Trembling With Fear 01-19-25

The Humming Sound of Trees, by Jessie Atkin

In the living room, a green stem twitched, reaching backward to make room for its brethren who needed equal time in the light for productive propagation. It was as if it were under strict instructions, though it was only fair considering everything. 

The process was repeating itself across the entirety of the room—all the rooms, in fact. In the kitchen, the walls were also moving, and were also covered in wiry stems, some ten feet long, producing small spindly-leafed plantlets at regular intervals. They moved as if in a breeze, though no outside force was needed for the natural growth to move in its own best interest.

What had once been walls were now merely supports for the immense green foliage that covered every surface that had existed before, save for the windows. Access to sunlight was, of course, in the growth’s best interest. The windows, however, were no longer a surface; they were a void. They needed no glass covering, no blinds, or shades, or curtains. Only the growth had needs, and here they had been filled, were being filled, would be filled for the duration of any future that could be predicted.

The necessities for its life were few: it needed only a star within ninety-three million miles of its location; hydrogen and oxygen for hydration; space to spread its vines and multiply; and, of course, time. And time it had taken, though less than was standard. It had gotten lucky. It had gotten more than it bargained for, but so had the planet. So had everyone.

The growth didn’t know how many of its offspring had been pruned and potted and replanted in other rooms in other buildings because the number by itself did not matter. All that mattered was that more houses, more places, had taken in its offspring, so many of its offspring, keeping the species alive across terrain the same way the growth had ensured its successful cultivation across space. Simplicity had always been the key. 

The soothing nature of its initial appearance had also been an advantage. 

While the environmental conditions of this planet had made it a suitable home, it had been the social conditions amongst the dominant native species that expedited the growth’s control of its newest world. The growth’s similarities to a diverse species of lower life forms, known at the time as “succulents”, had made the process of slipping in amongst the native beings not only simple but expeditious.

It wasn’t only the visual similarities between growth and succulent, but those that had to do with care and assistance that mattered most. Succulents, like the growth, could be ignored. For the most part, a succulent, like the growth, could take care of itself. Some water was helpful, but it came with no prescribed schedule or necessary cultivation. When the world’s dominant species did remember to look at the life willingly brought into its home, the change had already begun. Even then, there was only joy at the robust response each plant had shown in its new quarters. Offspring were replanted, regifted, restarted, and thrived. But small ceramic circles and simple square foot plots were never meant to hold the offspring of a species that did not dominate one world, but many.

The extra greenery was intended to boost mood, increase creativity, and eliminate pollutants. That’s what the growth learned, as it flourished beside the humans, as that planet’s dominant species was called. Of the three benefits succulents were said to provide, it turned out the growth was best at eliminating pollutants. Though it hardly agreed with the world’s dominant species, the humans, on what the most harmful pollutant was.

Once the real succulents began to die, once vines and leaves and evolution made themselves known, ducking into every pot and vase and garden bed, it was much too late. The growth need not reach out to be able to strangle any species so much more structurally complex than itself—only its equals, those who also depended on the star, and the hydrogen, oxygen, and space. There would be nothing left for the more complex creatures to eat, humans included, save each other, and every resource is, of course, eventually finite.

Though an experienced conqueror, this was the first time the growth had ever found a suitable home and watched said home become even more suitable over time. It was not only now the dominant species on this world, but a far better steward, it seemed, than those who had come before it. 

A breeze moved across the ground, through the air, and in the opening that once had been a window. The breeze was not necessary to move the vines, or spores, or any other piece of the growth known on this terrain as a ‘plant’. It was not needed, but it was there. It was at ease, dancing across a landscape that, like the breeze, exhaled easily, easier than it had in millennia. For, what was good for the growth was also good for this celestial body. This breeze, cool, and content, and natural, spun across a green surface that seemed to breathe, just as the lost complex creatures had. This time, though, the creature offered just as much as it took.

In the living room, as it had been known, the growth was certainly providing the most “living” the space had ever been the beneficiary of. But why have a single room, one small space, when there was an entire world? When there were so many worlds. The growth had never had reason to box itself in. There had never been a reason not to use space. There had never been any way to stop the growth, its travel, its expansion, its advancement. Though, of course, the humans had sped things along.

The breeze relaxed, a whisper in all the calm, a reminder in what often sounded only like silence that there was not emptiness. The growth was life, and the planet was too. And, in silence, a whisper can sound like a scream.