The Crest

The smell of death wafted over the Forest Research Center from the hundreds that perished from heat stroke and hyperthermia. In this new norm, with humans unable to cool themselves, they relied on the God of the wet-bulb to warn them. Their bodies maladapted to the meteorological conditions of their times.

They spent the next five days burying the bodies in mass graves. Thousands of seedlings died too, although the hardy ones survived; a type of directional selection toward drought and heat resistance. The mature trees turned brown and eventually dropped their leaves to the ground, removing what little shade there was in the enclave. For the time being, these large arbors stood proud but naked, and with just one more extreme heat event, the trees would be dead like everything else.

Now, Karl Müller sat alone contemplating his research agenda, which was in flux. Certainly, the heat dome pushed his pampered seedlings to their absolute limits. Their first big test and they passed, he thought. The assisted migration strategy worked, a positive. But in the back of his mind, he questioned whether his efforts on the North American continent were in vain. He thought about the obstacles in his way: constant war, a drastically altered climate, heat domes, wildfires, food shortages, and a general breakdown in civil society.

“Is that all?” he joked to himself.

He stared wistfully at a photo of his family from Germany; drifting, thinking of his mother and father. In the picture, they stood proudly in a field of hay in their hometown of Hechingen, the castle Mount Hohenzollern in the background. These days, he grew increasingly homesick; he worried about his parents. His last letter from them was two years ago, the last official correspondence brought by ship, before ocean going transportation ceased altogether. He longed to get home, back to the beautiful family farm in his mind; he knew it was gone, but he needed to believe in it nonetheless.

His mind shifted back to work. From the FORC headquarters at the top of a hill, he looked upon the five million seedlings growing across the rolling hills, a sea of green in an otherwise parched vale. He was the deputy director of the Forest Research Center, FORC, and people admired him for his groundbreaking research in plant communication. He’d discovered plant acoustic signals that were thought to be undetectable. He detected wave communications from trees that encompassed infrasonic, audible, and ultrasonic. He was the plant communication genius of his time and he came to FORC, the best institute of its kind, led by the brilliant but acerbic, Executive Director Danielle Fournier.

The relationship between the two was collegial but strained at times. Karl assumed responsibility for the entire research program, a position vacated by Danielle’s husband, Dennis Fournier, who died in a wildfire a year earlier. He’d never gotten the full story on Dennis and didn’t bother asking. Karl was the sort of intellectual that didn’t come around that often. He’d gotten his PhD from the Rottenburg University of Applied Forest Sciences and came to the Pacific Northwest for a post-doctorate study. His uncanny ability to read the forests gained him notoriety and—criticism. He regularly thought out of the science box, much to the chagrin of Danielle.

“Karl, I need to know what the hell is going on with the bioacoustics,” Danielle snapped at her deputy director today.

“Yes, we’ve been receiving some strange signals.”

“Let’s hear it,” she said.

“Let me break it down for you. We’ve been getting signals from the nursery. Distress signals, infrasonic.”

Danielle was cantankerous today. “Nothing new there, our seedlings give off distress indicators all the time. That’s your expertise to monitor and work with Fernando to give them what they need.”

Karl ignored the remark, knowing full well his responsibilities. “That’s not what I’m saying, Danielle, this is different.”

“Sorry, go ahead. It’s been a rough day.”

“Okay, our sensors detected infrasonic clicks that are not quite detectable by human ears and then,” he paused, “we detected audible clicks.”

“Really, these are audible sounds?” she asked.

“Well, research has shown that some plants produce sound at an audible frequency at around a 220-Hertz but rarely, it’s usually either infrasonic or ultrasonic. The reason for that is because it takes an immense amount of energy to produce an audible click. But now, some of our seedlings, particularly the big-leaf maples emitted two audible clicks per hour. Others less so.”

“What’s causing these clicks?” Danielle asked.

“We think they produced them in their xylem cells through internal pressure. Xylem moves water and water deficiency is first detected in the roots and then the signal moves up to the plant tissue. We also detected a lot of abscisic acid which is the hormone responsible for combating drought.”

As Karl continued his explanation, Danielle’s attention slowly digressed and she gazed out the window. She never caught his last two sentences. She was outside, thinking of something else. She did this more often, wafting from a serious discussion into another dimension, it seemed to him. It happened after Dennis died.

Karl noticed her gaze, and for his part took her contemplations in stride. He’d seen it happen before and he knew her story. She’d never recovered from the loss of Dennis, now almost a year ago. The despair crept up on Danielle at awkward times, certain words invoked powerful memories and she struggled to control her emotions. During these periods, Danielle avoided eye contact.

Dennis Fournier died in the wildfires. The fact was that rather than a few people dying each year, now thousands perished in the conflagrations that burnt year-round. Mostly it was migrants who died, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. FORC issued quaint fire shelters for its employees. These shelters came from another era — you wore them around your waist. Glorified tinfoil. They served as a makeshift, kiss your ass goodbye hail Mary and nobody used them. These days, the fires burnt hotter and faster and your best chance for survival was outrunning the flames, or if you were extremely lucky, finding a rock cave or a ravine with water flowing in it.

Dennis was placing sensitive research microphones on trees, working on his own. There were no longer any firefighting crews, all able-bodied people defended the Crest now, and besides, the Antisis roamed the land, nobody wanted to go outside of the Crest. Dennis was stubborn, he’d do anything for FORC. Back then, he cast aside the dangers, said it was no problem. There was a massive blaze pushed by a 40-mph wind. He never had a chance.

Danielle sent out rescue crews, but they never found his body, she never got closure. They held a celebration of life ceremony in FORC. Danielle remembered that day. 2000 researchers and technicians turned out for the ceremony but she never found true peace. Dennis lingered in her mind always.

After that, it didn’t take long for all to see that Danielle was moving toward a breakdown. To counter the melancholia, she threw herself into her work like a possessed human, never taking a break and never letting go of Dennis. She never publicly grieved. She expected others to follow her work habits, she labored ungodly hours through the night, pushed her body, never exercised, ate poorly.

Danielle returned to her conversation with Karl. “Tell me what I don’t know, Karl.”

“Plants for all practical purposes can hear,” he said.

“We’ve gone through this anthropomorphic discussion before, Karl, we have to be careful of our words.”

Karl remained undeterred. “Let me remind you, Danielle, that the more concisely we can communicate with these seedlings, the greater their chances of survival.”

“Go ahead then.” She didn’t have the patience to argue with him about whether plants had a consciousness.

They promoted Karl to the Deputy Director position, Dennis’s old position. In Danielle’s mind, there was no replacing Dennis. Karl couldn’t keep up with her demands and he refused to work sixteen-hour days going over research reports and administering FORC, even if the world collapsed around them. He let her know it.

Karl held certain German sensibilities about work that his North American compatriots never understood. One is that in a world in decline, one must find joy. If civilization was going to hell in a handbasket, he’d be the last person to get depressed over it. The ability to use one’s free time at will is one of the outstanding achievements of modern society, he rationalized. He thought he could be the counterbalance in Danielle’s life, show her other things besides work. But she seemed too far removed from ordinary life anymore.

“I’ll stand by my wording of ‘hear,’ until the scientific community says otherwise,” he said.

“Okay, Karl, keep going.”

“Plants can hear caterpillars chewing; they can hear pollinators flying by, our tiny microphones pick up their infrasonic frequencies near the plants.” He pointed to a box in the corner that recorded the tree pulses.

He waited for her next comment, but it never came. She never failed to correct. The immense responsibility for the facility made him tense and nauseous but he never let on. Together they managed a billion-dollar budget. They held, at their fingertips, the best plant science in the world. The trio of Danielle, Karl, and Fernando orchestrated a consortium of two-thousand plant scientists and nursery workers, and under their watch, nurtured those five million seedlings growing out in the hills.

Karl continued, “When attacked or stressed, plants can’t run away from their enemy, but they survive by kinds of signaling. If insects eat them, they send out distress signals. They communicate over a variety of mediums: sound, hormones, electric pulses, and mycelial networks. There are others.”

Danielle stayed silent, listening this time.

“Stressed corn plants can summon wasps to kill caterpillars and most crops increase yields when they receive the right frequency. The list goes on and on.”

She interrupted him, “Karl, I understand the background, get to the clicks you were talking about, what are your readings on the frequencies?”

“They are off the charts, Danielle. Infrasonic and ultrasonic but occasionally there are some clicks in the human audible range, it’s as if they are learning to communicate in audible, a new mode for them.”

“If xylem controlled the clicks, then it must be water stress, no?” she asked.

“Maybe. I sense the plants are trying to communicate another type of,” he paused to get the correct word, “another type of stress that we are not aware of.”

Danielle thought about Karl and his dedication. There was little joy in FORC these days, yet Karl’s research breakthroughs brought her delight and it seemed like the advancements were non-stop.

Danielle knew the Shift stranded Karl in the United States for eight long years. The Shift brought about the end of air and marine travel, except for the very privileged. The German government forgot about its foreign nationals in other countries, and well, the United States collapsed. He put his best face on it, surviving in the riot-torn cities of Seattle and Portland, the food shortages, the violence, and now the militias. He saw his place in FORC, his genius lay in plant messaging and transmissions. It was uncanny, he could read the disposition of plants and he used science to ask the right questions and he got answers.

“What are we not getting? We give them everything they need,” she said. “What do you think, Fernando? You’re managing the health of these various cohorts.”

“We give them what they need, Danielle. We probe, monitor, and test the seedlings ad infinitum.”

“What then?”

“Think about it. We’ve selected stock that are super drought tolerant. These seedlings are used to living in the worst of the worst conditions. Maybe we’re babying them too much. Maybe we should stress them a little more.”

“Really?” she asked.

“These seedlings haven’t reached their full potential, not even close. My thoughts are that these seedlings might reach their full capabilities by pushing them a little.”

“Karl, what do you think?” she asked.

“Not sure. Fernando could be right. A super-efficient plant has more energy, more resources at its disposal.” Karl used a soccer analogy. “It’s kind of like putting an outstanding soccer player in a championship game, they either enhance their game and excel to their highest level, or they fade.”

“How do we know the plants are not communicating by VOCs,” she asked.

“We recognize they are interacting with volatile organic compounds along with electronic pulses and their mycelial networks. The other researchers are aware of those signals. What I am trying to get at now is audible communication. Our sensors have picked up these audible and inaudible clicks.”

“With your electrets?” she said.

Danielle and Karl were always at odds with each other on interpreting research. Danielle subconsciously took out her despair on Karl, everybody knew that except Danielle. In the end, Danielle always seems to get the last word on interpreting research.

“Correct, condenser microphones placed a few centimeters away from a cut plant can pick up distress sounds that humans can’t hear. Animals can hear these sounds though. So, we’ve got these five million seedlings talking to each other and I’m picking up their frequencies,” Karl said. He braced for an argument from Danielle. In his mind, arguing was the basis of science, a foundation of a vibrant democracy, and interpreting science was an art form, but Danielle saw it otherwise. She needed answers to questions… yesterday, and she had a research center to run. She didn’t have the luxury of time.

“What about communicating the opposite of distress? How might they transmit when they are, say, content?”

“Well, I’m glad you asked, because when plants are relaxed, they give off good acoustic sounds to each other.”

“Our seedlings give off pleasing communications to each other when they are comfortable?”

“That’s exactly what I am saying. And so, if we can record and broadcast those sounds in infrasonic over long distances, just maybe, we might attract wildlife and that might give us some sort of concrete evidence that plants can communicate in waves that other animals can hear.”

“Can we record both in infrasonic and broadcast that signal out?”

“Yes, we have the technology to do that. And if we boost the signals of our contented seedlings, perhaps some animals will pick them up and respond. It’s hypothetical, but we could see what happens.”

“Hmm set it up, I’m curious. Thanks, you two.” The senior administrator gave a rare affirmation and walked away.