By bark and seedling, thy kingdom come.

The forest and I are the last trees on Earth. From nut to tree I have withstood the vicissitudes of mankind for 600 years. I have survived drought, flood, disease and war but the last 150 years your mankind has taken the absolute pith.

I am talking to you from the year 2121. Mankind (you) has regressed back to primitive tribal living albeit with advanced technology (it seems your progress in science still exceeds your progress in sharing power). Your incessant need for more led your kind to near mutual annihilation. Your abandonment of your strongest trait of survival, collectivism, led you to believe that without each other you could still have infinite progress. But before I regale you of the tedious routine of living in this 'post apocalyptic world' (you wimpy humans with your anthropocentric melodrama) I should like to point out that us trees have been around for 345 millions years. We laugh at you youngling monkeys and your arrogant idea that you will live forever. Neither do we believe we will live forever too, but we will out live you by a long shot. I should first wish to chew my own bark on matters relating to my own. If you were to know my own trials and tribulations then perhaps you might come to learn how the death of your species is fantastic for us. This dystopia is exactly just this. Your dystopia. Not ours.

I was dispersed (along with my 57 brothers and 84 sisters) from my parents in the year 1521. I was collected by the SHS (squirrel hibernation service) and buried in my earthly cot over the winter into the spring of 1522. Eager to begin my life as a sproutling (It is a real word, I would know, I'm a tree) I germinated my first shoot under that warm spring soil but my impatience to reach sapling garnered unwanted attention. An ill mannered squirrel whom I assume was not employed by the HBS or by any other establishment for that manner, tilled me up by its disease ridden thieving mouth and swallowed me whole. I do not recommend travel by squirrel gut. The view is dark and the smell is both detestable and maddening. Embarking from the thief's innards was traumatic. I shan't describe it and i couldn't without becoming coy anyway, but suffice to say, to this day I still cannot see animals defecating near my bark or the colour brown without jarring flashbacks (this caused me great misfortune in making friends with umber barked trees in my younger years).

ah, there goes one your kind now, unshaven and wearing some metallic clothes. Pleading for mercy over his instalink wrist strap. You have instant communication on your wrist but cant think to have a shave. The quicker you all die the quicker us trees have this planet to ourselves again. Mind my root you insolent vagabond. Shoo, Shoo!

Pardon me, as I was saying...

My new home of root proved solid ground. From the years 1522-1555 my saplinghood was one of wonder. I was born into a golden age for trees. Or as you humans called it, 'the age of exploration'. Yes I said it. Whilst you homo sapiens began gallivanting around the globe in your caravels, spreading disease, enslaving and committing genocide to your own kind, we trees were being spread across the globe by your want for exotic fauna. Colonial botany caused many trees species to travel abroad. I would over hear adult trees spinning tall tales of foreign trees travelling thousands of miles around the globe. It was thrilling to be alive then, such promise of an exciting future. Whilst your species was slaughtering its own like greed crazed apes, you were inadvertently growing and strengthening the kingdom of the plants. Thank you for the help! Hoo hoo hoo.

Catkins!, now there's more of them. Go away from my roots! Stop prancing around with your fancy hyper weapons and hover boots near my saplings! Mind the children! oh well, if you perish, my children and I will consume your decomposing body so slaughter each other all you want. We could do with a buffet. Ahh, excuse me again, the sight of your kind fighting like spoilt children was making hungry.

Like all species and genus my teenage years were testing times. I shot up like a bean sprout. I grew excess foliage on branches that were not there before. I rebelled by growing my roots long. There was brawls for light that went on for decades. I spread my pollen whenever the wind blow on me. I began to bear nut and seed of my own. But the most alien of all my experiences during adolescence was seeing two homo sapiens falling in love. They had chosen the base of my tree as their nest. On the first sighting I observed them holding each other and then attaching the front of their faces together. It was confusing and hideous! why would you mimic two crows sharing the same worm between their beaks. The second time they came to nest the he, presented something called a locket. It was in the shape of a heart. A heart shaped locket, if you will (I don't know if I've got that quite right. Please forgive my presumptuousness. Your 'language' has always eluded me). The third time they appeared with them an offspring! I couldn't figure out for the life of me how that heart shaped locket created human offspring. Was it sorcery? Was it used as an artificial inseminator? How did it create human saplings! I asked all other trees in my community and they had all seen the same thing and no one had any idea how these lockets did this. So yes. Testing and confusing times for us teenage trees.

But these times of glory and riding high were not to last.

Please forgive my change to a sombre tone now.

Each journey through life is full of highs and lows. A tree does not gain wisdom by youth alone. Our long lives allow us the horror and the privilege of seeing patterns of behaviour forged over centuries. We neve forget. Your species forgets the mistakes of the generation before and you are doomed to eternally repeat the horrors of your past. This, We have seen...

My adult life to this present dystopia, from which I am talking to you from has been grave and heavy on my heartwood. As I am preparing to tell you about this harrowing time I should note that your kind are unleashing plasma grenades in the forest around me. I can hear the screams of my own kind as they perish in the blue plasma flame of your disgusting weapons. Weapons that are by our wisdom an extension of your primitive insecurity.

After witnessing the behaviour of remorseless butchering that your kind inculcated onto your young, we trees came to believe that your kind would be the end of yourselves a long time ago. This we looked forward too. Without you, we would thrive and grow lush and dense over this elegant blue marble once more. What we did not foresee, was the length of time in which your kind and mine would endure your extinction. We underestimated your durability and innovation in war.

Rumours circulated around the forest that great swathes of our kind were being cut in half with silver discs that exhaled black smoke and were then being sent to great furnaces that incinerated us into more thick black smoke. I witnessed whole communities, that had grown strong for over two hundred years disappearing over a matter of weeks. Old friends with whom I had known since seedling were disembowelled and dragged away. With each cry of splintering bark and snapping branch my fear grew more. Was I next? Was our idea wrong that us trees would thrive once more? I would wake at night with leaf tremors and leaking sap caused from the anxiety at not knowing whether this decimation of our kind was real or a nightmare. Then one day, the whole ground trembled. Every tree in the forest shook like a synchronised death dance. As the ground quaked more, a metallic square cube with a snout that blew pellets that exploded into fire came into view. We witnessed the mechanisation of mankind and saw and felt every horror that you exerted with your mechanical dragons. We could not run. Forest after forest fell down to mans great wars. I was lucky to survive. For my horror, anguish and despair gave way over time to a crowning realisation. For every forest we lost to mans war, man would continue to slay their own kind on the bare lands afterwards. This provided a symbiosis. Our young would land there after dispersal from their parents by flight or droppings. The rotting carcasses of your kind or buried people as you call them gave great fertility to the land for our young to grow on. This symbiosis was imbalanced.

But not in your favour.

After the burning of our kind in your incinerators the thick black smoke that leaked from your chimneys began to kill more of man. The weapons of a thousand suns you drop on your cities, began to kill more man. Our long held belief that the peaceful virtues and longevity of the trees would outlast man was beginning to bare fruit. The killing of our kind was far from over, but by our estimation, mankind's extinction of itself was much closer. Your imagination for your weapons of war grew more insidious. Your over reliance on machines instead of your hearts fed your hyper individualism. Us trees know that harmony with thine neighbour above all else is conducive to the longevity of one's kind.

An old tree develops a strong sense of stoicism after witnessing such events over long periods of time. If you were wondering how at the beginning of me telling this tome, I could remain upbeat with all of your kind around me, eviscerating themselves, then perhaps now you know. As I said before. This dystopia is your dystopia. Not ours. For every sonic rocket fired, for every implosion mine set off, for every nano army blindly let loose, for every neurolink hacked, for every maglev torpedo and for every pointless death of your own kind. Our kind. The tree kind. Will live on.

Lee Spencer Westbrook