The Crest

The clicking began about 1:00 am. Fernando heard the alarms go off on his computers; the sensors placed throughout the nursery detected anomalies and dispatched the signals back to the lab via the transmitting tower.

Suerte, Fernando’s dog began to bark. “What is it, girl?” Fernando struggled to get out of bed as the nursery alarms sounded in the next room. His wife Paula sat up.

“What’s happening?”

“Not sure. Alarms are going off.”

He walked into the lab to see his screens lit up.

“Fuck.” He ran to the next building.

“Jorge, I need you now.”

“Right boss. Be right there.”

After a few minutes, Jorge arrived at the lab.

“Jorge, get on your headphones and let’s hear what they’re up to.”

Both men put on their headphones. The clicking was otherworldly, a rhythm that ebbed and flowed every ten seconds and it was then that Fernando removed his headphones, and cocked his head. Listening.

“It’s audible now. It’s completely fucking audible.” he said.

They walked outside and listened to the raw sounds coming in from the darkness.

“What the fuck? This is unbelievable, we’d better get on the phone with Danielle.”

Fernando called his boss.

“This better be fucking good,” she said groggily.

“Walk outside,” he said.

“What?”

“Walk outside and listen.”

“Okay.” Danielle shuffled in her pajamas to her front porch and immediately made out the crescendo of plant clicks.

“I hear them,” she said. “They’re audible and synchronized.”

“They’re a warning signal, Danielle.”

“Okay, let me get dressed. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

When Danielle entered the main lab building, the generator was humming.

“What are the vitals on our plants?” she asked Fernando like it was a hospital emergency room.

“Soil moisture, N, P, K, fine. No ethylene. Other hormones fine except jasmonate which is high, air quality acceptable, temperature in range, readings are acceptable. Danielle, this is remarkable, the plants have never communicated like this ever.”

“You said jasmonate was high. Jasmonate is a stress hormone and moves throughout plants. What are our little ones afraid of, Fernando?” she asked.

“It could be any number of things. We use radioactive molecules to trace jasmonate but it’s usually a warning of an imminent attack, animal, insect, or something to that effect. Plants don’t waste energy on frivolous functions.”

“I’m dumbfounded, Fernando. Clicking like this is more than likely a function of xylem flow. It takes massive amounts of energy to do it.”

“True, but remember, these are super-efficient plants. They are the elite of the drought performers, and it’s possible that they can click with minimal energy expenditure.”

“Didn’t the Israelis do the research on this?” she asked.

“The Israelis discovered ultrasonic clicks in plants but our seedling sounds are at 50 to 120 Hz, certainly in the audible range. Infrasonic is below 20 Hz, ultrasonic vibrations are above 20,000 Hz. Everything in between is audible to us humans. That means our little ones have learned to communicate in a frequency that we can detect. Further, this is the more interesting part, the seedlings are communicating in synchrony.”

“How much energy does it take to click in audible as opposed to infrasonic?” she asked.

“Not sure, but remember the last word on plant communication is still out.”

“Why would they communicate in unison? she asked.

“It’s a warning, Danielle. I’m sure of it.”

“But the plants are probably using multiple communication lines, right?”

“Correct again.”

“It’s not just communication, they’re utilizing multiple survival strategies for sure.”

“Like what?”

“Well, for one, in this hotter environment, they have their seed banks. They try to preserve their seeds in the ground until this shit-storm of a climate gets better.”

“How long does seed last in the ground?”

“Oh, I don’t know, fifty years or more.”

“That’s good, but the Shift will last hundreds of years.”

“Yes, and they have other strategies too. As the climate heats up, plant size is shrinking.”

“Really.”

“Incrementally smaller, seed size, stem size, leaf size, everything.”

“What does that do?”

“It might reduce transpiration, and create smaller, but more viable seed.”

“What if the trees can’t adapt, I mean the Shift happened so quick.”

“Then we’re screwed. We roll the dice that the plant traits now are the right ones. Selection of course weeds out the maladapted trees, but that’s over a period of hundreds of years. We’re asking plants to evolve in a matter of years.”

“My God, we really are doomed.”

“Maybe, maybe not. I mean the plants have kind of figured it out.”

“But you just said the opposite.”

Think of it this way. A few plants will live, they always do. If we must wait a million years for the plant kingdom to repair the planet, then so be it.”

“God, that’s depressing. As an assistant director of FORC, you sound like you’ve given up on the present.”

“No, but I’m just saying I’m not going to worry about what the universe has in store for us. I’ll do my best to get the Pacific Northwest to a more favorable livable situation, but in the big picture, it’s been a nice ride for humans — but our time on the planet may be ending.”

Just then, the air raid sirens sounded. In the distance, they heard gunfire.