The Last Tree

Olivia knew something was wrong when she left for her lunch break and there wasn’t anyone else walking around on the streets. There should have been at least someone else outside during the lunch hour, but there wasn’t another person to be found. She considered going back inside, worried that maybe some disaster happened that she hadn’t been told about, but the grumbling in her stomach convinced her that she shouldn’t rely on the nutrition packets she kept in her desk. As she walked down the sidewalk, peeking around corners cautiously and still looking both ways when crossing the street despite the lack of moving cars, she passed by a small old-timey shop with an actual box TV in the window and the images on the screen stopped her in her tracks.

On the screen was a familiar sight, one everyone in the solar system had been taught about year after year - the Last Tree. It stood somewhere on Earth and was wide enough at it’s base that three school buses lined up from end to end still wouldn’t match it’s width. The Tree usually looked like the epitome of health, well preserved by conservationists that still believed in the word of the old scientists who thought that humanity would die without trees.

The Tree changed to a live shot and looked nothing like that which she had seen before. The usual thick canopy of lush green leaves was shriveled instead, piles of leaves surrounding the base of the Tree with more falling in waves with each whisper of wind. Whole branches were hanging by sickly strands of bark, cracked and dry and threatening the crowd that surrounded the base of the Tree, a mixture of fascinated tourists and activists that cared about the Tree’s well being.

A memory popped into her head of one of the times she visited the Tree. Every school had some sort of requirement about visiting the Tree, reminders to the children about what would happen to the various worlds if we don’t take care of them. It was really just another thing that everyone had to do at some point, and there were school buses parked in the lot year-round so that the Tree never got too overcrowded, and trips were always provided for free to students from different planets because interplanetary travel was much cheaper when buying tickets in bulk. Over all of her trips, there were days where it was raining, snowing, sunny, windy, hailing, any kind of weather possible on Earth, and the Tree had never looked this bad before. There was some sort of special school tour that they would take each year that was just as boring every time, but Olivia had always enjoyed it at least a little bit, even if it was only because it meant that they weren’t doing any math or writing that day for school. And no matter how much the various other children didn’t care about it, the tour always discussed how green the Earth used to be before people had taken most of them down. And how if we didn’t try to take care of this final Tree, there was no telling what might happen to the Earth as we knew it. Most of the other students had always goofed off, playing games whenever they could get away with it. It certainly made sense to Olivia why the Tree was in such a bad shape, she just had never expected to see it herself.

The scene on the screen moved and brought two people into frame. One was a reporter, wearing a hardhat and continually looking back towards the Tree, concerned that something would happen any moment. Olivia then noticed the other person and her blood ran cold. The name at the bottom of the screen read “Ryan Turson, Human/Earth Development Project.”

Olivia walked into the shop before she realized what she was doing. She looked around to see that it was filled with Earth trinkets, that had a number of other outdated TVs in it, and there was already a group of people huddled around a different TV that had the sound turned on. For a split second she wondered why all these people were here instead of watching on a different, more updated screen, but then she realized they were all likely sucked in the same way she had been.

“Mr Turson, can you tell those who may be less familiar with the HEDP a little bit about your organization?”

“Certainly. We as an organization believe that this planet is one for the people more than the plants. Clearly humans have managed to spread ourselves out a bit among the stars, but many of these planets have such strict holds on them by various organizations for scientific research purposes. Many Earth scientists from the past believed that we needed to take such strict care of the Earth because there ‘was no Planet B.’ They were wrong. If anything, I think it goes to show that even here on Earth it’s just another science project. Why not find out what will happen if we get rid of the Last Tree?”

----

Olivia remembered a specific trip to the Tree. She had just started dating Ryan at the time, a required environmental course in college that they were taking as seniors. He was just as bored as everyone else in their group and it was clear she was the only one paying attention. Ryan kept poking her and talking at her, trying to get her attention, but she ignored him, continuing to listen to the tired tour guide. The were moving between sections of the Tree’s museum when she finally had had enough of his desperate attention mongering.

“What do you want?”

“Are you seriously listening to all this bullshit?”

She just stared at him, wondering how he could even really be asking her that question. “Of course. It’s cool. There’s a lot of interesting history here.”

“’This is a really big tree. You can tell because it’s fucking huge.’ What else is there?” His mockery had momentarily attracted the attention of a few others - a few small laughs from other students and glares from the adults with a younger school group nearby - but ultimately no one cared about their talking amidst all the other conversations.

“Well, maybe if you payed attention for once, you would know. He’s talking about the history of the Earth and how they figured out the different kinds of-”

“Blah blah blah, Liv. You don’t really believe in all that stuff, do you?”

“In all what stuff, science?”

He rolled his eyes and sighed. “No, in magical unicorns. Yes in science.”

“Ryan you can’t be serious. This planet is dying already, we don’t need to make it worse. The whole ‘those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it’ thing, that’s what this is.”

“And?”

“And?! What do you mean ‘and’?”

“We don’t need to worry about it. This Tree takes up so much unnecessary space, Liv. If we got rid of it, we could create buildings and actually take care of the people who live here on this planet.”

“If we don’t take care of the Tree, people might not be able to live on this planet anyways.”

“Then we leave this planet behind and keep finding more! We’ll spread ourselves out among the stars and take over the Universe! Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“No.”

All he did was roll his eyes again and mutter a quiet “Killjoy” under his breath as we wandered off to find some of his other friends who might be just as apathetic about the state of the Earth as he was.

----

“Did your organization have anything to do with the sickness that’s recently affected The Tree?” The words coming out of the screen brought her back to reality. She didn’t appear to have missed much.

“We actually didn’t have anything directly to do with what’s happened.”

“You say directly, how about indirectly?” Olivia admired this reporter’s drive to push for the harder questions.

Ryan’s fake smile dropped a bit as he prepared his answer. “Well, you could say that by being humans we’ve all indirectly contributed to the Tree’s demise. I’m sure sometime soon the scientists will be releasing reports that go to prove exactly that.”

“But so you and your people are responsible for what’s about to happen to the Tree?”

He sighed and plastered his fake smile on his face once again. “That we are. The Tree will be disintegrated using a cutting edge new formula that will spread throughout all the roots and branches, getting rid of anything that might have potential to rot any further.”

----

“You’re doing what?” She was standing in his apartment’s living room, staring at him wide eyed. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“Olivia, come on, it’s not that ba-”

“Ryan this is horrifying! You just wanna go and destroy one of the most important things Earth still has?”

He sighed. “That’s not what I said.”

“Yes it is. You wanna take out the Tree to build some apartments? What is wrong with you?”

“Liv, the Tree is old and dying already and there’s a housing shortage for people who can’t get off Earth. Think about how much more room there will be when they’re able to build where the tree is!” He was standing at this point, reaching his hands out towards her as she backed away from him.

“What are you gonna do when there are too many people for those too, huh?” She moved to the front door and started putting on her shoes. “That Tree is the last thing there is to tear up, they’re already manufacturing oxygen as it is, this is just putting the final nail in the coffin!”

“Look, at this point it’s like… The planet is just barely making it on life support, you know? Let’s just put an end to it.”

She grabbed her purse from the hook next to the door. “That’s not how planets work, Ryan.” The door closed before she could hear his response.

----

“No no no no no! What?!” She didn’t realize she said the words out loud until she noticed the stares from those standing around the TV with her. “I’m sorry, I just. I... know that guy.”

“Has he always been this shitty?” someone asked, their tone clearly angry with his actions. Another person elbowed the person who asked the question.

“He has a point though…” asked someone else, those two starting to argue before another person shushed them, turning the television up a little louder.

“That this area is one that I associate with a lot of bad memories. Forcing children to learn about their parents’ mistakes is something that just leads to more rebellion down the line. We’ve already got people on so many different planets, and our obsession with maintaining Earth is outdated. If we want to continue to expand and further the human race, we need to begin to take up some roots.”

“Speaking of roots, I take it you’ve done research into the root system? How do you plan to take the Tree out completely?”

Just at that moment, a crack resounded across the space between the camera and the Tree, and a large branch fell off, scattering the people below it, screams like whispers compared to the sound of the Tree.

“The cutting edge formula has been in development for two years and has proven the safest and fastest way to remove this much natural matter. ”

“Mr Turson, that can’t be-”

“You’ll have to excuse me I have to-”

“One last question.”

He paused from where he was already half off screen. “One last question, hurry up.”

“Has anyone ever told you this was a bad idea?” The reporter looked scared, clearly fiddling with her earpiece. Someone wasn’t happy she asked this question, but now that she had asked it, the people of the solar system waited with bated breath.

Ryan’s face wasn’t necessarily angry, it was more… contemplative. He looked at the reporter, fear on their face, and he seemed to silently be asking them his own questions. “Plenty of people, actually. Most people. A recent girlfriend broke up with me because she thought it was a bad idea. I hope she sees this and realizes that I was right.” He stared into the camera for a moment before he walked off, talking into an earpiece about how it was time to start the process.

“Who would even date such an asshole?” It was the person who asked if Ryan had always been shitty earlier. “Sounds like she really dodged a bullet here.”

“I… yeah. She… Yeah she really did.” Olivia was staring into the screen, stunned, when it happened.

The reporter was still talking but the words were background noise to the sound of the Earth breaking open. She watched as a far off camera tried to zoom in on a scientist who was bringing a hose up to the roots of the tree, a bright red liquid flowing out of it. Slowly the tree began to burn, a fire erupting from the base. The scientist with the hose tried to step back out of the flame’s reach, but they were enveloped by the flame before they managed to get too far, the hose they were holding now thrashing around like an angry snake. The crowd that had begun to creep back towards the tree after the branch had fallen now fled once again.

But even as there were people running away from the Tree, it was clear they were being thrown off of their feet by something. Something that was blurring the camera feed, making it shake as though something was causing the entire planet to shake. When someone managed to steady the camera enough to make out details, it was clear that what was causing the tremors wasn’t any kind of earthquake, but instead came from the roots of the Tree disappearing underneath the dirt, taking down anything that had taken up residence above it.

There was from everyone around Olivia in the shop, and she stood silent in her shock as well.

The camera focused on where Ryan was running towards someone, shouting something unintelligible, not noticing that he was straight in the path of the growing abyss.

From where she stood in the tiny little Earth shop she watched as the canyon grew deeper and wider, and took over the ground where Ryan stood. Everyone around her gasped, but she was more numb than anything else. Sure, it had been half a year since she had stormed out of his apartment when he finally told her what he was doing at work, but that didn’t mean she wanted him to die. She felt a tear roll down her cheek, but continued to watch in horror.

The camera shook as though someone was running, quiet instructions yelled in the background. The main trunk of the tree was gone, now the canopy sinking towards the ground aflame, people screaming and running. The chasm that had been opened up by the roots was massive, and the person who was holding the camera stopped a ways from the edge before a voice in the background yelled “Get to the fucking edge! See if he’s dead!” causing the feed to get closer to the edge until the awful reality came on screen.

The bottom of the canyon didn’t exist. Whether it was too dark or still growing, the black depths told the people all that they needed to know about whether or not Ryan Turson was still alive. It was only made worse by the camera beginning to shake as it got closer and closer to the edge, looking down at the dirt to see the feet of the person behind the camera struggling to stay above ground, and eventually sliding into the darkness.

FEED INTERRUPTED

The old screen simply blinked those two words, white on a black background. Some of the others tried to mess with it, trying to figure out exactly how to get it to change to a different station to see if somewhere else had more information. And older woman put her hand on Olivia’s arm. Olivia turned her head to see the woman offering her a small packet of tissues. She took one and wiped at her face, surprised at how quickly it seemed to soak through. She stared down at the tissue for a moment before the woman took her other hand and pressed the packet into it before walking away. Olivia couldn’t tell if the old woman knew she was the ‘recent girlfriend’, but she knew that she didn’t need everyone else to figure it out too. The screen made a puff noise and went dark, those who had been messing with it all grasping their hands back from the heat. They moved to a different TV, trying to see if that one would work, but Olivia stayed where she was, staring at the blank screen, the image of the words FEED INTERRUPTED sticking out in her vision.

She looked over to where the group was trying to mess with the next TV and took her opportunity to slip out of the shop. The streets were still clear of most people, this time one or two others out on the street as well. She looked down at her watch - her lunch break had been over ten minutes ago, but she couldn’t think of going back to work at this point, or even finding something to eat. She walked aimlessly down a block and stumbled upon a small park that she had only been through a couple times. She looked around and in the middle of the park was a tree that clearly was an attempt to imitate the Tree. The Tree that was no more. She sat down at the base of it, her head in her hands, tears slipping through her fingers. The most awful thought crawled into her brain and only brought on more tears, but she couldn’t help agreeing with it.

At least now he couldn’t destroy any more trees.