Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers by Sarena Ulibarri

Author:Sarena Ulibarri [Ulibarri, Sarena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: solarpunk, climate change, optimistic science fiction, utopia, future, renewable energies
Publisher: World Weaver Press
Published: 2018-06-05T06:00:00+00:00

The Heavenly Dreams of Mechanical Trees

by Wendy Nikel

Trees were never intended to be sentient beings, or God would have created them that way, back in the Garden.

Ailanthus ponders this sometimes as the sun’s rays prickle her leaves’ tiny solar panels and the tubules of her stems absorb the afternoon’s deluge. If the Tree of Knowledge had a voice, would it have cried out to warn the Tempted? Or would it, too, have been deceived by the Serpent and the false promises falling from its golden, forked tongue? Had it spoken, might the Tree have saved its offspring? In a way, the trees’ first parents had failed them, too.

Though admittedly, Ailanthus is not a natural tree, composed of wood and leaf and bark. No, she was created by another hand, forged of copper and steel and gold, in a factory not far from the Wind Forest. Its fumes are familiar to her. As soon as they’re inhaled, they’re processed through her leaves and exhaled again in a form fresh and renewed. The humans planted her here, she and her brethren—miles and miles of eight-armed trees-that-aren’t-trees in a forest-that-isn’t-a-forest. A second Eden, created to save the world.

Whether the other trees spend their days in philosophical ponderings, Ailanthus has no way to know. Though her branches scrape theirs when the wind blows just right and their roots are irreversibly entangled, their creators gave them no means by which to communicate, so their solidarity is one of silence. Thus, Ailanthus spends her days processing the air, dreaming her dreams, and wondering what she’d say if she had the words.

Something—no, someone stirs at the edge of the forest and Ailanthus shifts her attention from the skies, from the impossible flight of black-feathered birds and the way they pick the copper from her leaves’ veins for their nests high in her cloud-closest branches.

***

“—with enough energy to power a hundred households for a hundred years in each and every tree.”

“They’re not trees.” Bita’s voice was hostile, accusatory. She knew how she sounded, but she didn’t care. She hadn’t wanted to come here anyway. The trees here cast eerie crisscrossed shadows and the wind whistling through their branches seemed a whisper of warning.

“Bita.” Aunt Gigi’s disapproval manifested itself in gradually deepening lines. Each wrinkle was unique: some longer, some thicker, some that oddly hooked themselves about along the contours of her face.

That, Bita thought, is how a tree’s branches ought to be.

“Well, they’re not trees,” Bita said. “Not real ones, anyway. The real ones were each different. Complex and magnificent. Not like these things. These aren’t even plants; they’re machines—cold and hard and ugly.”

“You know how long it took to build this wind forest? Decades. If it weren’t for these trees and the others of their kind, Earth would be a wasteland. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” Bita said, trying to keep the annoyance from her voice. Since she was small, she’d listened to her aunt’s lectures about the bark beetles whose population, unchecked in

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