of the company is “to protect life and preserve our future while providing a great return for our stockholders” not much more is known about the company. Most of their stockholders would however probably be surprised to find out that the majority of planning that has occurred over the last 400 years has not been focused on how to make money, but instead on reducing the world’s viable tree population and misdirecting three inconspicuous women. Now in 2065 the plans that were laid all those years ago are finally coming to fruition. In short, the Tiamat Foundation is almost ready to feed.

The destruction of almost all the trees on planet earth by 2060 went almost unnoticed by the world’s population. The process had been going on for some time: pollution, global warming, radiation, as well as fallout from the war, were just some of the factors that had contributed to this. Ironically it was man’s efforts to protect the environment that sealed the fate of the earth’s trees.

The nanites that were produced in order to undo the damage caused by the war had been given two basic instructions: to restore the quality of the earth’s lands and oceans to a self-sustainable point; and to protect them from degradation until this occurred. Unfortunately in early tests the nanites also identified humans, animals and plants as threats to the environment as well. To prevent this from happening in the future the machines were programmed with the ability to identify these organisms and to protect them. Humans, crops and useful animals were given top priority. All other organisms were to be judged on their ability to produce a healthy and diverse ecosystem. When first released into the natural environment ten years ago there were two major pieces of information that was first processed. Carnivores are less efficient then herbivores and larger plants smother the growth of smaller ones. Smaller ones were judged by the machines to have a higher biodiversity and productivity…

The biggest thunderstorm to have happened to Brooklyn in over a hundred years is currently raging over the city. Its fury rips the tops off a number of organically produced buildings, destroys a small fortune in wind webs and nanotech transmitters, and causes a number of quantum and biologically based computers to fry their owner’s neurone receivers. This is nothing, however, in comparison to the events taking place on a small patch of land inside the Old Algonquin region.

“We are not taking no for an answer.  This root belongs to us now” A man is speaking, and his softly spoken Germanic accent carries quite clearly across the wind and the rain. “We brought the rights to this land by human law and even wrote our real name in the All Fathers letters upon it”.

Most of the rain seems to hang in the air over the man, never quite touching him. The occasional droplet that does freezes so violently that it shatters – it is almost as if he’s surrounded by the cold of Niflheim itself. He is dressed immaculately in a sharp black suit and gives off an air of icy disinterest. He’s very handsome with blue eyes the colour of glass and dark black hair that’s been carefully plastered back all the way to his skull. “So what do you say to my offer then…old girls?”

The ladies say nothing; they just stand carefully positioned between him and the tree. He sighs and reaches carefully into his inside pocket pulling out a roll of paper “Fine. Let’s have it your way then”. He opens the contract in his hand and then, having taken a breath begins to read. His audiences are ideas long lost to this world, the stones that surround him, the memories in the air of wars fought and the space spreading out into the void beyond all limits. His words cause the ground beneath his feet to crack, the grass around him to wither and thousands of insects and bacteria around him to die. He speaks of his right to destroy the tree, of how he owns the land upon which its roots rest and of the millions of machines eating away at the bulk of its body. He challenges the ladies to refute his claims and calls them arrogant whores that seek to chain the lives of all mortal and immortal men alike. To this the three women do nothing but stand resolute before this spiritual onslaught, and the air between the man and the ladies boils. He says he will tear apart the tree and eat its roots and that man and gods alike shall bleed and crawl before him.

Again the ladies say nothing but this time they seem to shrink under the weight of his words. Finally, seeing weakness in their actions he calls them harpies, whose only pleasure in life is the misery of lesser beings and the corruption of the innocent with the deaths of the ones they love.

The ladies look up towards the sky and let the rain run down their faces, and then they join hands, and when they bring their gaze back to the man in front of them there is a look in their eyes that has seen the end of worlds.

The first lady speaks in a quiet, melodies voice “We take no pleasure in what we have to do, so when you talk of things you do not understand know this...”

The next lady’s voice sounds older, calmer and warmer “…unlike you who has no other purpose than to bring death and destruction to the world, we care more about living beings than you will ever know, or comprehend.”

The last lady speaks in a quiet and terrible voice “The tree is under our protection, as are the beings that are sheltered by it”. They raise their arms and speak in one voice “You are nothing, your contract means nothing. You gained it by trickery and deceit, be gone from here and crawl back to the frozen wastes where you belong.” Reality around them ripples and warps, stretching behind the weight of what will be. For a second the shadow of the man is gone, replaced by a terrible dragon reaching its wings up to the heaven, and then it - along with the man -disappears.

It is the next day.  All is calm and the sky is a clear blue. It is the last day for the last tree. The morning sun is a stream that bathes the dying limbs of the willow tree in light. The ladies have stayed by the tree all night; they have used the last of their water to kill the nanites within it.  They lay flowers by the plaque for those who died during the war. Then they sit under the tree and survey the sunrise as if it is the first one the earth has ever seen. Where they sit a single flower has been placed and as the day wears on the petals are slowly scattered across the park by the wind. By the end of the day the last tree has died and the flower has no more petals. The tree is seen to by the grounds man and by the end of the week it will be removed in the interests of safety. The park will be demolished and the area around it turned into an experimental building site for rich Americans.

The last thing the ladies do before the willow tree dies is to dig a small hole near the base of the tree and take a sliver of something from it. They will then move on to a new area of the world, perhaps china or India. Before they do this though, they will take the sliver to a nearby laboratory. They will go unnoticed by the staff and security into a small room on one of the top floors. There they will drop a tiny amount of the sliver they took into a machine that is designed to map genetic information. Then they will leave America, and in twenty years time, where the last tree stood, there will be a new and unique structure: a living building made of photosynthetic material. Its purpose will be to collect energy that can be used for the good of humanity and the planet. And where it stands people will say the sunlight falls more gently and the rain a little less harshly. In other words, the world is a better place where it grows, if only for a little while.