The Tree Remembers:
Chapter 03

  “Oh thank god you’re home,” Patricia frantically said when she saw Kathryn enter the kitchen.  There was quite a mess, but it was understandable considering how much she was trying to do at once.  “Could you please put these out on the table for them?  I’m almost ready to go in here.”

  “Sure thing,” Kathryn answered after giving her a quick kiss.  “Everyone here?”

  “Yes, and they all arrived early,” Patricia grumbled.

  “How insensitive,” Kathryn teased.  She couldn’t help but admire the woman.  It wasn’t just how beautiful she was with her curly shoulder length brown hair framing her round mocha skin face with impossibly large brown eyes, who unlike Kathryn, still hadn’t seemed to visibly age in the decade or so she’d known her.  It was how quickly and deftly she’d absorbed herself into an alien futuristic culture.  Kathryn found herself wondering how well she would have adapted in Patricia’s situation.

  “Oh, and could you let the dogs out please?” Patricia asked as Kathryn pushed her way through the swinging door to the dining room.

  “Dogs…” Kathryn mused as she greeted her guests.  “Crazy isn’t it?  We hadn’t had any for half a millennia, then we get our hands on the New Horizon archives again and within a few years we’re genetically synthesizing our old pets.”

  “Well, there were certainly still dogs on Earth,” Margaret, the millennia old synthetic woman answered, “but they were mongrels of course.  Made them quite healthy by comparison for all the good it did them as wild animals.”

  Kathryn set the appetizer dish down on the table before stepping over to the sliding glass door to let the two whining bouvier dogs out into the backyard.

  “They pregnant yet?” her best friend Felix asked.

  “Yes actually,” Kathryn answered, we just found out last week.

  “It’s crazy how many breeds you humans have replicated so quickly,” Margaret observed.  Her casual ease warmed Kathryn a little to see.  She had always been so surly, so cantankerous most of the time she’d known her since Kathryn found her on Earth in her original body, permanently tethered to one of the last generators inside an old hydroelectric dam after her internal power systems had long since degraded beyond repair.

  Then there was the years of study of her, her profound loneliness as the only surviving simulant, and then the war… but in the couple years since then, now that she had Ralph as a constant companion and wasn’t so lonely, she’d lightened up a lot.  She was prickly and dismissive of humans and their limitations in a way which was never clear to what degree she was joking, but there was a way in which it seemed like she wasn’t suffering anymore.

  “Bobbins didn’t really have pets,” Ralph explained as Kathryn watched the dogs play with each other in the yard for a moment longer.

  “No?” she asked as she turned around.  “I’m not sure why, but that doesn’t surprise me.”  His new body was infinitely more sophisticated than the imposing inhuman automaton they’d originally loaded his alien scout ship artificial intelligence into.  Soon after meeting Margaret, when she’d still been Molly, or ‘The Great Mol’ to Patricia’s people who worshiped her as a kind of demi-god, she’d bargained with them to help her find a new body to put her consciousness into.  Her original body was badly damaged, missing a couple limbs, half her face bludgeoned away, but in the ruins of an ancient city on Earth, they’d found a store of original not yet activated simulant bodies and they were able to successfully transfer her into the body of an elderly woman, more appropriate to her now than the sex pot pop star body she’d originally had.

  “I would speculate,” Ralph continued, “That it has to do with them never being lonely.  The Link negates it— if they ever even start to feel lonely, they need only activate The Link and immediately be at one with millions of others.

  After the war, which started in fact Kathryn recalled with a weird tug of feeling she couldn’t quite identify, when they met Ralph in the first place, or at least his conscious intelligence, they went back and did more excavation of the site.  There had been a cave in and it had always been presumed there were no viable simulant bodies down there, but when they put the resources into looking, more for their own research purposes than for his sake, they did find several more intact bodies.  Ralph was granted one part in gratitude for his efforts during the war, and part because having another active simulant was valuable for their continued research trying to resurrect the technology.

  “What are these?” Taj, Felix’s husband asked as he picked up one of the appetizers Kathryn had placed on the table.

  “Cured pig meat wrapped around soft, uh… what was it again Kat?” Patricia tried to answer as she hurried through the swinging doors.

  “Brie, I believe it was,” Kathryn answered.  They’d themed their dinner party on recreated foods from Earth, animals and processing techniques they’d reacquired from the New Horizon archives after having lost them.  Kathryn’s people had brought as complete a repository of human knowledge as possible with them to Haven, but their arrival on the planet had been something of a disaster, and though they survived, they quickly lost all of that knowledge and know how until they redeveloped rocket technology and were able to send Kathryn up to their ship they’d left in a high orbit, which contained the last surviving backup copy of the sum knowledge of humanity before its fall.

  “Oh I remember these…” Margaret marvelled as she took a piece and popped it in her mouth.  “What, no cranberry sauce?”

  “Oh, right!” Patricia remembered, before going back to the kitchen and returning with a little dish of cranberry sauce.

  Margaret laughed out loud.  “I was joking Patricia!  Wow, you’ve really gone all out here, haven’t you?”

  Patricia, curtsied with a playful smirk in one of her many flower print sundresses, her almost always preferred outfit, before returning to the kitchen.  The archives also contained information on how to build genetic transcribers, which allowed them to painstakingly recreate genomes from their digital records.  It was difficult work and involved a lot of learning through failure, but they’d successfully replicated many things so far, including pigs, cows, and cranberries, along with relearning the techniques and processes involved in curing meat and cultivating cheese.

  In reality, things were going well across the human realm.  The immediate punch in the face of the loss of Kobol had lost it’s immediate sting in the last couple years, and without their gatekeeping of more advanced technologies, open access to New Horizon’s archives and reliable rift based communication between Earth and the remaining Haven and Roma colonies, humanity was enjoying a kind of new renaissance.

  “How is Maggie doing?” Taj asked, seemingly conscious of the sensitivity of the subject.

  “Um… the same, I guess,” Kathryn answered.  “To be honest I’m kind of out of ideas what to do about it.  My— I was recently told that all I can really do is just be available to her and give her time, but that I should spend as much time as possible with her hoping she’ll just decide to open up to me…” Kathryn recounted somewhat distantly as she slowly turned her wine glass on the tablecloth before downing the rest of the glass and reaching for the bottle to pour herself some more.  She decided mid-sentence she wasn’t ready to divulge that she was seeing a counselor, not even to her closest friends.

  “To that end Felix,” she continued, “I was wondering if I come along with you on your research expedition and drag her along, get us in proximity for an extended period of time and see if she opens up to me at all.”

  “Of course!” Felix responded.  “Of course, it’s a working research trip and not a vacation, but you’re welcome to tag along.  I’m eager to do anything I can if it will help get through to Maggie.”  Felix grew quiet for a moment as Patricia entered the room with the first couple side dishes for the main course.  Kathryn noticed the dogs at the glass door and rose to let them in.  

  “I really miss that girl…” Felix added.  “She used to be so…”

  “Yeah…”  Kathryn acknowledged.  She just hadn’t been the same since her abduction.  She was now withdrawn and distant where she used to be vibrant and full of life.  Something had so clearly broken inside her and it broke the heart of anybody who knew her and cared about her before it happened.

  “Felix you can selfishly miss the way she used to be,” Margaret scolded, “but don’t say you miss her just because she is no longer conforming to your expectations about how she should be.  The girl she is now is still the girl she was, only changed by a very traumatic experience.  Don’t take that away for her.”

  “I mean… obviously, yeah.  I didn’t mean it like that.” Felix shrugged.

  Kathryn watched as Patricia brought the next two items and placed them on the table.  She was about to turn back to the kitchen before pausing to look back at the table and decide to rotate one of the dishes a few degrees to present better.  God, she loved her…

  “What is your research trip for, Felix?” Ralph asked.

  “We’re going to just do some observational research of the Squiddies.  Nobody has done any close-up research.  We’ve identified some of their, well nests, and we’re going to camp nearby and just observe them and hope to have some interaction with them.”

  Squiddies were the colloquial name for the tree squid that roamed the forest but usually scattered from human if approached.  The way the surface of Earth was for the most part the domain of mammals, the surface and to a large degree the ocean of Haven was the domain of one variety or other of cephalopods.  Squiddies were about the size of a person, but stood on four tentacles which could be tensed to rigidity despite not having bones as humans would define them.

  “They really think they used to be intelligent?” Patricia asked as she brought what she thought was the last two items to the table, then remembered something and returned to the kitchen as Felix answered.

  “Oh yes, if fact all around here there are ruins of their ancient civilization.  There are elaborate tunnel networks with baked brick reinforcement, so they must have had the capacity at least for rudimentary chemistry and furnace technology.  We’ve even found ruins with evidence of a fairly sophisticated writing system but it’s scarce.  We haven’t been able to decipher any of it, but we’re pretty sure it’s coherent.”

  “That’s fascinating…” Patricia offered as she sat down finally at the table and invited everyone to dig in, before getting up again to fill everyone’s wine glasses.  “I mean especially to me having come from a world in a similar situation, growing up in the ruins of a once advanced civilization.  I think I’d like to come as well if it’s okay.”

  Felix gave Kathryn a look which had a nervous tone to it.  He knew that Maggie had some animosity towards her and didn’t want to agree before giving Kathryn the opportunity to put the idea down.  Kathryn responded with a barely perceptible nod.

  “Sure, but same warning that this is a working trip, not a vacation.  You come along, expect to be put to work,” he said with a smile.

  “Oh don’t worry about her,” Margaret said.  “I’d bet anything on her surviving longer out in the wild than you or any of your people.  She maybe be pretty and enjoy playing domestic, but I know where she comes from.  I’ve seen what she’s capable of.”

  Patricia offered a knowingly mischievous smile to Margaret and winked at Felix as she popped her fork into her mouth.

  “I’ll keep that in mind…” Felix answered.

  “What happened to the Squiddies?” Ralph asked.  “You referred to their civilization as ancient.”

  “Well, that’s one of the things we still want to figure out,” Taj answered.  They had planned the expedition together, but Felix was more logistical and technical support while Taj was among other things an evolutionary biologist and the science lead of the expedition.  “We know that they encountered a parasite that worked its way into their brain and retarded its function somehow.  We suspect that they still essentially have the same brains, but they develop with the parasite, and it disrupts the development of their brains.  The early colonists figured out pretty quickly how to cure them of the parasites, but early experiments showed that curing adults of them after the damage had been done didn’t accomplish much.  Further experimentation was banned by both settlements before anyone tried letting one mature from conception in the absence of the parasite.”

  “That’s…” Patricia started.  “I don’t know how I feel about that.”

  “What part?” Kathryn asked.  

  “Well, all of it weirdly,” she answered.  “The idea of disrupting their natural state now, experimenting on them like that, even if it could help restore them to the way they’d been before seems wrong somehow.  But at the same time, if we can help them, choosing not to do so also seems wrong.”

  “Plus… the other thing.” Margaret added, knowing exactly what she was doing in making all the other at the table look over at her in question.

  “This was their world before it was yours,” she said, maintaining her separation from humanity.

  “You give them back the capacity to want it back, or have any opinion about you being here, well then you’d have to deal with that.”

  Kathryn noticed the female dog beside her at the table and reached down to scratch behind her ears.  She looked across the table between Felix and Taj and out the glass sliding door as the last of the day’s sun sank to the horizon and emblazoned a vivid abstract painting of sunset colours across the sky.

  “This is my world.” she said, softly enough she wasn’t sure if she’d meant to say it out loud.  “I mean… I am of this place as much as anybody could be.  I’m not saying it can’t be anybody else’s as well, I just mean that nobody can rightly say it’s not mine as much as anybody else’s.  I don’t care who was here first, this world is my home.”

  She noticed Margaret looking at her with some curiosity and returned her gaze.  “What?”

  Margaret just shook her head.  “I don’t know, I’ve just… heard people talk like that before, a long, long time ago.  It never turns out well.  People in your position are just as likely to decide that a place being theirs means it can’t be anybody else’s by definition.”

  Kathryn looked back out at the last sliver of sun quickly disappearing.  “I mean we’ve got some of that today already…” she offered with dismay.

  “I know what you mean,” Taj said, a distant look coming across his eyes as well.  “I’ve heard way too much xenophobic talk the last couple years for my comfort.  At first it was just the war and a fairly expected jingoistic attitude, but afterwards I’ve felt this growing…”

  “Ugliness.” Kathryn offered.

  “Yeah,” Taj acknowledged.  “Yeah…”

  “I know what you mean,” Felix said.  “I’ve seen more and more anti-Bobbin propaganda fliers around town, heard people slip and say things they forget to not say in polite company.  Something ugly is definitely brewing out there, not sure what we do about that.”

  “Most people aren’t in a position to do anything about anything that big…” Kathryn muttered as she pushed some food around her plate.  Understanding better than the others the weight of her words, Patricia reached out and took her hand on the table and gave it a squeeze as her already wide eyes opened even wider in sympathy.

  “I have observed an increasing security presence at the Bobbin embassy.  Do you foresee some sort of incident?” Ralph asked.

  “I hope not,” Felix answered.

  “I don’t know,” Margaret cautioned.  “Wiping out a whole world, a whole culture, a whole people, tends to do things to people.”

  “Surely they can’t blame the remaining Bobbin population for what happened to Kobol,” Ralph asked.

  “Oh, certainly they can,” Margaret answered.  “And certainly, many do.  Persons can be smart, but people can be incredibly dim witted.  Nothing dissuades a person from nuance than xenophobia and nationalism.  I’ve seen a lot of that in my time too.”  She looked across to Patricia at the head of the table.  “We both have.”

  Patricia nodded somberly but declined to add anything.  She’d told Kathryn many stories about warfare with other nearby tribes on Earth in the North American North-West before Kathryn dropped out of the sky and into her life.

  “Humans have a pretty shoddy track record of being able to tolerate even just their neighbors who look and sound like them and believe almost all the same things.  Worse if they look or sound different, even worse if they both think they’re entitled to the same patch of land, worse still if they both think they have some sort of divine right to it.”

  “Or even if they just have a different idea or some bad blood that makes it impossible to tolerate being around another person or group of people…” Kathryn added, thinking both about the injustice of asking Maggie to accept the existence and presence of Bobbins after what she’d suffered, but also about the capital’s city original founding as two separate encampments as a compromise after conflict broke out immediately upon her people’s arrival here almost 600 years ago.  People called it the Twin Cities now but never thought much about why they called it that.  “Thankfully time and familiarity have a way of smoothing that kind of animosity out.”

  “That’s true,” Margaret answered, then raised her eyebrow as she continued.  “Though that can often take generations.  It takes children of hateful parents interacting with each other and being friends, seeing the humanity in each other after not having experienced the original conflict.”

  “So I’d ask again,” Patricia said.  “If we have the capacity to restore Squiddies to their original intelligence, should we?  Do we have an obligation to help just because we can?  Because being more intelligent and more sophisticated is objectively better than the alternative?  Because being able to and choosing to is the same as inflicting the infirmity on them ourselves?  Or do we have an obligation not to, because to do so would interfere with their natural development as a species?  To what degree can and should we consider what either course would mean for our own existence on this planet?”

  Kathryn squeezed her hand, still finding new reasons to love her.  Her questions stopped the conversation for a short time as everyone considered what she said.

  “Good questions,” Felix finally said.  “I guess in the end it’s always easier to do nothing than to decide to do something, even if doing nothing is just as much a decision in itself.”

  “We can already feel such a tension about the Bobbins,” Taj said.  “There are some here, but I’ve noticed I never see them just out and about on the street.  They probably have a sense themselves of how people react to them.  I think there really is a lot of anger out there, a lot of people who don’t care to see any distinction between them and the ones who destroyed Kobol, let alone care to consider the degree to which those who were under the link were responsible for their actions.  Nobody’s talking about it,” he lamented.  “Somebody really should be talking about it.  Otherwise it’ll be left to just fester under the surface until something terrible happens.”

  ‘Somebody…’ Kathryn thought.

  “Well like you said,” she added, “it’s always easier to do nothing, isn’t it?”