“You can’t serve their purpose. Create their novelty.”
“Bingo.”
I don’t know how long it took me to reach the tree. Hours, easily. How do you measure your steps when you can barely feel your feet? When your hands are vague sensory suggestions? I crawled; there was no other mode of travel that would have been even in the same neighbourhood as safe. At least I knew the neighbourhood, I thought. Generally speaking, I could recall that the trail to the tree began just beyond Li’l Dougie’s house and that the last time I’d walked it, it was mostly clear of debris. Seeing where I had to go was not the problem; orientation was. I began to grope and inch my way through a grey world.
I experienced a kind of warmth in my palms and knees that told me I was touching the earth, or rather, banging myself up badly with each hesitant forward movement. Just getting out of the building was a torment. Similar warmth began to spread over what I recognized as my shoulders, the flat plane of my forehead. I know I met walls and the corners of furniture in harmful ways. The impacts registered as something dim and far off but they were there as I navigated. I want to say blindly but this, I think, was worse than blindness.
The world had departed. The former things had passed away, but if there was a new heaven and a new earth below, it had been delayed. I was in the Numpty, the real thing, and fully immersed. I was out of every possible loop. All I had as a lodestar was the Japanese maple. The early stages of my approach to it were agony; the tree would recede in the grey void, growing rapidly smaller or rising away or both, then return to me by slow, teasing degrees. Eventually I knew I was on some kind of track when the blazing red sphere steadied and began to level out in my vision. Even then I was unsure of what I was seeing. With only the tree and the warm ache in my palms and knees to focus on, it was shockingly easy to fool myself.
What was I hoping to gain, even, by reaching the fucking thing? I had no food or water with me. I only assumed I was wearing clothes. No doubt I would die of exposure by the time I reached the trunk of the tree, or not long after. I’d be found curled up around it like a grub.
But it was real. Or real-ish. More real than I was, at least. A straw to a drowning man, but there I was, grasping away like an idiot.
Minute by nerve-wracking minute, I approached the tree, and finally, in a state of exhaustion and near panic, I lifted the ghosts of my hands to the sphere of its influence over the Numpty. I crossed that barrier in an instant, and the effect of entering that space was like suffering whiplash, only everywhere. Mind, body, and whatever passed for my soul roiled and spun, before settling down into a deep blue ache. My form was mine again, all its failings mine to perceive in their nerve-wracking fullness.
I was clothed, I noted, but only just. Jeans and a T-shirt, a single shoe, the left one. The right had been lost, and the trip had destroyed the sock. Something warm coursed down my cheeks and I reached up to tap at my skull. My fingers came back deeply red and I took a moment to wipe them on my shirt. Fingernails were missing on both hands, and I couldn’t seem to move the fourth and fifth fingers of my left hand. I’d worn through the knees of the jeans, and the skin beneath had fared no better, having peeled away to expose bare musculature caked in dirt and forest litter. A sliver of mica rose like a fin from the ruby muck of my right leg, catching at the provisional light that illuminated the tree. The sun, shining? I couldn’t be sure anymore and knew I could never be completely sure about anything ever again.
There was the tree, though, and pain. Both burned after their fashion, though the latter was dull and distant, still. I wept then, I think, and at some point I must have fallen asleep, because when I woke the sphere was dark, the tree itself a spectrally thin shape spiralling above me, the suggestion of stars held lightly in its arboreal grasp. I roused myself and stood, for what was likely the first time since waking at Stonefish House.
The rage when it came was sudden and violent. I tore at the tree with my hands, a black roar pouring from my throat, inarticulate and primal. I clawed away leaves and smaller branches, twisted at the larger limbs until they split into tangled green cords of ruined fibres and seeping bark. Falling to my knees, I gouged at the earth holding the root system of the thing. The episode couldn’t have lasted more than a minute or two but it felt mythic and timeless while it was happening. A vengeance, somehow, or a balancing. Finally, I slumped to the ground in fresh exhaustion.
How dare this plant be beautiful, I remember thinking. How dare it impinge itself on the perfect perceptual emptiness of the Numpty. How dare Gregor tend to it with such care, while the false world burned away. People lived there, not here in this sculpted alcove, this offensive showcase to the power of illusion. This tiny memory palace. I was landotter in that moment, destroying to protect. Destroying to serve insane masters.
Then I saw what I’d done.
In my fury (at Gregor, at the archons, at everything) I had flung parts of the Japanese maple far and wide, beyond the sphere of its influence over, or through, the effects of the Numpty. And now I could see beyond that sphere. There were globes of perceived things littered all around me, and at the centre of each of these, a small piece of the tree. Leaves and twigs and scraps of bark. Shining balls of darkness, moss, forest detritus. A portion of one limb, thicker than the others, rested in and illuminated what was clearly a gouge in the dirt I had made with a knee on my trip up. Each sphere shone with significance, with presence.
It was like meeting old friends after a long absence; my eyes and mind clutched at each one eagerly. I wanted all the details with a desperation that made me sick. Specks of dirt, the subtle shine off a beetle carapace, the raw green scent of crushed leaf. But even as I grasped, the spheres began to fade, first into the sketchy, provisional outlines of the pre-Numpty state that Gregor had once introduced me to, and then finally into the Numpty itself. That empty fullness.
I stood again, reached for the already ravaged tree, selected a much sturdier, leafier limb, one that split off from the main trunk. I had to brace a foot against the trunk to do it, and the entire plant leaned dangerously to the ground as I did so, but the branch came away with a crack finally. The sound caused my gorge to rise. This was a violation, I knew, and if I was to survive, I had to force Gregor, and Jeremy, from my mind.
The limb was surprisingly light and supple. The tiny, hand-shaped leaves trembled at my slightest movement. Holding the limb before me, I stepped forward and away from the injured tree, and the sphere of presence stretched to envelop the limb, and myself. I could move, and more than that, see where I was moving. It was a revelation, and for the first time since Mandibole used me, I felt something close to a genuine joy.
The feeling was short-lived. I must have walked a tentative three or four metres down the trail leading back to the compound when the Numpty began to encroach upon me again; I quickly retreated to the tree.
There was only one thing for it. Nothing succeeds like excess, I recalled Gregor saying.
It would have to be the whole tree.
Clearing the root system took until the first light of dawn. Above the ground, the tree itself was over twice my height; with the roots it was easily more than four metres tall. Four metres of hardwood, mangled branch and torn bark. Still it was beautiful. Still it shone. Still it kept the nothingness at bay as I worked, grunting, to find a way to carry the thing over a shoulder. Uprooted, the maple was lighter than I expected, but I knew that would change before long; already a dark throb of pressure and friction was lighting up the traps on my right side and the clavicle there was clearly aware of what was being asked of it. By the time I was ready to leave, full daylight had turned the sphere of the actual into a fulgent glow of stone and moss, tree and human.
It worked, though. Like travelling in a spotlight. How it was working, I still didn’t know, and couldn’t, but whatever it was about the Japanese maple, Gregor’s precious plant, this stand-in for a substitute that somehow cancelled the Numpty, I was grateful. Drained of questions, of anything
but the growing drive to get away from Stonefish House, but grateful.
Did I even want to find Gregor, I asked myself, and answered in the next breath. No. No, I did not. He’d made his choice, and part of that choice had involved drugging me and abandoning me to the unknown. Had he triggered the Numpty at Stonefish House? Or had his flight from there on his mission to hunt down the bear opened the gates of the place, allowing the archons to fall upon it? Either way, I’d been compromised. He’d left me in danger. Fuck Gregor Makarios.
A bright vertical line entered the sphere suddenly and I stumbled backward at the intrusion. A building. Bioconcrete. Li’l Dougie’s house. I shifted the maple on my shoulder, gritting my teeth with the effort, and edged my way along the wall until I was at the door, or what was left of it. It had been torn out of the frame. Servos and drive belts and shattered glass panels made a mosaic in the wet earth. Had the AI finally done it? Was this the aftermath of death by electronic masturbation? Or had their higher dimensional captors been by to collect them? Silence welled out of the darkness beyond the doorway, thick and oily, and in that moment I determined that Li’l Dougie, whatever their fate, was another person I could do without seeing again, if they were in there at all. My desire to unknow things and people was profound and growing stronger with each second spent there.
I picked my way back through the buildings of Stonefish House, dragging the Japanese maple with me through the halls, jamming it in doorways while I ransacked the room beyond. In my rooms, I cleaned wounds and changed clothes, retrieved my pack, checked my respirator for eventual use. The wayfinder and GPS seemed functional within the field of the tree, so those came, too, though I’d have little use for them. In the commissary, I threw a little food in the pack, and found several metres of twine to tie the branches of the tree closer to the trunk. The thing was far from streamlined but at least I wouldn’t be catching it on every last outcropping and twig.
I made for the media room next. Five DAT recorders, the data strips from the cameras, and a portion of the downloaded archives on a small packet of portable drives took up the rest of the space in the pack. Your gospel, Gregor. I chose what I thought at the time would be a good representative cross-section of the archon footage, but the selection process was agony and took more time than I liked.
I guessed the sun was high in the sky by the time I picked up the tree and struck out from Stonefish House, heading west. I knew from the walk up that the land generally sloped west and down to sea level; if I kept to the low areas, the streams and gullies and what trail could be found, then I estimated arriving at a shoreline in three days, all going well. Four at the outside. I was glad of the pack, as it helped keep the trunk from abrading my shoulder, but I knew the added weight wasn’t going to make things any easier.
The going was slow. My effective visual range was maybe two metres. I could see my next few steps at best, and most things to my sides were obscured as well thanks to the root ball of the maple, depending on which shoulder I was carrying the tree on. A clump of loosening dirt and root fibres like a second, shaggy head. This was fine while on the white pebbled paths of Stonefish House itself, but once I left those, my speed was halved. The thought occurred to me that I should pocket a few of Li’l Dougie’s pebbles, but when I stooped to pick one up, I found on examination that the thing was entirely smooth and glyph-free. So were subsequent handfuls, which, when tossed outside of the bubble of perception I occupied, disappeared into the Numpty. If they started crawling back to their assigned spots, I couldn’t have known.
So much for significance. So much for the relevance of art.
What was it about the plant I bore with me that allowed for this effect? This nullifying of the null that was the Numpty.
“Don’t question it,” began my mantra. Don’t think about it. Walk. Just walk, and walk some more after that. “One foot after the other, don’t question it, walk.” Whatever was left of the survival mechanism in me hooked on to this strategy and hooked deep. The mantra, and marveling at my growing exhaustion, with stops every five or ten minutes to readjust my hold on the Japanese maple, became my world.
My world was small, but fragrant, and full of wonders. The placing of each step brought clouds of dust and particulate into my eyes and nose; the savage mistforest revealing itself to me in olfactory shades of decomposition, growth, and moisture. When I wiped the sweat clear of my eyes, colors announced themselves like the latest thing, never before seen. Light acted as a conductor, charging my small sphere with import. At times, I felt I walked as a giant would; at others, I was more a microbe beneath a mighty eye beyond my ability to know.
Time condensed as well. In my little bubble, the seconds became fluid, minutes relaxed into entire seasons, hours were as similar to eras as made no difference. There were periods of light and dark, mist and fog. I ate when I was hungry, slept when I couldn’t hold it off. I don’t want to call them naps, but after the second period of black sleep, I found I had more faith in the field of the Tree, going so far as to capitalize the thing in my mind; I began sleeping whenever I found a soft patch of relatively rootless ground. I’d wrap an arm around the trunk and prop the root ball between my knees, then doze. A kind of lazy abandonment gripped me; if the Tree failed while I was out, and the Numpty took me, then the Numpty could have me, and the Tree.
One foot after another.
At some point, I must have paused to relieve myself. That’s right, Gregor, I gave a shit, and thought of that arctic fox while I did. I only recall this due to the episode of howling laughter the pile of unhappy dry pellets triggered in me, once I’d pulled up my pants, hoisted the Tree again, and stepped away. Looking back, I saw that what I’d voided had actually managed to create its own small sphere of Numpty-cancellation. A tiny dome, a domain of their own, that faded to grey over the course of a few minutes, minutes during which I almost laughed myself sick with the absurdity of my situation.
Don’t think about it too much. Don’t question it.
There was no trail. My path was narrow, and eternally short, and limited by where I could drag the Tree without destroying it. My thinking became truncated, repetitive, delusional. Often I would ask the Tree where it wanted to go and would find myself answering for the thing in a sing-song voice. Probably I was close to actual madness; I travelled in the now exclusively, which is surely part of the criteria. My shoulders beneath the Tree became raw and inflamed; the bark wore away at the fabric of my clothing and the friction from both raised large, painful blisters. I reprimanded the Tree; we got into a little imaginary fight about its weight and I almost left it to sulk, before coming to what was left of my senses.
Madness. No probably about it, all things considered. And a very good chance that I’m still in that zone.
There was no reason to scout ahead. Once beyond the Tree, there was only Numpty. With the Tree, within its small bubble of perceived things, which is to say a world, there was safety, movement, a chance at survival, so long as I kept my feet and my wits. As long as I kept a grip on that Tree.
***
Here in the shitbox, I have a piece of the Tree, still. A small, dry branch that I must have snapped off from the parent plant and concealed on my person. Not even a branch, more a twig, but there are five leaves like slips of faded crepe paper still attached. Little red hands, folded in prayer. They cling there, each no larger than my thumbnail, each on the end of a piece of stick no thicker than a toothpick. How it survived I have no idea. I say survived but the twig is dead, and the leaves, but it remains, a small arboreal memento mori. Excellent commitment to the bit, Gregor. Top fucking shelf.
I have a piece of the Tree, so obviously I made it out. I took that chance, and survival happened, after a fashion. This piece remains, and so do I, as I come to the end of this. What did I call it, earlier? A report? Confession, document. A fiction? Gospel. My commitment to it wanes, though, Gregor, and it’s a feeling I don’t find entirely unwelcome.
But then, you already know wha
t that’s like.
***
I was found far north of the trailhead where I’d started my search, on a peninsula of shale and driftwood and jetsam. I was of course delirious, dehydrated and wracked by malnutrition; my body had been busy consuming itself for weeks, I was told later.
The Tree was the reason I’d been spotted by the fire observers offshore; the bright red foliage, catching what little light there was in an early Cascadian evening labouring under a pall of smoke and airborne detritus, and sticking up at a jaunty, noticeable angle, triggered a closer look through binoculars. My body was nestled in the rocks, but I still had one arm wrapped around the Tree, my hand around the trunk like a vice. A Zodiac was launched and a rescue happened.
Aboard the ship, I was revived and treated. Then they asked me how I’d managed to be there in the first place and upon hearing my answer, promptly called me a liar, because if I wasn’t, then I’d walked through one of the worst wildfires on that part of the coast in recent history. When I scoffed at this, I was allowed to see for myself. They helped me up, as I was profoundly weak, and moved me to the stern where I was propped up with a good view.
We were already far west of the shore, making our way into Hecate Strait. The yellow wall of smoke stretched north and south as far as I could see and had no upper edge. Spires of smoking, incandescent trees rose like black needle teeth from the bluffs and coves, and everywhere pure founts of flame leaping and howling for more fuel. Everybody Hungry. Ashes, ashes, a constant slow rain of grey particulate coating everything, turning the surface of the strait to a seething slurry.
My initial insistence that I’d come through that conflagration marked me as delusional. I couldn’t disagree.
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