The Crest
Chapter 32: Arboreal Intelligence

The next morning the team met in Danielle’s office. “What’s the damage report?” she asked.

Fernando broke the bad news. “We’ve lost twenty percent of our nursery trees with the heat dome and the hail. That’s almost a million trees.”

“Damn, we’re doing everything right and we are still fucking losing. I don’t know what else we can do, Fernando.”

“Not much we can do. Just have to move the rest of the stock from the greenhouse out into the nursery. With a little luck, we can begin to outplant into the hills in six months.”

“God, I pray we can.”

“We need to put microchips in them of course.”

“Really. Can’t we avoid that?”

“That’s the only way we can monitor them, Danielle. Remember the SupSeq project, right?” Fernando used the acronym SupSeq which stood for the Super-Sequesterer Reforestation Project.

“Of course, we inherited that damn thing. What became of it.”

“Long story.”

“Give me the Reader’s Digest version.”

“Well, we received the SupSeq project from the University of California Berkeley, just before they fell to the Antisis, but it in fact was a Department of Defense funded project.”

“I know the DOD funded all kinds of crazy research and called it national defense.”

“Right, well years before the government of California collapsed it tried its best to reforest the hills destroyed from the Shift. Millions of acres burned up or diseased. The state back then, launched SupSeq, and the UC Berkeley researchers created trees that could sequester ten times more carbon than a normal tree. The government planted these secretly and they didn’t tell anyone where they were because they knew the wackos would come and chop them down.”

“Yea, so we’re still tracking SupSeq, right?”

“Correct.”

“So how is it doing?”

“Well, we started off with a million trees and now we’re down to about 850,000.”

“You mean those bastards have cut 150,000 of the Berkeley trees?”

“Yep, but getting back to the microchip discussion. The government put microchips in the trees so that they could be monitored. They could determine whether the trees were still living. Now, I check the readings once a week on my computer. Once they’re cut, a little light on a map blinks off and on. That’s how I know they’re dead.”

“I thought the location of these trees was supposed to be top secret. I mean the DOD funded this as a top-secret climate defense strategy.”

“It is top secret except the researchers who developed these genetically modified carbon super extractors trees put a gene into the trees that made the trees glow slightly at night.”

“You’re kidding me. Why did they do that?”

“So, they could track them more easily, replace out which ones were theirs. The glowing is not detectable to the naked eye mind you, but the problem is that anyone with a pair of night vision goggles can spot these trees at night. That’s how the bounty hunters did it. They hunted them down at night.”

“Fucking DOD in their infinite wisdom. They always funded uncontrolled shit like this.”

“They were cutting about fifty a day. Remember, the Antisis hired five bounty hunters to cut them down. Paid them well. They’re not really affiliated with Antisis outside of the fact that they’re contractors.”

“I thought we got rid of these guys?”

“We did, finally. We used booby traps, land mines, and cameras to get them.

“That’s the world we’ve come to, putting land mines around trees to protect them. God help us.”

“That’s why when we outplant these seedlings from the nursery, it’s important to put chips in them. It will allow us to see trends in mortality. We can see if there is any disease or stressor or human hunting them down.”

“I guess you’re right, Fernando,” Danielle said wearily. She turned to her other director.

“What have you got for me, Karl?”

“I’ve discovered something. We’ve got some new recordings. They’re learning,” Karl said.

“What are you talking about?” Danielle asked, typically cautious of Karl with his big announcements.

“We think the larger trees are communicating in another way, we think it’s radiotelegraphy.”

“Explain,” Danielle said, not sure how to interpret the radio telegraphy part.

“I believe they’ve tapped into radiotelegraphy. I can’t explain how, and it’s just a hypothesis at this point.”

“Keep going.”

Karl switched on the radio. “I’ve put it on an AM station. If you wait, you will hear a Morse Code being sent out. It’s repeating.”

They listened and after a while they heard Morse Code coming out of the radio. Dit, dit, dah, dah, dit, dit, dit, dah, dah, dah… It repeated.

“It’s a series of radio wave pulses of two different lengths “dots” and “dashes”, which spell out text messages.”

“How do they transmit, I mean there has to be some sort of transmitting device, no?”

“All you need is a crude spark gap transmitter. A spark-gap transmitter generates radio waves through an electric spark.”

“But how do they work?”

“They are easy to build. Basically, you need batteries or a power source, a key to transmit, a coil of some sort, and an antenna.”

Danielle thought of her previous meeting with NOPSC and their research at the Murrelet research station. She remembered their research transmitting electric pulses from tree top to tree top. She recollected the idea that an old wildlife radio tag sitting in a tree could be activated with a tree’s electric current. It was mind-blowing. Radio transmitters for birds and mammals were cheap and came in a variety of sizes. They made them small so that they didn’t interfere with the animal’s ability to move. And if a bird with a transmitter died up in a tree or it simply fell off, there it stayed.

“So, you’re saying our trees are acting like transmitters to send signals to humans?” Danielle asked.

“First of all, some of the science is there. Plants generate electricity, and we have positively detected electric pulses coming from the old growth ‘mother’ trees in that area. But you are correct, we have no empirical evidence one way or the other that trees can interact with radio waves. I’m speculating now so bear with me while I think this out.”

Karl took a breath. “It is plausible that if a tree can interact with an old wildlife transmitter, or a steel building, or post, which they regularly do; then there is a chance that they could receive and transmit radio waves. Often the roots of trees accumulate metals like gold, silver and copper.”

“But transmitting, Karl, that is the key. Transmitting. You are on to two different and unsubstantiated theories here; first that plants receive radio waves and interpret them; and second that plants transmit through radio. Pretty much beyond our knowledge base at this point.”

“I don’t know how they transmit. I’ve suggested a crude telegraphy setup. Spark transmitters are used to produce electronic pulses that come across as radio signals. In the old days, the operator tapped on a telegraph key which turned the transmitter on and off to produce pulses over the radio waves that spelled out audible messages in Morse code.”

“Morse Code, really?” she asked.

“Just listen to the radio for yourselves.”

They listened to the audible beeps on the portable radio.

“Spark gap transmitters produce damped waves that interfere with radio waves. The sender hits the telegraph key, which turns the radio transmitter on and off, producing the pulses of dots and dashes you just heard. The receiver just needs a radio.”

“I get it, Karl, but how do we know that these are not ham radio operators outside the Crest? Hell, they’re more than likely Antisis sympathizers operating inside the Crest.”

“Could be, Danielle. Radiotelegraphy uses a narrow frequency bandwidth, a person can hear 20Hz-20KHz but humans can’t hear radio waves, they hear sound waves. The transmitter takes the radio waves and converts them to sound waves within the range of our human hearing, which is why you can listen to your favorite music on the radio. A radio receives electromagnetic radio waves and converts them to mechanical vibrations for humans to hear.”

Danielle grew frustrated. “You’ve explained radio well, Karl, but you haven’t mentioned what and how trees or whoever are using it.”

“Science is often creativity in disguise. I suggest that the large-sized trees might be sending these radio waves out because of two things. First off, it takes a great deal of energy from the seedlings to produce a series of audible clicks and then they dissipate. They stop because they run out of energy. But the mother trees have the electric energy built up in their vascular system and they’ve taken it to another level, by picking up Morse Code.”

“You’re suggesting now a higher intelligence in trees, that they can learn?” Danielle said, standing with her arms crossed.

“I’m not suggesting that at all. I’m alluding to a very common phenomenon in the natural world and that is called mimicry. Animals and insects mimic sounds in nature all the time. Perhaps sending out Morse Code as I mentioned is mimicry. Let me play something for you. This is a recording of the audible clicking coming off the seedlings in the nursery.” He played a short recording with a series of audible clicks in a pattern. After five seconds the clicks stopped.

“The clicks were in a pattern when they stopped. They stopped because the seedlings cannot produce enough energy to keep them going. If you notice, the first five seconds was a pattern.”

Danielle sat in her chair listening, wondering where this was leading.

“Now, I’ve recorded the Morse Code from the radio and matched it with the audible clicking patterns and here is what we get.”

They listened to the clicks and the telegraphy from the recording. The clicks stopped after five seconds but the Morse Code continued.

dit, dit, dah, dit, dit, dah, dit, dit, dah

“The patterns from the two are similar.”

Danielle sat in her chair, unconvinced. “I’m trying hard to believe you, Karl, but I need proof that your so-called radio telegraphy is coming from trees.”

“I’ll get you that proof, Danielle. As we say in Germany, Das Schönste, was wir erleben können, ist das Geheimnisvolle. The most beautiful thing we can experience is a mystery."