Chapter 9 Hazel #2
She runs a hand over the broken circuit.
One or two more days and it’ll be done. She’s not sure what happens then, but she’s still wary of CHARL1E and doesn’t have enough oxygen to return to the Hab Dome, so she’s hopeful she can stay here.
It’s not out of the question: The Tinys seem unable to touch Tree’s circuits, either out of respect or because their programming prevents it, so they might keep Hazel here for maintenance.
Better prove she’s good at it. She takes up the soldering iron. Let us begin.
She works in silence, mulling over the Eikos Muthos.
It’s divided into three sections, covering the main centuries-long phases of Project Kairos, a history comprised of lab notes and epistles.
Even though she’s keeping the book a secret from the Tinys, the inscription from its original owner lets her know it was meant to come to her: For the Forward Traveller, should it come to this.
I have torn out pages so this is safe for you to read.
Keep my brother in check. Trust CHARL1E, have patience for the Tinys, and always listen to Tree—even when none of them are making sense.
Perhaps avoid letting them know I’ve given this to you.
Good luck. Lilith. That the Eikos Muthos belonged to a woman killed in an accident Hazel caused only makes her feel worse for all the misunderstandings she’s had about Station C, and she’s begun to feel as if fixing Tree might not only bring the Tinys around again, but help Hazel start atoning for the damage she’s caused.
The book’s a mess: Station C’s history interspersed with the daily activities of the Keepers who wrote it, semireligious verses, and a whopping ninety-six parables.
There’s The Parable Of The Unwary Coder And The Backup File; The Man Who Replied-All; The Woman Who Did Not Beta Test …
Hazel’s skipped quite a few, though The Sage Who Turned It Off And On Again entertained her more than she’d expected.
Likewise, The Epistles Of The Lovers was deeply moving, an almost-complete collection of letters sent during a decade-long plague between a man confined in the Workshop Dome and his husband quarantined in Tree.
But it’s the opening Euangelion Of The Mirrors that Hazel most enjoys.
Many years hence, when the world will be knee-deep in ocean and blistering from fire, five hundred and forty-three broad-minded scientists will nurture Project Kairos.
They will build Station C, a sustainable laboratory, to house endeavours aimed at altering the tides of destr]uction.
There, they shall eat, sleep, and work to unlock the secrets of revival.
But this research will take many years and the sky will breathe fearsome storms upon them that shall fell every tree, until but one remains.
For in their early Green-Fingered Generations, the broad-minded scientists shall invent pretty-voiced Tree, a chimera descendant of extinct colossal forests.
Pretty-voiced Tree will inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen, but she shall suck so many nutrients from the ground in fuel, and so acidify the soil, that there can only ever be one of her …
Hazel’s day starts to go wrong around lunchtime, when Robin appears with a bowl of something approximating pad thai, a clump of slimy noodles bobbing in the middle.
Robin stalks off, doing self-maintenance as it waits for the empty bowl.
It releases a slim spout in its sternum, which dispenses drops of oil that it applies to a troublesome axel.
Tinys have many moving parts, and they work constantly to keep themselves in minimum-squeaking order, though the results are variable—particularly in Robin’s case.
‘You know, I’m nearly there with the circuit,’ Hazel says. For once, Robin looks up. ‘Yeah, you’ll get fixed soon. Will you forgive me then?’
Robin shrugs.
‘That’s fair. Though, honestly I’m nervous about what happens when I turn this circuit on. Is Tree going to burst into life like a merry-go-round?’
Robin stops greasing its wheel and nods.
‘Stands to reason that what makes me nervous makes you excited,’ she says, maintaining her new habit of accounting for the Tinys’ feelings.
Robin takes her empty bowl with a bit less venom than this morning.
‘I need a little walk. Can I come down with you?’
Rolling its lenses, Robin nods. If you have to.
They take the elevator, honeycomb cells flicking past as they clank through the dark towards the Tinys’ altar.
And so the middle Steel-Fingered Generations shall come around; marked by terrible airborne pestilences that will turn their pink lungs black, and their grey brains bloody; and which they will defeat by erecting airlocks, redirecting the oxygen from Tree into the habitation domes, and using biosuits to traverse the outside.
Dwindling and grieving, they shall create the helpful-handed Tinys …
On the ground, Hazel unlocks the elevator gate and walks towards the table of oil lamps and votives that twinkle twenty-four hours a day.
Until she found the Eikos Muthos, she’d called Tree ‘the tree’ or ‘a tree,’ causing any nearby Tinys to stick their tails straight out and spin on the spot.
Now she understands that it’s just ‘Tree,’ but if she let on, the Tinys might guess she’s got hold of the Eikos Muthos and confiscate it.
Handing the empty bowl to another Tiny, Robin trundles to the altar, the flames wavering as it clasps its hands and arches its tail over its body until fingers meet tail-tip.
Other nearby Tinys hold their tails perpendicular to the floor, threatening to spin if Hazel gets any closer.
She holds her hands up, saying, ‘It’s OK, I’m just having a walk,’ and circles the altar from a distance.
Little changes in Tree and there’s only a limited amount of walking she can do, but there’s always something to watch here.
The altar is made from ancient saplings woven into a low table, the bark worn away by centuries of reverent Tiny touches, revealing a jigsaw of oak, bamboo, kapok, and baobab.
Curios are arranged over it in the almost-circular shape of Tree’s trunk: an empty snail shell, a bird’s-wing humerus, a mouse skull, three bovine molars, a leaf skeleton …
In the centre of the almost-circle, two Tiny lenses balance glass-upwards.
A pair of amputated steel hands cover the lenses, as if they’re peeking through the fingers.
From closer and riskier inspections, Hazel has discovered the parts bear a serial number and model description: TINY MK.
1.1. A SERIES. These aren’t just parts to the Tinys, they’re organs, but the altar’s a reliquary rather than a mausoleum.
Manufactured in the failed experiment of Tree, the Tinys will only be programmed for empathy and joy, with the intent that they shall carry seeds and saplings in their bellies and disgorge them across the world, a networked community of optimism.
But the farther they shall stray, the more isolated each Tiny will become, and danger will follow—for the world shall not yet be empty, and many will be the aggressors to the broad-minded scientists.
One day in deep winter, a group of distrustful humans will attack the first and oldest Tiny.
The Tinys shall band together to retrieve their fallen comrade and return home with it on a bower made from their saplings.
In the hollow heart of Tree, the Tinys will gather and learn grief, which they will not be designed to bear.
Seeing the Tinys unable to move, or dance, or play, or lift their eyes from the ground, the broad-minded scientists will gift them a new programme—faith—knowing as they do so that once the Tinys are given a deity—their own creator, Tree—they will never again leave her side.
The Tinys will live under her comforting embrace, believing there is no need to venture forth with seeds and saplings because the deity will mend all …
Clay oil lamps cluster around either side of the altar, spreading across the floor.
As Hazel watches, Robin emerges from its reverie and picks up an extinguished lamp.
It releases its sternum oil spout, filling the lamp and relighting it from a neighbouring flame.
Robin pauses before putting it back, praying perhaps that Tree’s circuits will be finished today and its hand will be fixed, or for the half-mended Tinys suspended in the Keepers’ Treehouse.
It’s never occurred to Hazel before, but it isn’t unusual to light candles for people who are sick or deceased—and the broken Tinys in the Treehouse are certainly one or the other.
My parents had candles.
That sudden, overwhelming memory is the moment things fall apart.
The church, the funeral, the day Hazel wore the only black dress that fitted over her neck brace.
She’d downed her codeine prescription an hour early because she couldn’t take the stress of having to talk to everyone, and they all kept lying about how well she looked, unable meet her eyes when they said, ‘Grief suits you.’ Ridiculous, like she’d picked grief out of her wardrobe that morning, tested it in the mirror, and decided, ‘Yeah, this looks good.’ All the while, their gazes drifted to the bruising at her neckline.
Miss Brandt, you have a hairline fracture in your atlas axis vertebra; must wear a cervical collar for ten weeks; vocal cord paralysis, or should I say paresis—
The back of Hazel’s neck aches, as if someone’s pinching the skin, but when she looks, no one’s there, and the sensation sticks to her as she turns.