So, with Eku by her side, she chose to walk. She wanted to step through the jungle with the power of Eku beside her. She wanted to be in her tree. Yet, she also just wanted to take her time. She craved shelter and sleep and the lull of a long walk.
It was only a few kilometers. Syn could see her tree peaking up over the other trees. It was enormous and seemed to stretch forever. It was the one sight that was visible wherever they stood on the Disc. From the other side of the Disc, looking up, she could see the small green dot that was the tree’s top, and it was still visible against the mass of the rest of Aja. There was so much green in the jungle preserve, but her tree was somehow greener. It was darker, and it called to her. She felt like she should’ve named it Lighthouse. She could see it from great distances and was pulled to it over and over.
The first time Syn had seen it, the call deep inside her was there. But she was also scared. It was larger than anything except the Towers and the Disc itself. From kilometers away, it felt enormous. It was easily twice the height of the other trees. Its branches were visible, darting above and through the treetops. It somehow overshadowed and unified the trees. Those twisting branches seemed like the arms of some mother trying to bring her children together. Syn had seen movies of mother birds and their outstretched wings cradling their chicks along. The tree’s branches always felt like that protective, leading nudge of a mother. It directed, it protected. She knew it was all in her head. It was just a tree. A giant tree perhaps, but she knew that it didn’t have any special magical properties. There was no magic beyond what she could carve and program together from other parts. There wasn’t some great god-planted tree in the middle of the garden that she was pulled to. It was just a tree, and no gods had raised it up.
Looking up at the tree for the first time, there was a part of her that seemed to pause at the enormity of it. It was the tree of all trees, and it was beyond imagination. She couldn’t believe that the builders who had designed this ship had thought far ahead enough to consider a tree. No, this tree was simply tall because it was the cage-fight winner in evolution’s tournament battles. The other trees hadn’t won the genetic monopoly. Just this tree. And as it grew, it overshadowed others. She had called it the Queen of Trees. A Red Queen sitting on her throne.
Syn moved from tree to tree and stepped through the underbrush. The forest was meant to be managed and taken care of. In her exploration of the Aja jungle, Syn had taken note of at least nine different type of forest worker bots whose entire job was keeping it cleared and managed. There were tree trimmers, refuse cleaners (small spidery type bots that crawled through the underbrush), tree doctors (these were drilling into the trees, analyzing samples, and injecting various chemicals to help the trees continue to live)—just a sample of the bots in the forest. But several years without humanity and the floor of the forest was a mess. It delayed her travel and that delay just shouted at her: the tree is special. She didn’t know why, just that it was.
It was quiet tonight, and the sunstrips above were powering down. The forest at twilight was just perfect. The animals were just beginning to wake up or go to sleep. The forest crackled as insects took flight. Leaves rustled as things moved from their burrows and stiff breaths issued from underneath the green packed into every corner. Small creatures taking their first few breaths of the evening, determining the changes of the day and hoping for prey, or to avoid being prey.
Syn still kept her spear close by. The animals that were about, like Eku, were all programmed to avoid humans. They preyed upon each other, but Syn knew she was safe. Still—she knew there were still places unexplored, so she kept her spear nearby. There could be monsters in the dark surrounding her, but she was confident in her ability to protect herself. Yet, she was glad Blip was here. No matter how confident she felt, he always emboldened her.
She pushed through foliage and dense brush before she reached the trunk of the tree. She felt incredibly, wildly, unbelievably small. Like she was an ant staring at an oak tree.
Syn stood there at its base and just stared. She breathed deeper. A few minutes of reflecting, of standing, and she could’ve sworn the tree was breathing in sync with her. She would exhale, and it would inhale. She would inhale as it exhaled—carbon dioxide to oxygen to carbon dioxide. Over and over.
She walked with quiet steps, her bare feet padding along the wooden steps, and moved around the trunk, her hand tracing along the rough bark. The bark changed every time. It had grown underneath her fingertips. A crack would be smaller from one day to the next, or larger. She could never predict the changes the tree would make to itself.
She always wondered how her living amongst its branches had changed its future. Looking up, she thought its outer branches were arcing up more, cradling the treehouse, and thus, her. Was it protecting her? Did it know who it was? She wondered, When I sat at its peak, did it feel as satisfied as I did that first time? Had it been waiting for me? Had it been growing slowly in anticipation for me living there? She hoped it had. Every night, for just a few seconds before darkness took her, she imagined she could hear its wooden heart beating deep inside its ringed depths. Ka-thud. Ka-thud. Slow. Slower than the spin of the Disc itself. Ka-thud.
Tonight she walked into her main room and fell onto cushions, into the mass of stuffed animals—piles upon piles of them that she had scavenged from across the ship. Blip floated by the door, and Eku crawled up next to her. Syn’s eyes shut, craving that steady beating heart. Ka-thud. Ka-thud. Each slam of that imagined heart pulled her deeper into sleep, below the waves. Ka-thud. And she slept.
6
THE TEA PARTY
“Before us is the dream of a million souls. A new Eden lies ahead. We are the stewards of the hopes of all that came before and the gratitude of all that will come after.”
“A very merry unbirthday to me!” Syn sang out, her arms raised above her head, tea splashing all over Captain Pote’s table. Her mouth was wide open, and she bellowed out the notes. “And a very merry unbirthday to you!”
Next to her, in the odd array of light from various fixtures, was Blip. He bobbed, floating a few feet off the ground. He chirped in his nasal voice, “I have work to do. Please, let me go.”
Syn fell back into the padded chair with a thump, crossed her arms, and glared, “You promised you’d do this scene. And you’d do it right here.” She wanted to add, I thought you were doing work these last few nights. Where were you?
Blip spun away so Syn couldn’t see his eyes. “I did not.”
“Liar.” She pitched her white cup against the ground, and it shattered. Her voice was full of false anger, and she wore a grin. With a laugh, she continued singing, “Twinkle, twinkle, little bat, how I wonder what you’re at!”
At the sound, Eku gave a grunt from the far corner of the room where she slept. She lifted her head, looked around, and then went back to sleep, snoring softly.
Bits of porcelain rattled across the light wood floor. It didn’t add anything to the mess of the room. The entire house was in complete disarray. Syn had raided this house over and over for keepsakes she could take back to the great tree, back to her home. She often came back to stage her various productions. It wasn’t a theater, but it was the biggest house along the south edge of the Disc, and it felt the closest to family. It had been Captain Pote’s face, with his daughters in the background, that she had first seen when she had woken up in the white room. His large jowls and smiling face had been a calming influence in those first confusing moments. She had always felt drawn to him and his family. When she discovered that the video message played when she first woke had been a recording made years before and that Captain Pote and his family had been dead for decades, she had cried for a long time. She had wanted to run away the night she had found the Pote house and walked in on the Captain’s daughters, who were now just withered corpses. Instead, she sat down at the dinner table, the same table she was hosting her tea party at now, and she wept. She had fallen asleep with her head on the table, and when she had woken hours later, she cried again. She would never know the family that she had hoped for. Those first several months in her crèche—an isolation and integration room where she was brought up to speed on the Starship Olorun, was dotted with several pre-recorded messages from Captain Pote and even his daughters. His oldest daughter, Stace, had been the one that recorded the most and to whom Syn had felt the deepest connection. She had imagined staying up late talking to this bright-eyed girl. She had wanted to ask her so many questions that the videos and instruction tutorials never answered. But Stace’s body was blackened with decay, and her blue-knit flex suit hung loosely on her splayed-out corpse.