The Trees

We were trying to save the world. That sounds noble, right?
It all started with an invitation through the university mail system to meet with Doctor Winifred Paulson, a famous climatologist.

I’m a botanist, why would a climatologist want to meet me?
I didn’t want to second guess the invitation. Maybe this was a chance to actually contribute to one of those well-funded programs I always heard about but never got a chance to join.
Doctor Paulson’s lab was everything I had ever imagined. Rows of computers, whiteboards covered with calculations, and -Oh my God – the space. I was used to working in a hundred square feet. My only workspace was a table overflowing with plant cuttings and spore samples. I stood, stunned, at the sight of a cutting edge lab that was at least five times the size of my own.
“Doctor Stephenson! I’m so happy you could make it.”
Doctor Paulson was a short, broad woman who reminded me of my grandmother. Her gray hair with streaks of white running through it was pulled into a severe bun atop her head. Beneath her white lab coat she wore a simple blue dress and comfortable black loafers. The one hint of non-academic style was the neon pink cats-eye glasses balancing on the tip of her nose.
“George, please.” I shook her proffered hand.
“George, the reason I’ve asked you here… please sit,” she pointed to a metal stool.
“The climate is in danger. I think any reasonable person can agree with that statement. We battled the hole in the ozone layer and won; of course you’re probably too young to remember that.”
“I’m not as young as I look, ma’am.”
She gave a small snort and pulled up another stool to sit across from me.
“Anyway, when science is leveraged correctly, there isn’t any problem we cannot solve. The global temperature has risen over two degrees in the last hundred years of industrialization and since the 1980s, it has only accelerated the pace. The North Atlantic current is slowing in response to desalination, weather has become more violent and unpredictable, and desertification is spreading at a record pace. My team has been studying these problems for over a decade and I think you can help us.”
“Me? I’m just a botanist. I graft plants trying to make a better petunia. I don’t think I can contribute anything to a global fight like you’re talking about.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. I read your paper on genetically engineered plants, sheer genius. It’s the next level beyond grafting and GMOs. You don’t just alter existing plant cells but create entirely new cells from scratch. I believe it has the potential to be world-altering.”
“I’m years from the actual implementation of those theories.”
“With your current funding and resources, yes, but I have recently been given access to quite substantial resources.”
“How substantial?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Let’s just say that the President is obsessed with the environment. He wants to be the man who saves the world and my team is one of a handful who have received what amounts to a blank check to make that happen during his administration.”
The timeline was impossible. My theories possessed no practical footing. There was no way we could pull off what she was suggesting.
Of course, I said yes.
Three years. I had three years to produce the miracle that Winifred demanded. The first year was a whirlwind, procuring cutting-edge equipment and collaborating with some of the most brilliant minds in the field. To say it was a heady feeling to have access to material and personnel that I had always assumed would be beyond my grasp would be an understatement. That buoyant feeling soon evaporated as failure upon failure stacked up.
My lab was filled with rejected samples, withered cell cultures, and pathetic plant species that were only fit for the incinerator.
Winifred’s other specialists created amazing new systems of cloud seeding to bring rain to drought stricken areas, and processes to remove toxins from soil but my project was still stuck on the starting blocks. I dreamed of a super tree, a plant that grew faster than bamboo, needed less water than a Snake Plant, and produced more oxygen than a Peace Lily.
The best specimen after two years of work was a thin bamboo-like plant having short lived flowers, but it was too fragile in drought conditions. It was nowhere near what I needed. The addition of the genetic characteristics of the Bugleweed fixed that problem and made it darn near unkillable, but it was still missing something. The plant just wasn’t growing aggressively enough, it wasn’t sufficiently adaptable.
Then came that fateful day, thirty months into the project when I tried a wild, some would say hare-brained, idea.
“Winifred,” I barged into the project manager’s office.
“I did it. It works.”
Doctor Paulson looked up from the report she was reading and her eyes widened. I can’t say I blamed her reaction, my hair was wild, my eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep and I was in the same clothes I had been wearing for the last four days. I did not put forth the appearance of a professional scientist.
“What have you done, George?”
I can’t fault the tone of her voice, the project had racked up nothing but failures and dead ends for over two years. I thrust the pot I was carrying toward her and thumped it down on her desk. The plastic pot was filled with desert soil. In the center was a twelve inch tall, reddish, woody stalk covered with dark green sword-shaped leaves with thick, red veins.
Doctor Paulston leaned forward and examined the plant with a critical eye.
“It’s very pretty, but what exactly am I looking at?”
“I call it Salvator sempervirens, the Savior Plant. It fits all the criteria. It tolerates little to no water, is evergreen, produces more oxygen than any other plant and grows faster than bamboo.”
“Impressive. How old is this specimen?”
My cheeks hurt from the manic smile that split my face. I could barely contain myself waiting to see her reaction.
“This seedling sprouted six hours ago.”
“Six…” Her mouth dropped open and she leaned in close to my creation, studying it minutely.
“The growth rate is 0.5 millimeters per minute until the plant reaches maturity.”
“Oh my God, I can see new leaves sprouting, it’s like watching a time-lapse film. This is a….wait, is there a second seed?” She pointed at a small green shoot poking through the soil near the edge of the pot.
“Nope, they are rhizomatous. The size of this pot will allow this plant to only produce one offspring but in the wild, I expect them to spread across several acres per plant. We can reforest an area in a matter of months rather than years and the increased oxygen production will offset CO2 induced global warming within a decade.”
“You’re a genius! This is why I knew you’d be a perfect addition to this project.”
She looked me over with frank appraisal and then focused on the Savior Plant again.
“I want all your work on this so I can review it and prepare a presentation for the President.”
“I need a little more time to study the plant’s propagation and ways to control it but sure, I’ll send you what I have.”
I should never have trusted her. I assumed that Doctor Paulson was an earnest, fellow scientist who would adhere to the scientific method and reward my labor. Little did I know that she had reached her pinnacle of fame by absconding with the work of others.
I and two other members of the project were dismissed from the university less than a month later, the reason given was budgetary.
I saw nothing sinister in it. Sure, I was disappointed at the loss of a lucrative position but the lack of news on my Savior Tree project led me to assume that the President’s administration had not considered it a viable path forward – then, three weeks later, the press conference aired.
The President went on live television with Doctor Paulson by his side to praise the program she was heading that would save not only the United States, but the entire planet. He applauded her new technique for bringing rainfall to drought areas and the hybrid plant she had cultivated to not only reforest depleted areas but also bring vegetation to the most inhospitable environments. There was talk about awarding her the Medal of Freedom.
I threw the nearest object, a small bust of Carl Linnaeus, and smashed a hole into my television.
How could she do this to me?
Of course, I called the University but they said there was no record of my having been on her staff. The White House switchboard took my information and promised that someone would get back to me – they never did. Every avenue I could think of led to a dead end. There was no connection between Doctor Paulson and me to be found anywhere. The research papers she presented were all attributed to her with no mention of my input. I was shut out as if I had never existed.
“At least you know,” I said to the pair of six-foot Savior Plants still living in their small pot in the corner of my apartment.
The leaves rustled and I swear the plants nodded. It was unnerving, but it was probably just my anthropomorphizing from its agitated state.
Needless to say, the President won reelection by a landslide.
Over the next year, Savior Plants were seeded across the American west, the Amazon, Europe, Australia and even in the Saharan desert. Hundreds of thousands of seedlings distributed around the globe. The economic windfall for the country was incredible. The new cloud seeding technology was a lucrative side business, ensuring that existing farmland and the new Savior Plant groves would receive all they needed to prosper.
Boy, did they prosper.
Towering forests of the plants, hundreds of feet tall, covered every inch of available soil where they were seeded. Within the first year any territory that had been seeded was covered by a lush forest of red and green plants.
Unfortunately no one ever learned the most important facts about them before seeding the planet.
Nature has a habit of filling its environment to the capacity of that environment to support the life present. The Savior Plant could exist anywhere, on almost no resources. Nothing could stop it from spreading beyond the point where it began.
Forestry services tried treating it like bamboo and cut the plants but they just grew back, faster than before. They attempted to sever the rizhomes to block their spread. The plants sent out more subterranean tendrils. Walls, gullies, waterways, even steel barriers did not stop the spread of the Savior Plant. It was like the plant could out think its human opponents and devise ways to defeat any barrier we placed in their way.
When the first town was overrun by Savior Plants and every building leveled by the green menace the government finally came knocking.
I answered the door on the fourth booming knock and there she stood, Doctor Paulson. She looked as harried and disheveled as I had on the day she stole my research. Flanking her were two large men in the dark suit worn by so many in government service.
“Hello, George.”
I tried to slam the door but a hand large enough to palm a basketball stopped it before it could close.
“Please, George, we need your help.”
“Funny that. Why would you want the help of someone who was never involved in your project? Whatever. I can’t stop you. Come in.”
I stalked across my tiny living room and sat on the couch.
After a moment’s hesitation and a long, nervous stare at the pair of Savior Plants, Doctor Paulson settled in the chair next to the plants. Her goons remained near the door.
“You know what’s happening out there. We need your advice on how to control the Savior Plants.”
“I thought you created them? Why don’t you solve the problem?”
“Cut the shit, George. I’ve told the President the truth, that’s why I’m here. I’m out of my depth. You’re the only one who can stop these things from taking over the entire planet.”
“I can’t.”
She did a double-take and looked at her escort before returning her bloodshot gaze to me.
“What do you mean can’t? If it’s a matter of money or recognition, I guarantee that you’ll get whatever you want.”
“You stupid woman, in your race for fame and fortune you didn’t let me finish my research. I could have told you this would happen if you had just waited a few months. I don’t have the lab space anymore but I do have a specimen and I’ve continued studying my creation since you stole it from me. I created them to be adaptable, to exist in any environment. I took a risk when I created them and, well, it’s kind of ironic what’s happening now.”
“George, we’ll give you whatever you need. Every scientist on the planet can be at your disposal, with unlimited funds…”
“You don’t get it, do you?” I closed my eyes in defeat and sighed.
“The reason you can’t beat these things and that they are striving to conquer the world is that they are us.”
Her expression betrayed her utter lack of comprehension.
“I couldn’t make them tough enough no matter how many plant genes I spliced and rearranged. A single plant just isn’t suited to conquering any environment. Only one creature in all history has managed to adapt to any environment on the planet and not only survive, but thrive.”
She shook her head, still clueless.
“You still don’t get it? Humans! I used Human DNA, my own in fact. I combined the best traits of our genetic code with theirs. I took the parts that allow us to adapt and overcome any obstacle and married that to all the plant traits they already had. It’s the perfect organism. It can live anywhere. It spreads in a way that is uncontrollable and, here’s the kicker – you really should have let me continue working – it has evolved an intelligence.”
“That’s insane.”
“Yeah, it was. But I was desperate so I cheated nature and made this monster. You, however, let the genie out of the bottle. Hell, you not only let it out, you went out of your way to help it. The more it spreads, the smarter it gets and like any Human, the more of them there are, the more it desires land and resources for itself. We are in its way now. It’s spreading so fast that you’ll never be able to stop it short of nuking the entire world and killing every Human and plant on it.”
Doctor Paulson’s face drained of color. She finally understood.
She rose without another word and walked unsteadily to the door. As her escort opened the door I heard a rustling and everyone turned to see the Savior Plant waving farewell to them. They fairly ran from the room as my manic laughter finally bubbled to the surface.
I walked over to my Savior Plant and spritzed it with water. I could only hope that they would remember who made them and treat me kindly when they finally came for us all.