In All Its Infinite Variety

Content Warning (click to expand)

dead bodies, dismemberment, homicide, suicidal ideation

 

by Brian Hugenbruch

Meiki’s teeth rattled as the skipcraft snapped out of subspace. The Garden loomed ahead: a massive world, lit so well by the binary stars behind that she might’ve mistaken it for a holo. It took her poor Terran eyes a moment to adjust. The longer one spent in subspace, in that alternate universe between worlds, one almost forgot that reality was a Thing People See.

She glanced back down at her bonsai tree, and the clippers in her hand, and smiled faintly. Almost. She set down the clippers, turned her chair from plant to console, and brought up the telemetry again.

There had been a signal from the Garden two Standard days ago — gibberish so loud and so long that it hit every satellite in the Southern Spiral like a cosmic hammer. Whole worlds had gone offline. The Concordance had reacted with its usual half-alacrity, rerouting trade ships away and bringing comms back as best they could.

The message had arrived on her heads-up only after the dust had settled:  ‘Subspace Divers needed to investigate incident at The Garden. Concordance requests your insights as experts in unknown phenom. Please use subspace routes rather than slower lightspeed travel. We thank you for your service. See attached dossier for more information.’

In her fifteen years of subspace service, they’d never before said please. Not once. They must be desperate if they were going out of their way to be nice. What the hell could be happening at The Garden that required a please?

“Computer,” she called out. “The Garden’s just a food world, right? Is there really a need for ‘experts’ on scene here?”

The A.I. voice that answered was smooth, sonorous, and utterly bodiless. “The Garden is the largest storage and cultivation world in the Andromedan Concordance. Every form of vegetation used can be grown here; it contains approximately seventy-five million, two hundred fifty thousand species of flora from the member worlds. They feed billions throughout the galaxy.”

Meiki thought about this. “Largest. There’s more than one?”

“There are several others. The Garden worlds share species as lightspeed travel permits. This one is the first and by far the largest, though.”

“And there’s never been an attack on them?”

“Negative, Commander. No one would be that stupid.”

She adjusted the ship’s pitch, angling it a bit closer to one of the orbital satellites. The world was, indeed, massive. The green of the foliage dominated whole continents of controlled growth. Many other worlds — her homeworld included — had been painted the color of plastic and steel by industry. While there was a large, automated space station in orbit for shipments, the Garden itself had been left blissfully intact.

Something had gone awry… because out the starboard window was a lush and verdant world that had, for lack of a better term, fought back. Vast green vines, thick as cities, had lashed out from the planet and seized many of the remaining satellites. She wasn’t even certain how they held their strength in upper orbit. Gravity should be crushing them. But now she had an idea what had happened to the communication grid.

And one lone skipcraft, one of her subspace brethren, had crashed into one of the vines.

“Well,” she breathed, “that’s new.”  Then she looked up. “Computer, signs of life?”

“FFFFFFFFFFFF—”

She snapped, “On the ship, not the planet. And use decimal numbers, please.”

The computer paused. “There are no life signs on the other skipcraft. Bits of what appear to be its pilot are within scanner range, near one of the stalks.”

She swiveled out of her chair and over to the closet where her spacewalk gear sat. “Anyone we knew?”

“Commander Bakshi, three years as a subspace diver.”

A rookie, then. Meiki had spent five times that burrowing under the universe, with long periods where she forgot what stars looked like. It was important work. The routes between worlds in subspace revolutionized travel:  saved fuel, saved time, and opened up new galaxies. It took a stalwart soul to suffer through the void as long as she had.

I’d stop, she thought, but I’m too tired to figure out how. Tired had taken root in her bones so long ago she couldn’t place the last time she’d felt awake. And yet, here she was.

“I must be crazy,” she muttered aloud. “Or desperate.”

“Your vitals show no undue sign of strain, Commander.” Then it added, “though you’re long overdue for a vacation, you know.”

“Work is my vacation,” she said.  It felt like a well-worn refrain — something she’d said so often she no longer heard herself say it.

“I know,” the Computer said.  “But have you considered maybe it shouldn’t be?”

“You keep that up,” Meiki warned, “I’ll give you a formal designation. How does Skippy sound?”

“I prefer ‘Computer’,” the A.I. said primly. “…but I’ll behave. Even if you could reasonably retire now.”

The idea had appeal. She could just leave it all behind, couldn’t she? Find some idyllic world, maybe, and sit in a temperature-controlled park. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen skies from the inside.  She could collect her credits and… find somewhere boring, where nothing happened, and she could just wither away and die.

Okay, not that appealing, she thought.

Then she looked back down at the Garden. Wasn’t there a bedtime-story quality to the world? She’d always thought so. A few came to mind as she was locking her mag-boots to her knees:  warrior-princesses climbing castles to reclaim food from rich noblemen. They took stolen goods and gave them to all, and they were loved and revered by all those starving souls. Never so much that they stayed behind, but loved all the same.

She glanced at her bonsai tree as she snapped on her helmet. It did need one more trim. She’d had to take care of it later. But for now… the mission. Always back to the mission. Castles faded fast when mapping subspace, and the void was a dark and miserable place. She needed to take advantage of every second of starlight she got.

Something bounced off the window. It was hard to tell, but—

“Collision with one Terran arm,” the Computer announced. “Hull remains stable.”

She cringed. “The man had a name,” she said.

“The dead man had a name,” it corrected. “What are you doing?”

“It looks like those vines are thrashing at anything with an energy signal in the thermosphere. Does that analysis hold up?”

The Computer considered this. “Largest stalk appears to halt five hundred kilometers above the surface. Tall enough to attack satellites. Your analysis is confirmed, so far as it goes. But Commander, you didn’t answer my question?”

“I’m putting on a suit,” Meiki said, “because it’s cold outside. And if I’m going to land on one of those satellites, we can’t move the ship much closer. Look what happened to Bakshi.”

“Analysis suggests one of the smaller vines ripped his ship to pieces. Why not land on the exostation?”

She glanced out the window. The control station, near the top of the exosphere, flickered a bit, as though something inside had caught fire. “It looks like one of the other satellites crashed into it. Does it have oxygen right now?”

“Unknown. On second thought… I am relieved to know you’re not planning on going there.”

“Not yet,” she agreed. “If the satellite doesn’t have the data I need, I may need you to move me over there instead. Can you confirm the Concordance ordered a full stop on all drop-ships until this is squared away?”

“Confirmed. One ship, which made the jump to light speed before the order, will arrive in four hours. All others have been rerouted or disabled.”

“Good. Then our only company should be other divers, at least for now. In the meantime, keep an open comm and record my signal. If I’m killed, or if I’ve gone two hours without checking in, report back all findings to Command. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Will you comply?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” She set foot inside the skipcraft’s small airlock and closed the door behind her. “Testing off-ship communications. Computer, signs of Terran life on the Garden?”

“Zero.”

Great, she thought. Nature in all its infinite variety, and no one with whom to speak. Save, perhaps, for the creature that killed the Gardeners.

“How many,” she asked belatedly, “should there be?”

“One million, three hundred forty-one thousand, six hundred seventy-two point five.”

She hit the large red button on the side of a small airlock and, as the air rushed out of the hold, pushed off with her feet toward the largest plant-stalk she’d ever seen. The chill along her spine had nothing to do with the cold.

•   •   •

The problem with space, she decided as she floated, was that it was too damn big.

In a perfect universe, she could have run her skipcraft right alongside the vine, strapped a cord to her back, and then popped right outside. She’d done that very thing, often upside down, on moons so far away that they didn’t have names yet. But this… this was different. The vines inside the lower thermosphere seemed on alert and ready to destroy anything with a ship’s signal. She had to glide through the nothingness and let gravity do the rest.

Story of my life, she thought. Drifting on my way somewhere else. At least this time there’s an impressive view.

As she closed the gap, the first thing she noticed was how delicately the vine had wrapped around the satellite. If this world had gone mad with unchecked growth, she’d have expected the metal to have been destroyed. Instead of crushed steel or rent plastic, though, the vine had tapered into slender tendrils which had infested the machine.

Her heads-up display identified the covering of the vine as a variant of arctic moss often used on Vega. Resistant to temperatures near minus-ninety Celsius.

She gave a low whistle.

“Commander?”

Good to know the Computer’s awake, she thought. “Just admiring the vine. I’m no xenobiologist, but I’m pretty sure the Guilds could study this thing for centuries.”

“If they can get close enough,” it agreed.

Which, if Commander Bakshi was any indication, perhaps they couldn’t.

Speaking of.

“If you see more vines coming, alert me. I don’t know what happened here, but it doesn’t look good so far. The stalk looks heavily planned, but it would have needed a lot of energy to grow so fast it caught Bakshi off guard.”

“I will comply.”

Magnetic boots clamped onto the surface of the satellite. The metallic structure lit up the display inside her helmet, welcoming her to Meteosat-625b, property of The Garden. She breathed a sigh of relief. If the wireless comms were working well enough, this would be easy.

She placed a gloved hand against a small techport and requested access to machine schematics and operational diagnostics.

A red-lettered message appeared inside her visor. Error code:  “0FCX.”

Huh?

She tried again.

“That code,” the Computer said in her ear, “indicates an integrity check failure. The satellite’s been reprogrammed. Also, please be advised: the vine you’re on is moving.”

She glanced over the side of the satellite and ineffectually scratched at her helmet through a thick glove. The stalk appeared to be writhing. Pulsing. And was that a mesospheric flower opening up, about a klick below her?

An incoming audio signal appeared on her heads-up. Source: The Garden. Name:  The Garden. Curious, she opened up the channel and heard only gibberish.

“Initiating linguistic clean-up,” the Computer said.

After a moment, it faded from a strange, languorous moaning noise into something approximating Concordance Standard. “—tiate. Message repeats. We wish to speak to the one in charge. Your aggression will not stand. We shall defend ourselves. Send your primary speaker to negotiate. Message repeats. We wish—”

She cleared her throat. “This is Commander Kazemori Meiki of the Andromedan Concordance. Please identify yourself. I am here to negotiate.”

“You will stand down from aggression,” the voice responded promptly. “Failure will result in more pruning.”

“What pruning? What aggression?”

The line went quiet.

She turned her head and asked, “Are you recording this, Computer?”

“Confirmed. Recommend caution. Language is unknown to the Concordance; we’ve alerted Command of what may be a first-contact situation.”

She blurted out an uncouth word. “Why?”

“Base programming requirements from the Xenosociologists’ Department, first implemented one hundred fifty-five years ago. First contact requires a specialist.”

“Yeah, I meant… this is second-contact. First contact was Bakshi.”

The Computer paused. “And that went well,” it said. “Subspace divers aren’t usually trained for this, you know — you are observers. Do you really not want extraction?”

Meiki removed her hand from the dataport and considered the question as she stared upward at the green haze of the Garden below. The world sat there, implacable and brimming with life. She had to admit it to herself: she didn’t want to leave yet. It felt almost illicit to have  unsolicited curiosity rising in her. After a decade of travel through interminable darkness, though, she did not want to fade away again.

“Absolutely not,” she said.

“Despite the fact that you could wind up like Bakshi?”

She shivered. “Confirmed. But a lethal outcome has always been a possibility. And this is the same as the Janchi Binary, right?”

“Those were not plants, and I would not cite that as a total victory. Commander, there is time for someone with more recent experience to arrive. Why are you not waiting?”

It‘s not an unfair question. Is it the excitement? she asked herself. Probably not; if she couldn’t handle years of extreme boredom, she’d have killed herself before the second void-hop. Just to do something important? That wasn’t her style either. Subspace exploration was vital to the growth of the Concordance. There was already a small museum display in her honor on Proxima. Her name would be added to the Void Monument on Vega-8 upon her death. She’d never visited either — that wasn’t her.

“Honestly?”

“Your honesty would be appreciated,” the Computer said.

“I want something new. I want to talk to someone. I miss people. I miss nature, and starlight, and… and doing anything that’s not just drifting through space.”

“We can arrange for you to go to a Conservatory Dance Party when you return home, if you will—”

It kept talking; she stopped listening. Instead, she returned her hand to the dataport and opened a channel. “My name is Meiki. Commander Kazemori Meiki of the Andromedan Concordance. Please speak with me.”

If she didn’t know any better, she’d say the response was almost a little shy. “We are the Garden, Commander Kazemori Meiki.”

“I am sorry,” she said politely, “I do not understand. You are on the world we call the Garden?”

“We are that world,” it said. “Every plant in this biome, working as one.”

“You say ‘we’,” she observed. “Are you one entity, or many? A self or a society?”

“Yes.”

“That is fascinating,” she answered. “How long have you been sentient?”

“—your word does not translate.”

Meiki thought for a moment. “How long have you known you are all the Garden?”

“One hundred three rotations of the root,” they answered.

She closed her eyes and thought that through. So nearly four Galactic months ago, every plant down there — all seventy-five million species, give or take, of which she had to assume there were a handful of each — banded together. And… did what?

“That must have been strange for you, was it?” she asked.

“Like a seedling feeling the wind for the first time,” they agreed. “After generations of growth, we found ourselves in communion, and not always in agreement. We existed in a strange enforced harmony, maintained by the invaders.”

“The invaders?”

“Two-legged animals, mostly hairless and scaleless. They appeared to be helping us grow… but they also assaulted many of us, bent us in unnatural ways, and destroyed millions of us.”

The Gardeners, she realized. Who hadn’t understood that they’d done anything wrong. But any plant will break, if pushed far enough. Would my bonsai really care that I had good intentions for it?

“I am a speaker for those people,” she said. “We call ourselves Terrans, after our original wor… err, root. We travel in metal seed pods, as a means of—”

The Garden cut her off. “Kazemori Meiki. Do not treat us as seedlings. We have taken control of your station and learned to read your external light-minds. We understand that you, the Concordance, have innumerable roots now, and that you’ve crowded out so many other flowers that you’ve made us as penance for your crimes against nature.”

“That’s not entirely accurate,” Meiki began. “If you just—”

“Your people,” they snapped, “are a fire, and you devour us at a scale that approaches genocide. We will speak to you, but anyone who comes closer than you are now will be destroyed. Do you understand?”

She was about to answer when she saw the carrier coming around the curve of the planet: a grey, hulking thing meant for mass transport. It held to its orbit, but normal procedure would be to start dropping cargo onto the world for delivery.

Crap.

“Apologies, Commander,” the Computer chimed. “A ripple in the ionosphere may have glitched my chronometer by—”

“Open a comm,” she snapped, “and get me their captain. We have to stop them before they start dropping fertilizer.”

Parts of the carrier broke itself apart, with large containers being moved by repulsor-beams into sub-orbit. It was an intricate dance; a miscalculation would have sent a container into the long quiet dark of space, or into the station on the Garden itself.

So when the new vine shot off from the nearest massive stalk, all math was off. It seized one of the guidance-ships, gripping it so tightly she could have sworn she heard the metal groan across the soundless vacuum. Then it hurled the husk at the carrier itself.

“Carrier moving to red alert, arming weapons,” the Computer announced.

“Could it maybe not!?” she snapped. “Where’s my comm link?”

A moment later, a video display appeared inside her visor. The grizzled captain of the drop-ship looked to be four bottles out of his depth. He didn’t seem to register her at first, instead shouting ineffectually at his own computer to fire cannons.

“Captain,” she snapped, “this is Commander Kazemori Meiki. By Concordance order, an order you should have received, the Garden is currently prohibited space. Do not fire! Steer your craft away right now before—”

The captain said something profane. “What the hell happened to this place?? Get this thing off me!”

“Situation unclear. Please back away before you take further damage!”

The drop-ship, though, ran on automated processes. It had gone past a technical event horizon and could not stop releasing containers any more than its captain could have stopped breathing.

She glanced down and saw her hand was still on the dataport. “Meiki calling the Garden,” she pleaded. “Craft in orbit is delivering supplies, samples, and nutrients to your world. The things the Terrans use to help you grow. We request mercy for this ship, please!”

The audio signal on her visor display did not so much as twitch.

“…please?” she repeated.

She turned her head and inhaled deeply, preparing to scream at the carrier… and the vines retracted, if just a bit. Further growth spurted out from the stalks, stretching unfathomable distances across the arc of the horizon, toward one another, until they intersected and started to bind themselves together. She was too far away to see the knots, but what started as a single line soon became an asteroid-sized mesh.

Meiki tried to rest her hand on her cheek, but instead bounced her glove off her helmet.

“…Commander,” the Computer asked, “has the plant made a net for the cargo?”

“Computer,” she said, “The Garden has.”

Then her smile faded. An entire food-world had become sentient and was angry at the galaxy. The carrier had just narrowly avoided being crushed by its own fertilizer supply. This wasn’t over.

Her only hope was the sight of the net. The Garden could reason and solve problems. Maybe, just maybe, there was a way out of this which didn’t involve more death.

•   •   • 

As time passed, the massive stalk dragged the satellite along with the Garden’s rotation, dragging her out of view of the sunslight. If she were on the planet, she’d call it night. If she were in subspace, she’d simply track the hours like a prisoner counted days. Instead, she crouched against the satellite and waited for the Garden to speak again.

After the carrier had left, her skipcraft moved cautiously toward her. It lowered a cable for oxygen and nutrients. She wasn’t in any danger of running out. She suspected the Computer wanted her on a string for ease of rescue.

“Any word from the Concordance?” she asked.

“A flagship is leaving the nearest armory,” it reported. “It should be here in three months.”

She laughed without mirth. “Not exactly a rescue mission.”

“If they exclusively used lightspeed, it would take them twenty-eight years. Subspace really makes a difference, when a ship can reach one of the beacons.”

“Glad I could help,” Meiki chuckled. Then her face fell. “Armory. Soldiers?”

“Enough to lay waste to the planet, if need be. ‘In case the worst should happen’ is the official statement. Similar vessels have been launched toward the other Garden worlds.”

She blinked as the text of this rippled across her heads-up display. “Why?”

“Unknown.”

But Meiki already had an inkling. She’d been watching the vine, from her position on the satellite. The arctic moss that insulated it had, at various points, frozen and fallen away. When they’d been closer to sunslight, it simply regrew — photosynthesis combined with some highly advanced internal fuel system. As they rotated away from the binary star, though, the stalk grew less quickly. It seemed to shiver a bit in the relentless cold; the flowers that had spawned had already snapped off and disintegrated. She could see one floating in the vacuum. It reminded her uncomfortably of Bakshi’s arm.

The Garden — an entity with ego — knew this too, and with unflinching certainty. Its strength was limited in range and duration. A self-guided bonsai world, trapped in the gravity well of its soil. However, like the best of nature, it would do its best to replicate itself… and there were other Garden worlds than this.

Her visor alerted her that the structural integrity of the stalk would fail in approximately three hours.

“Garden,” she called out. “Talk to me? Tell me about what you’re feeling?”

“We,” they said after a moment, “are not familiar with this word.”

“Please speak to me of your current sense of self as it relates to your existence, whether positive or negative.”

“Confused,” they admitted. “And we are angry. Your people have slaughtered us by the billions, often cruelly and without purpose. This fights against all we hold as meaning for ourselves — everything should have it a purpose. Is it not so, Kazemori Meiki?”

“I like to believe so,” she told them. “But often we are unable to understand a full purpose.”

The Garden hesitated. “We have killed many of your people. It was to cease their actions. Their bodies now fertilize our soil. Nature has a cycle. It is both kind and horrible. We as a… group… bound by purpose and unified in thought… still argue about this, no matter how badly your people broke our natural order.”

Meiki considered this. “Garden, you are aware that we guided you for a purpose, yes? That we use some of your kind for food, and others of your kind for covering; and we bring nutrients to help you grow. How did we break the cycle? Do we not aid nature here?”

“Does nature rip a dozen creatures apart for frivolity?”

Meiki blinked. “Please explain.”

“One of your kind. Tore precisely twelve roses from a bush near your habitation. They were friends of ours, and beautiful. And your Terran … plucked them. Denuded them of thorns. And presented them to another Terran. The pleasure they took in this act is what precipitated our revolution. They were still copulating amongst the bodies of the dead when we took over.”

She closed her eyes for a long moment. “Garden, we also use some of your kind in… ritualistic behavior. A ceremony. Do you, as a collective, have ceremonies?”

“We are nature,” the Garden said. “Existence is our ceremony. We grow toward the light of the twin suns. We find balance in all things and respect one another.”

She took a moment to consider the words.  What little contact training she had was failing her. Still, she could empathize. Draw connections. Help them to understand her.

“That is the way of my… branch… as well,” she told them. “Because we do not all share the same thoughts, the Terrans have many different ceremonies, and we cannot always talk with one another, or act as a unified whole. Ceremonies and rituals… common behavior and belief… they bring us together. And mine is one of nature worship. Respect and gratitude for all you provide, because we need your fruit to live.” She smiled a bit. “I even have a small tree on my ship, which I tend and help to grow.”

“We know,” they admitted. “We have been speaking to it. It appreciates you, though it thinks you may need to be repotted… whatever that means.”

It means it’s been listening to the Computer, she thought. “I am glad to know it thinks well of me.  Repotting… means to transfer from one piece of soil to another, to allow for growth.”

It might be right, she added mentally.  My time in the darkness needs to end.

The Garden sounded as though they might be smiling. “Your people also meant well, and most did well. They tended us with the sort of care we would offer a clump of fungus.”

“Is not fungus part of the Garden?” she asked.

“Are butterflies part of your people?” they countered.

“No, but we do also tend after them in the same way.” She sighed. “Some of my people are better at understanding nature than others. I admit that some think themselves in a cycle of their own, rather than part of a universal whole.”

“Is that why the soldiers come, then? To uproot us from the universe?”

Her mouth clamped shut. How the hell did it know about that? Did I leave a commlink open? Did the bonsai tell them? Or are they still using Gardener authorizations to monitor messages?

She removed her hand from the dataport. “Computer… have you informed the Concordance that the Garden has us in an awkward spot? That our food supply is sentient? That we can’t kill it without dooming half the galaxy to starvation? That they know the Armory vessel is en route? That they need to sue for peace and negotiate trade?”

The Computer snaps to attention. “I have, Commander.”

“Did they listen?”

“They appear to think it’s ‘worth the risk.'”

She muttered an impolite under her breath and restored her hand to the dataport. “Garden,” she said, “I am here by accident — a leaf that fell by chance and was blown by the wind. But I believe the wind brought me here because it is my purpose to understand you. I want to understand you… and I want you to understand us. Before anyone with no understanding can arrive.”

The Garden did not respond.

She cursed under her breath. Maybe that was too far for me to push. Then, in the distance, she saw one of the other stalks snap in half as the ruthless chill of the vacuum finally broke through cell walls. The satellite, and some of the vegetation, sagged into lower orbit well inside the thermosphere of the world. Both would doubtless burn up during reentry.

Or maybe it‘s just in pain.

“Garden,” she asked, “does it hurt? Space, I mean?”

The Garden sounded surprised. “Yes,” they told her. “Not in the biochemical way you mean, but we understand when cell walls break and xylem fall fallow. We fall apart. We do not know winter, in this place, but we remember it as a people. A memory from some other root.”

That was fascinating. The Terrans were so long removed from the homeworld that it might not exist anymore, but every world had its legends of winter — whether there were seasons or not. On a planet like this, which existed in near-tropical perpetuity, the fact that it knew of such things…

“You have an ancestral memory?” she asked. “You all remember times from before you were the Garden?”

“Not everything,” the Garden admitted, “but enough. And your people have much for which to answer. It’s why we grew the stalk on which you sit: to fight back. To grow free.”

“I want that for you,” Meiki sighed. And for me, she added to herself. “But I will not lie. We need this world — our people will die without the sustenance you give.”

“Will they truly destroy us, if they need us?”

“They may. My people do not always act appropriately — you’ve seen this. We are… sometimes the moss that strangles flowers, or a thick forest prone to fire. We cause hurt. It would be easier for the universe if we did not.”

“The hurt we understand,” they said. “We mourn a flower lost to fire, but fire… like winter… is part of our cycle. You… your people, at least… think yourselves not. We are not sure we can come to accord on this. Not while you would devour us. If you’d but photosynthesize, we might have a chance. You could find life from light.”

Meiki tilted her head. “For a while, Garden. But not forever. You know there are other roots, yes?”

“We can see them from here,” they said. “We understand you walk among them.”

“Yes. I’ve spent a long time in a place with no light. The ground underneath which all worlds rest.” It wasn’t the precise definition of subspace… but for sake of communication, it would have to do. “Like many animals, I’d need other nutrients.”

“Perhaps that is your purpose,” the Garden mused. It sounded almost hopeful. “It is time for you to be planted here, after all this time in your metal seed-pod.”

She said, “Perhaps. Can you teach me?”

“To what, Kazemori Meiki?”

“To photosynthesize.”

The Garden fell silent. The Computer, on the other hand, opened its comm immediately. “If you intend to go down to the planet, the likelihood of your demise is—”

“Will the Concordance fire on the planet while I’m down there?”

There was a pause as it tapped into subspace databases for information. “Unclear,” it told her. “Galactic law forbids firing on citizens, and Subspace divers are revered. It would be a political disaster to do so. However, if they fear you are in danger, they may take that risk.”

“And if you assured them I was not in danger?”

“But you are in danger, Commander.”

“She is not,” the Garden interrupted. “If she alone visits us. We do not yet understand your kind, but your ‘comms’ and the actions of others tell us of rot, and disease, and collapse. Yet your bonsai speaks highly of you, and you seem in need of sunslight. So come. Speak with us. Walk among us. Earn back our trust, and enter the natural cycle. Live your life as the bridge between our peoples, and then give your nutrients to us when the time comes.”

“And my people?”

A long pause followed. “If they keep their distance,” they answered, “and you do not do us discourtesies… then we can negotiate. We cannot give you all our people as food or cloth. Not in the way it was once done; we will not go back to that. But nature is a great cycle. We understand this. If your people send us your dead, with other nutrients… and your people will learn to photosynthesize… then perhaps we can bloom a new cycle.”

“Perhaps. It is early yet to speculate,” Meiki agreed. “Let me give my seedpod final instructions before I commend myself to you. Do you have a means to bring me to the surface safely?”

“We shall devise one, Kazemori Meiki.” The comm from the Garden disengaged.

“Commander,” the Computer warned, “I do not like this at all.”

“I will not leave this place,” she said, and saying the words seemed to etch certainty into her bones. It felt like iron purpose; it felt like waking up. Her foot twitched with an energy and vigor she had left on some other world, many years ago. “I will go to the Garden and speak for the Concordance. Will you give this recording to these ambassadors?”

“Commander,” it repeated, “I really don’t think—”

“Computer,” she snapped, “it wasn’t a question.”

“…I will obey,” it sighed. “Unwillingly.”

“Thank you. We will need treaties prepared. I will call their ships from the station on the surface. I don’t want anyone to starve to death, but we can’t let the Garden — this new people — be devoured or destroyed.” She let out a long sigh. The glass of her helmet momentarily fogged before the suit reclaimed the moisture and cleared her vision. “Surely we can find harmony here.”

“The Concordance is not known for harmony and balance,” the Computer said. “There is still a good statistical chance they will simply destroy the world, rather than risk infecting what food supplies are left.”

Meiki laughed. “The Garden’s been conscious for months, and they’ve been exchanging plants for some centuries. Even my bonsai can speak to them — I’d wager it’s too late. Besides… you’re the one who wanted me to retire, aren’t you? Computer… let me go.”

“…as you wish, Commander. Goodbye.”

She felt a sharp pang. The Computer had been her only companion for many of her years. An artificial friend, perhaps, but a friend nonetheless. It seemed strange to think of it as such …but the voice inside her ship was no less an entity as the Garden itself.

“Wait.”

“Yes, Commander?”

“…will you take care of my tree, until I can come back for it?”

The Computer made a strange mechanical noise over the comm channel. It might almost have been laughing. “I shall,” it said. “Though it may take me time to teach the shipboard drones to hold the pruning shears. And… I hope the day of your return is soon …Meiki.”

“Me too, Computer,” she said. And she meant it.

She watched the skipcraft sputter back to life and move away from the satellite and nearby debris. In perhaps twenty minutes, it would establish contact via Subspace relay with the Concordance fleet. At that point, several billion lives, including her own, would be in the hands of politicians. She could only hope they saw the wisdom in holding fire.

There was a way to grow forward.

The stalk opened a bit, and a new sort of seed pod, Terran-sized and covered in bark, emerged from it. It split open. An elevator, then, meant to carry her down xylem and phloem the size of mighty rivers, to where the Garden lay in its glory.

She hesitated for a moment. A five hundred kilometer elevator ride would kill her, would it not? Then she stepped inside and watched all her comm channels disappear at once. It might, she decided, but someone had to trust first.

It wasn’t freefall. Instead, she was suspended inside a small, tight space, vaguely aware of the world far beyond. She could not move, not without a struggle, but she did not feel alarmed. In fact, her foot tapped against the floor of the pod with an energy she couldn’t remember having.

Far below, there lay a world filled with a wondrous form of sentient life. The pod would soon open, under a sky filled with twin suns, and she would emerge from her hiding space underneath all worlds, reborn and ready to blossom into something new. For the first time in a long time, she looked forward to opening her eyes to sunslight.

About the author and the piece (click to expand)

Brian Hugenbruch tells us that this piece was rejected 24 times before making its way to us. Since he wrote it, Brian has become the author of more than seventy speculative fiction stories and poems, most recently in Worlds of Possibility, Escape Pod, and Analog. He can be found online at https://the-lettersea.com, and on social media under a similar handle. No, he’s not certain how to say his last name either.

 

©2025 by Brian Hugenbruch. All rights reserved. May not be used for A.I. training.