159 & The Mystery of the Golden Pear Tree

159 emerged from his stasis pod. Swinging his legs off the bed his long bony feet greeted the warm leathery floor of his craft. Bending forward slightly he spewed up the last remnants of the stabilising fluid from his lungs, he coughed and spluttered for a little while and then promptly lay back down on the bed. Closing his heavy lids over his bulging eyes once again.

He wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep. He didn’t care.

The old familiar emotions emerged from their enforced hibernation and began to wash over him. Within minutes he had replaced the clean fresh stasis fluid with the familiar dark brooding fluid of hatred. It seeped into his blood, at first a trickle and then a tsunami of black emotion.

He felt miserable and angry and resentful all at the same time, frustrated and powerless like a pawn in the grand game without hope of salvation or success. His body trembled as it surged with outrage and indignation and then succumbed to overwhelm and hostility.

The last memories of his life on Atlantiss flashed into his mind like an unwanted electric shock. He ruminated for a short age on the disturbing events that were now fuelling his body with anger, bitterness and hatred. The memory of his betrayal once again dominated his mind and ignited the darkness in his soul where heartbreak festered like a weeping sore that never healed.

He willed his mind to return to the Golden Pear tree that sang in the Meadow of Purple Grass, the place where it had all begun.

Shimmering lime green leaves danced in the wind, soft golden pears dangled enticingly from its branches, they looked delicious, fit for a Saviour, so beautiful and yet so deadly.

I59 loved this time of the light cycle. It always reminded him of his great great grandmother and the love she had showered him with. When he was a youngster she had taken him to the meadow every year for the pear gathering. They would sit on a blanket beneath the tree play games and wait for the tree to sing.

It sang for precisely 3 minutes once a year just before it released its golden pears from its slender tawny bows. A joyous yet haunting melody that lingered in your heart and filled it with joy. His great great grandmother had been a connector. The last of her kind. She could connect to the elements and to nature and talk with them. She knew exactly when the tree would release its bounty of golden pears.

He loved this time of the cycle and the happy time they spent in the shade of this majestic tree. His great great grandmother loved the tree fiercely, she looked radiant in its presence and she glowed with health and vitality for weeks after the pear dropping.

Together they would gaze up into its branches trying to guess which pear would drop first. It was a silly game because of course his great great grandmother always knew which one was going to drop first.

As soon as the first pear dropped they would race to catch it. She never let him win. Not once in all her years did she let him catch the first pear. It was hers and hers alone.

She was so fit and fast it was incredible, everyone admired her age and her vitality. She always said it was because of the …….. Funny, he couldn't remember what she said now.

He remembered her laughter though, as they scooped them up in their arms and then… It was strange how he couldn’t quite recall what happened after that or why they had stopped going to the Golden Pear Tree.

Later after his great great grandmother's sudden and unexpected death and the untimely death of his parents in the great cleanse he had asked a knowledge giver about his amnesia. After an unaccustomed eternity of delay the knowledge giver Bento finally gave his answer.

Bento, it transpired, had been consulting with the most influential of knowledge givers in the whole of Atlantiss. Collectively it was decided that 159 was suffering from an extremely rare condition known as irreversible catastrophic grief lockdown. As a result of which the sufferer was doomed to experience memory failure caused by the sudden loss and support from multiple tier one love relationships.

It was an extremely rare condition with very few reported incidents.

Other cases had occurred but they had been solely in adults, most of whom had been driven insane by their inability to remember. Consumed by grief, shame and embarrassment about their inadequacy to correctly use their once brilliant memory they had subsequently committed the ultimate act of cowardice and taken their own lives.

The knowledge givers had gone to great lengths to explain the perils of this condition. It had been decided that as this was the first reported case of such a condition in a youngster they would take the unusual step of prescribing a radical mentoring course under the guidance of an esteemed Stellar.

Under the watchful guidance of the Stellar Artois, 159 would receive the necessary mentoring that would ensure that he would always be able to remember his great great grandmother fondly but also shut off and not probe too deeply into the disturbing memories of his great great grandmother and the Golden Pear Tree. Instead he would be schooled in ways that would allow him to embrace other memories of his great great grandmother and his parents and to focus on the love they had shared in other areas of his life.

This unprecedented approach had caused a number of raised eyebrows not to mention the stirrings of jealousy.

Stellars were wise beyond imagination, respected and worshipped for their minds and foresight. Second only to the Revered the gatekeepers to the immortal Saviours. The Revered outranked Stellars simply because of their ageless qualities.

Back in the ship 159 lay motionless on his bed. Transfixed by the wisp of a memory that had floated into his mind. Disrupting the ebb and flow of hatred and animosity that ran through his body. A flash of love and happiness came with it and a strange and surreal image of him biting into the juicy flesh of a sweet ripe pear, golden nectar squirting from its flesh and running down his chin.

It seemed so real, he could almost taste the sweetness, feel the soft pulp in his mouth and the warm stickiness of its juice.

Except he knew that couldn't be true, he knew it must be false. There was no way he could’ve eaten a golden pear.

It was probably just the effects of the stasis fluid he reasoned. It couldn't be true. The saviours had declared the fruits of the Golden Pear Tree to be extremely toxic for civilised creatures and so all were forbidden to take the fruits. To save all creatures from a long and excruciating death the Saviours had ordered Stellars to collect the fruits and take them out of harm's way.

They had considered the threat to be so serious that whilst the tree bore fruits the purple valley had been declared a no go zone.

159 sat bolt upright, quickly drew his knees up to his chest and dropped his head to his knees. He didn't like what he was feeling, it was uncomfortable and confusing and he wanted rid of it.

Another thought exploded into his mind.

Other things in Atlantiss are harmful to creatures. Why do the Saviours only protect us creatures from the Golden Pear tree?

This thought made him very uncomfortable and gave him an unfamiliar sickness in his stomach. He tried not to think about it and focus instead on remaining sane and calm as Stellar Artois had taught him.

Boom! “Tree of life!” The words reverberated through his skull.

Another unwelcome intrusion.

He threw his hands up in despair.

“Tree of life!!” he muttered to himself.

“You gotta be kidding me” he chided.

“Tree of death more like!”

What was wrong with him? Was this the onset of insanity? The sure path to death.

Dropping his feet quickly to the ground he laughed loudly. It was a fake hollow laugh with a bitter twinge. Why should he worry about death? His life was already over. The fact that he was here all alone on this shit hole of a planet was proof of that.

A Planet inhabited by countless moronic humans hell bent on their own annihilation. This was his punishment. As if losing the one true love of his life was not enough. His posting to Gaia was the last nail in his coffin.

He spat a mouthful of disgust out onto the deck and wiped his mouth with the back of his long bony arm.

So here he was a Watcher on planet Gaia. They had said it was an honour to receive such an important posting but everyone knew that it wasn’t. It served a purpose that's all. It got him out of the way and severed the connection between him and his twin flame Kimono.

Watcher of what? he quipped. Watcher of death and destruction?

He had been thoroughly briefed before being despatched and it seemed to him there was no saving this planet or its occupants. It was set to destruct and he would destruct with it.

Stroking his smooth bald head he let a wave of bitterness and sorrow wash over him.

Boom. He was back in the Purple meadow. It was the day they had first met, he remembered it well. He was on guard duty, searching the meadow for any stray pears. The Stellars were very thorough and he knew they would never leave a pear behind but nevertheless it was a task that had to be done and one he enjoyed doing.

Distracted by the call of a rare and exotic Aquirrelhawk he had been gazing up into the branches of the tree looking for the bird. As a kid Aquirrelhawks had been plentiful, they would visit the tree every year to feast upon the pears, but since the Stellars had arrived to collect the pears the Aquirrelhawks had stopped coming. Some said the Aquirrelhawks were afraid of the Stellars and so they stopped coming, others said they had died because they ate the evil fruit of the tree.

The Stellars said the Aquirrelhawks were loathsome creatures because they fed on the fruits of the Golden Pear Tree and the tree collected all the bile and hatred of the planet and turned it into pears which was why the pears were so toxic and why civilised creatures could not eat them.

Kimono lay quietly in the long purple grass staring up into the branches of the towering tree. She sucked lazily on the nectar of a slim reed of grass, its sweet juice tickling her soft plump lips and exciting her taste buds.

159 strained his neck up into the branches slowly circling around the tree, his gaze always upwards looking for a glimpse of an Aquirrelhawk. Suddenly his feet caught her legs and he was falling face first towards the ground crashing heavily next to her.

She had cried out in surprise as he thudded down next to her. Sitting up suddenly with the grass dropping from her mouth she turned to face him. Embarrassed, he jumped to his feet and seeing her rank he immediately began to apologise and stretched out his hand to help her up. As his hand reached hers he looked at her beautiful smiling face and his heart melted.

Her eyes met his and seeing his bewildered face she began to smile and her smile turned into a laugh and then somehow they were both laughing.

Minutes past and there they were still holding hands laughing and smiling. Just the two of them in the beautiful Meadow of the Purple Grass under the sprawling branches of the magnificent Golden Pear Tree.

They stopped laughing and he let her hand drop as he reached down to pick up her bag. As he lifted it into the air he caught a glimpse of something underneath it.

Suddenly Kimono grabbed his hand and pulled him across the meadow. Distracted, surprised and excited he had gone with her. He heard the cry of the Aquirrelhawk and as he looked back he saw it swoop down from the tree to where they had been standing. It snatched something on the ground and then in an instant it was flying back up into the sky and as quickly as it had come it was gone.

He began to feel an unpleasant heat spread throughout his body. It was uncomfortable and made him squirm. It was a feeling he couldn't make sense of. It was as though there was something pushing from inside trying to burst out.

Sitting back down he rewound the memory and played it again. He paused. What he saw made no sense.

There underneath the bag there had been three fat pears. But that was surely impossible, a trick of his imagination. Or was it?

He sat back down. Still and numb, confused and confounded. He wasn’t sure what was happening to him or why. But right now nothing made sense.

He had more questions than answers.

Why had Kimono been allowed into the Purple Meadow when it was a no go zone? Why would his great great grandmother take him to harvest poisonous fruit? Did Kimono really have a stash of pears?

Nothing was making sense. He knew only one thing he had a job to do so he would do it. He was no longer a lover or a son or a Stellar protector he was a Watcher and nothing more.

The mystery of the Golden Pear Tree would have to remain just that a mystery.