Fools Like Me
...and goodwill to men
I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree...
Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.
— Joyce Kilmer, 1915
I was dispatched to inspect Earth 2.0 after four years of training. This Earth-sized planet, in the habitable zone of the N14-Z system, turned out to be within only a half-lifetime's reach via paraluminal speeds. I was awakened by my automaton 3 days out from orbit injection, so by the time of atmospheric entry I was 100% physiologic again.
Descent was nominal. I had been trained well. The maps had been accurate, too, so I targeted a heavily wooded subcontinent that had open swaths dividing it. Seeing it from above, I imagined it as some type of highway system connecting all the wooded areas. The more I followed the linear patterns, the more I realized one could probably connect the entire planet with them.
I landed on one such open area, and after an hour of xeno-acclimation, as per the protocol that had been established, I was ready to disembark from my vehicle. After finally having boots on the ground, finally out in this new world, I took a deep breath. All seemed well.
It had been a long time since I had seen green, but what lay around me was a verdant area of angled flora, rising dozens of meters into the blue sky. Green is hardwired into the human brain. It's in our DNA. Its electromagnetic spectrum frequency soothes the mind. I felt at peace here. As long as there was green, I'd be OK.
The trees' angulations made them look like strings of connected Ws, Ms, and Xs. White puffy clouds dotted blue skies above the horizon. As long as the sky was blue, I'd be OK. Blue and white with green — another scheme we're hardwired for.
I was home — it was the first thing I thought. I thought I had thought it; it was more like the thought had been presented to me.
But I knew I wasn't home, really. Still, I don't know if a more Earthly welcome could have been presented to me, had it been scripted and fed into some planet-making machine.
The trees were slightly different, even a little "off," but I could get used to that. They were very thick, yet twiggy, with lots of irregular features in the bark. But as long as they were green, I'd be OK. As long as they were emerald, celadon, chartreuse, jade, mint, olive, myrtle, citron, or harlequin, I'd be OK. There were all of these hues within the green spectrum, but also one more, of a greenish shade unknown to my Earth. I realized I had the distinctive honor, bestowed upon me, of naming it myself.
Remy. I named this unique tree's green "Remy." Remy-green, like the freshly cut oars hewn for rowing, still a bit green when first striking the blue waters.
I watched, now, the "slightly off" aspects of the flying insect-like creatures, minding their own business in the variegated flowers and the green trees. I followed one particularly colorful one and wondered about mandibles, venom, stingers, and yet-to-be-discovered contrivances of defense. From childhood Earth had trained me well, so I was cautious. This tiny beast fluttered to the Remy-green tree in particular.
The tree, my favorite, so far, stood with angled branches as if it were waiting patiently for something, its arms akimbo. The markings and knots on its "bark" fired up my mind's pareidolia, and I imagined a strange alien face on it. I scanned laterally across the trees to the left and right, and found similar markings. The more I studied them, the more discrete faces seemed to emerge. Was this some sort of welcoming committee, I joked to myself. And was that even funny? Or a premonition?
Pareidolia is well-established in the space program. It is the reason we see a "Man in the Moon," or that "face" in that rocky pyramid on Mars. I looked up and saw the giraffes and lobsters in the billowed clouds. This aptitude figured prominently in Man's survival, expressly for the advantage of recognizing faces or remembering the appearances of danger. Recognition is the ignition for interaction; interaction is the fuel for society.
Pareidolia had served us well.
Still, these visages in the bark were almost spot-on for faces. By looking deeply into them I could almost know what such faces might be thinking.
And then I heard them.
It was a low rumble at first, in frequencies so deep it was hard for me to echolocate any discrete origin. But the sounds began climbing up the scales until it was obvious they were coming from these "face-trees."
I sat on a soft mound of dirt and just watched and listened. And I saw things. Were lip-like thin shelves of bark moving? I re-checked my chromagraphic analyzer, and there was nothing in the air, hallucinogenic or otherwise, except oxygen, nitrogen, and some trace elements.
My first tree of scrutiny, the Remy-green tree, began to get louder, out-singing (singing?) the others. Then, one of its akimbo branches extended, its terminal part flexing upward and inward, as if to wave me toward it.
The entire soundscape began to come together in unison, as if I were being welcomed into some planetary rite of passage.
I rose and approached the tree. The branches on the other trees began to shake in place, adding a percussive element to the chorale. I got close enough to its Remy-green to touch it, but I hesitated. Again, an abundance of Earth caution discouraged me from jumping right into the milieu of another life form. Was this flora? Fauna? Something altogether different? Something altogether friendly?
Was it beckoning me or warning me? Welcoming me or condemning me?
I needn't have anguished so. It finally extended a branch and touched me on the top of my head. That's when I heard every tree on the planet, the entire Earth 2.0 choir, singing heavenly out to the lightyears in an explosive array of sinusoidal, electromagnetic vectors.
I needed not be anywhere else again.
I signed out of my explorer's datalog, and I began my new adventure. I was changed. I was changing. I was being changed.
I would not be the last man from Earth 1 to come to Earth 2. I had no idea how long had passed before I saw men and women come here again. By my reckoning, it would have been about another 30 more years or so for the first Earth to revisit the second. When they did, this time it was with five explorers on a pre-colonization mission. They had come with all of my notes, a voluminous trove that ended abruptly. Indeed, my observations were historical records. And when they had stopped, so suddenly, that was historical as well — and the motivation to find out why.
Of the five interworld travelers, one of them had a personal stake in it, as he was my son.
My son, Remy.
I loved him dearly, but — still — I needed not be anywhere else.
Based on my data, they had landed on the same patch of clearance and found the environment as inviting as I had. They found the same contingent of welcoming "trees," and they fell for the pareidolia ignited in their mind's eye. They had been warned by my observations, and so they were wary of reading too much into it. But Remy was troubled.
He eyed one particular tree, standing among the others — what he couldn't know was of an eponymous shade of green. It stood proudly, as if were some member-in-good-standing, with interesting marks and knots. He didn't fight the pareidolia. Instead he embraced its call.
"Dad?"
The branch's touch was re-enacted, the connection made again, and the new evolution of Man had begun, as the official welcome to Earth 2. Remy embraced his father, even if it was a spiritual act carried by the preternatural fluids imbued within the cellulose and fibers of trees — whose bark imperfections invoked the faces of all visitors who had come before.
Remy and his father saw their entire new world before them. They felt every leaf, branch, trunk, and root; swam in its water table; and tasted its life. Their euphoria was a grasp of an entire network of mycelial synergy. They partook in philosophy, mathematics, theology, and a thousand other sciences and arts.
The knowledge — and the assimilation thereof — went far beyond the roots and the synapsed consortium so realized; it extended to the very minerals that held the data of worlds and stars born, universe-sown, and reborn. They also partook in something the first Earth had never been able to achieve.
They had peace on Earth.