Avni woke on this particular Saturday morning in November and realized that it was eerily quiet again because of the power cut. San Francisco was still making up its mind to stay blanketed in fog or be sunny. Nothing indicated that her life would be thrusted on television by today evening and the whole world was going to be thrust into a calamity. For now, she craned her neck out of the covers to check the seed tray by her window. No sprouts yet! Her head slumped back into the pillow. This was dismal. She had taken a liking to gardening in her room last year after a friend had gifted the guests 5 indoor plants each on her baby shower. Within the first two weeks, the leaves of rose plant turned brown at the tips prompting Avni to water it diligently in both mornings and evenings. But it turned golden brown regardless. The more she cared for it, the worse it got. Soon, she declared it dead. A friend joked that drowning the plant instead, and gifting it an instant death would have been more humane. The other four plants had survived because their pots had holes at the bottom and drained out excess water. Avni’s confidence gathered incrementally with each plant surviving another day and would go down considerably when any of them turned droopy. She had then sown the seeds in a starter tray – it was a joy to see those green buds pop up in the brown! Healthy plants were transferred to pots. Some of them had survived. This was her third starter tray. That the whole tray of different kind of seeds had not sprouted at all, made her nervous.
It was annoying to wake up to this feeling in the morning. Besides, there was that uncomfortable feeling about the other plants in her room – it seemed they did not flutter anymore. She curled her legs, stretched them upwards, hurled the comforter toward the foot of the bed and jumped out of the bed.
Less than an hour later, she drove up her Honda to the mouth of the French stream trail in Oakland. There was a drab, cool air – it did not carry much of the forest perfume. She took in a long breath searching for freshness but the dry air hit her throat: a mix of camp fire and dust. An elderly couple went by as she stretched near the wooden fence. She started her run down the familiar route ambling through the shrubs at first that soon turned thicker and bigger. The Redwoods were few and far between. It was the only kind of the tree she could identify and it didn’t matter. It was blissful to be in the midst of trees and it was not necessary to know their names to be so happy among them! Today, it seemed more still, extra quiet … as if something invisible enveloped the air, even though it looked the same. This reminded her of the unsprouted seeds in her bedroom window.
She arrived at the bifurcation where the left sign indicated the French stream. Nothing marked the path that angled towards right. Last time she had taken this path and had found a perfectly well-formed path there, just extremely empty. In fact, she had seen only one lady in the whole stretch till the path merged with another trail. She had heard a very distinct squeak last time … like opening of a door in a Hobbit movie - an old, heavy wooden door with rusting hinges - but forgot to look it up later. She remembered thinking that she had heard it earlier too when she was in the Redwoods. That did not make it less bizarre to hear it from so up the trees. It seemed like an oddity, a trick by her brain. It had to be a bird – she didn’t know just which one.
Taking that path again, a completely empty trail stretched in front of her. Amid the tallest trees, she could hear her own steps crushing the dried leaves, twigs, and coarse sand. She heard herself breathing. Time slowed down and she felt the calmness descend on her. She smiled and was about to gather more speed when there was an unmistaken creaking sound of a heavy wooden door with rusting hinges. Was it a bird or a tree that did that? She slowed down into a walk and then halted.
She heard a new sound … a click. It could have been a branch hitting a trunk. She felt blood drain from her fingertips and going colder – it felt orchestrated. It was so vivid! She waited for more sound. There was none. No person nearby. She stood still with her tummy clenched and fingers coiled in a fist. A few moments passed. Then tuk-tuk-tuk. A bird tapped its beak on a trunk. She spotted it atop a branch and let out her breath and unclenched her fists. She extended a step in the direction of the sound, off the paved trail; her eyes staring at the tips of trees. No movement. Nothing. Absolute stillness. Tuk-tuk-tuk. Then she searched the grounds, squinting hard. She turned to go back and corner of her eye caught something. A lump choked her throat.
On her right, amid the untrimmed, wild grass laid an off-white rectangular postcard. It did not belong to its environment. Maybe it blew-in from some trash? She started walking over the grass, away from her set path and towards the card. The clearer she saw it, the more she was convinced that it was not trash. It was written in a beautiful curving calligraphy in green ink. She looked around and still there was no one.
Avni picked it up and ran back blindly to the path. After getting to the trail, she kept running in the direction of the original trail. The trees were not falling and no one trying to harm her. She glanced at the postcard and read “for millions” in the middle of the text. She looked up at the path where it met the original. A man was running along with his dog and then she hid the card on her right. She furtively looked at it and then stopped. Taking a long breath, she calmed herself down. It seemed like a regular card, one of very good quality. It had a self-embossed root pattern at the bottom. She flipped it over and it was addressed to “Humans.” Weird. Another guy walked by. She did not deem it too unreasonable to carry a postcard with her on the trail and so started reading the text.
“Hi again Homo sapiens,
Our network throughout the world has not observed any preparations on your end. All other kinds of fauna were also informed a week ago and are trying to save whatever they can claim any of us. There is some panic but it is being dealt with: they don’t have a choice. Having looked over you for millions of years, we should not have to tell you that we do care about you and are concerned about the lack of plans on your end. It is being reported that you are trying to sow more seeds and different kind of seeds from your seed banks. It is useless, we are not going to change our minds.
Good luck,
Flora.”
She felt half anxious and half amused and ran back to her car. There she rang up Sumi and told her about the card. She laughed out loud and Avni understood why but she was not convinced that this was a joke. It had to do with the dead seeds in her window and the stillness of the plants in her room.
Three days earlier an online meeting had taken place that had been called urgently by the German Forest Society. In Bengaluru, India, Prof. Venkata Ramamurthy had been woken up from his sleep around 1:30 am by one of his graduate students who informed him in a breathless barrage of words that there was a highly important meeting happening right now and his presence was requested asap. This was highly unusual for a professor in a field of growing plants to be woken up as if he were dealing with atomic bombs. Surprised, he got online in his pajamas and was surprised to see eight windows in the video interface – seven of them showing one person each and the eight one was clearly the one hosting the meeting. There were 5 people seated around a table in a conference room. Venkata quickly deduced it was the University of Frankfurt as he recognized Wolfhard Lafrenz and Chris Kingsley. It was odd that they invited him to a meeting because of their vehement reservations about his area of research: evolved communication networks within trees much like humans.
Another person joined the call and it was the septuagenarian Patricia Westerford! She had pioneered the highly controversial idea at the time that trees can ‘talk’ to each other. Despite being severely ridiculed through much of her career by these very people, she persevered and worked in isolation. Her work had paved path for Venkata’s research. He too had spent 38 years researching mycorrhizal networks – the underground fungal networks which connects trees and facilitates communication between them. His team, mostly comprising of graduate students, was working on deciphering the chemical, hormonal and slow-pulsing electrical signals that trees send to communicate through the network. There still was a huge reluctance to the idea in the scientific community but the adopters of the theory slowly trickled in over the past decade.
Wolfhard Lafrenz, Professor of Botony in the University of Frankfurt, started the meeting in a heavily accentuated English, “Ladies and gentlemen, we meet here today to discuss some results which are, eh, quite harrowing. As our precedent research and results will testify, it is not usual for us to present half-researched information. But considering the ramifications of what follows, it was imperative that we present you these. Before I call on the first speaker, I would like to thank all of the distinguished researchers that were able to connect. It is mandatory that what we discuss here today be shared with no one – I emphasize this – no one outside us considering its consequences.
Professor Gunther Lerche will now address us.”
“Hello,” began the voice on left. The conference room camera swiveled towards him and brought Gunther Lerche to the center of the frame. “Admittedly, the data is about 14 hours old. What we have observed is that there is no organogenesis taking place in the wheat samples across our laboratory. Additionally, there has been no primary growth from meristems. We are uncertain about the secondary growth – although the outlook does not look very promising on that end either.
In line with above, the level of plant hormones related to their growth like the Auxins and Gibberellins appear to be dwindling to sub-normal levels. Also concerning is the level of plant growth regulators – PGRs which are nearing concentrations levels as high as that found in newly abscissed or freshly fallen leaves. We are still working on pin-pointing exactly when this phenomenon started. At this point, it seems like all kind of growth has stalled in our laboratories across different species of plants.
Our teams are trying to collate the results from other laboratories and farms; but it seems like a worldwide phenomenon. The basis of this is a postcard found by our forester in the municipality of Hümmel. This is the postcard.”
A postcard that looked like the one that Avni found 3 days later was projected on their screens. Venkata leaned in to read it.
“Hi Homo sapiens,
This is awkward. Like a magician, we too didn’t want to reveal our tricks but we could not figure out what’s the dictum if we are retiring from the trade? Not trying to be snarky but we thought a little humor is always useful. There is no easy way to do this. We, the Flora, have decided to not produce another leaf, another root or a stem on this soil in our attempt to control the mayhem you have brought to this place.
As caretakers of this earth, we have decided to act on behalf of all other species. Your species has grown too much and left extremely few resources for others. So now, we need you to dwindle down. With lesser oxygen in the atmosphere in very near future, you have to make smart choices about your population and resource usage. We are pretty sure you can run all your science models to work out the time you have.
While we are taking this extreme step, it should be noted that we are not going to actively reduce our present production of oxygen. Our plants will continue to work otherwise: providing food and oxygen at the current levels. However, it should be noted that over time, like all other living things, these plants too will age and die – so you need to account for reduced production over time.
It is not like we don’t like you. It is similar in the way that you don’t hate us. We too have to look out for the well-being of our own species. It is deeply painful for us having heard stories from our ancestors about your coming of age stories. They were really fond of you, and we are too. But you are well aware of the survival of the fittest paradigm and we are sorry for this abrupt notice.
Regards,
Flora.”
Venkata shifted in his chair and listened to the findings which did not seem anything more than a laboratory setup malfunction and a theatrical performance. His eye caught Patricia Westerford who was listening intently. She could not be taking this seriously! Another glance at his screen told him that all others seemed to be as concerned.
The rest of the meeting was spent zoning in and out of the incredulity of the entire thing and trying to fathom the implications of it if it were true.
Someone asked, “So how much time do we have?”
Patricia Westerford unmuted on her end and said, “depends on how the humankind can come together and what steps we are able to take. At current levels, the older people and high-risk people will start feeling congestion within the next 4 days owing simply to the dwindling oxygen levels and sustained carbon emissions. Some broad measures like stopping all logging and cutting down electricity production by one-eighth will buy us 2 weeks.
All nations have put this into motion.”
[to be continued ..]
To the esteemed readers, I understand the delay is annoying. Thank you for your patience nonetheless.