Apple Core [Short Story]

[Seraph]

Apple Core
by Aaron J Fagan

It gets claustrophobic sometimes, living inside a bubble.  Sometimes it feels like everything is closing in on me, collapsing, crushing me under the weight of the place and that Plasteel dome.  The worst part is that there's nothing you can do about it.  You can't go outside, because the outside was a barren wasteland.  You couldn't even survive a minute out there without being burned alive by the wicked sun.  It has been that way as long as anyone can remember, yet you still feel claustrophobic sometimes.  

Sometimes, people go mad from it and try to break out of it, which is of course completely suicidal.  I saw it once, and it was a truly pathetic sight.  The poor deranged man was there beating his fists against the Bay Doors where the maintenance workers, who have to wear exosuits to protect them from the burning, are sent out to make repair in and keep up the Sphere.  He was screaming to let him out, that he couldn't take it anymore, and that he had to get out.  They call it Escape Syndrome; an overwhelming need to get outside.  Someone made it once, I think.  They've kept a closer watch since then.  People don't get out anymore.  They still try, but iPol always catches them.  I think it's a lot more common than anyone will admit, but the Company keeps mum about it.  So no one really knows how many there have been.  Not that it really matters, as all it takes is to administer the Reeducation, and they are once again fully functioning employees.  

It's simple really.  All they have to do is hook you up to the Neural Net and give the computer the proper commands, so that it deletes the malfunctioning components and downloads new programs to your brain.  It's no different than going to school, or training for a job.  There really is not much to it.  Routine.  It's what they do with criminals and deviants, with the ill and the psychotics; almost anything can be cured through the Reeducation.

I was researching once, and I was surprised that once we actually used to use chemicals to alter brain function, and what was called "therapy."  But I suppose we weren?t as advanced then as we are now.  We had to resort to more obtuse means of maintenance.  But then again, I read that once we also used plants and herbs, so I suppose at the time it was "cutting edge."  

I wonder what those must have been like, to have plants.  I mean, I've seen plants before, well, a tree.  An apple tree.  But I've never seen Echinacea, or eucalyptus, or any of those other herbs.  They're extinct now.  We only have archaic texts to tell us that they ever existed.  But really, how could they exist?  With the outside world as hot as it is, and as inhospitable as it is, nothing could survive.  It wasn't always that way, though.  Once there was breathable air outside, and an atmosphere to protect you from the immolating sun.  They called it the Ozone.  It doesn't exist anymore.  Apparently, we destroyed it.  I was perusing old files, and apparently, there were movements as early as the millennium to try to help the atmosphere and prevent global warming.  Sometimes I wish they had succeeded.

The Apple Tree is all that we have left.  There are no other plants but this.  Its sprawling twisted limbs growing gnarled and short, its green leaves shading the space beneath it like umbrellas that people used to use when there was such a thing as rain, and its succulent looking crimson fruit are in stark contrast the white straightness of the surrounding city.  Something about it draws my attention.  Maybe it is the vibrant display of color, maybe it is the way in which it does not grow in straight lines like the buildings, or curve smoothly like the dome above our heads.  I often go and sit under it, just looking at it.  One can't sit directly under it, of course, due to the Plexiglas shield that surrounds it.  I may not be able to touch it, but there's nothing that says you can't look at it, so I sit outside the glass for hours on end sometimes admiring.  It bewilders me that the whole of society can walk past it every day and never notice how beautiful it is.

There was an old man once, when I was a boy, a wandering tramp, broken and bedraggled, who made his home near this tree for a time.  He looked like some wise old druid, leaning on a walking stick and swathed in rags that were almost like a robe.  He pulled me aside and told me to look at this tree. "Do you see it?" he asked.  "This is the last tree on Earth.  This is last remnant of the natural world.  This is all that is left.  This one Apple Tree.  Look on and lament at the tragedy of our Mother the Earth, for we have killed her.  When I planted this tree, there were several others, scattered about to grow as they may, but one by one they have withered and died.  This tree is all that we have left.  It must not come to harm, for if we lose it, we lose our last link to a better world than this."  He then clutched at my hand, clinging to it like it were something dear to him, and handed me a seed, presumably of another apple tree.  "Plant the seed," he said. "Plant it so that something may go on.  Plant it so that Nature can endure."  I pocketed the seed and as I ran home promptly lost it.  Looking back, I wish I had taken better care of it.  I wish I'd planted it, if for no other reason than to have a tree of my own, to look at and sit under, and admire without the impediment of Plexiglas.  As it is, there is just the one.  The Company claims it for itself, and even use its fruit for their emblem, but I will always know that it is the Druid's tree.  

As an employee of the Company, I spend my days in my three foot square cubicle, doing pointless programming jobs that are most likely being echoed by at least twenty other workers.  Each of us writes a program for the operation of oxygen-distributors, or for the structural maintenance bots, and, if by chance one turns out to be more efficient or have a lower error matrix, that program will be spared from deletion and implemented in all future models, and the programmer would receive a few extra credits for lunch as his bonus.  Each time such an improvement is made, the factories recall the older models for the new ones.  In the case of consumer goods, which employees are required to purchase for themselves, the expense of the upgrades are covered by the employees.  That is Company policy.  

It is difficult to produce good work when you know that at midnight--or what they tell us is midnight, because you can never really tell--everything you've worked on for that day will be erased from the database to keep it from being a strain on the Core.  The futility of the endeavor, I think that is what drives people to madness.  It's when they can't shut off the background noise of the pointless work we do, of the programming whose only purpose is to keep us occupied, that drives them to need to escape.  They get trapped looking for a point, thy get stuck on trying to make every program perfect; to try and make everything better.  They don't realize that there is no point.  There is no point to anything we do and there is nothing we can do to change it.  Someone does get lucky now and then, and comes up with something quicker or simpler than what is out there, but in the end it means nothing.  There is no change in the routine, no difference made in the daily lives of anyone.  Maybe there was a very confused maintenance bot that would be thankful--if bots had feelings.  So in the end it doesn't mean anything, and you have to accept that if you're going to survive.  The lucky ones among us know the secret of the Nothing, and it is we few who can stay sane.

Cameron was not one of the lucky ones.  An associate of mine, he programmed heavily to obsession.  It was always a blow to him to see his work undone after having spent hours trying to perfect it, poring through old mathematical formulas and equations to find that perfect formula to make that perfect program.  He has never succeeded, but Cameron was always possessed of that spirit that some people have of almost ludicrous optimism.  Each program he wrote was going to be the one that made it, each one was going to change something, to earn him the recognition he strove for.  Each one failed him in turn, and every time in turn he would turn to another, starting again from nothing day after day.  It was that optimism that kept him going, and the occasional interventions on the part of those around him that he had to calm down and think of other things.  Our topics strode to whatever we could think of in order to distract us from our work.

"There's been another one." I told him.

"Another escapist?  I'm surprised we heard.  The Company doesn't usually like to tell us about those."

"Everyone knows they happen, so they can't just say it doesn't.  Even liars have to give a nod to the truth every now and then.  It trips people up.  Telling the truth sometimes makes the lies more believable."

I looked out the window, down onto the courtyard below, at the Apple Tree, encased as it was in its Plexiglas shell.  I watched its leaves fluttering in the artificial breeze, created by the spinning of massive industrial fans throughout the city necessary for the distribution of oxygen and the reuptake of carbon dioxide that fulfilled our basic human needs.  It was completely controlled, set on timers and to fixed amounts of oxygen, but this tree made it all look so perfectly natural.  It was getting to the time of the year when the fruit was ripening to that rich red that so stands out against the unanimous white.

"Why do they keep that thing around?" asked Cameron, following my gaze.  The grimacing expression on his face contorted his nose, already bent-looking, into something strange and indescribable, like some malformed baby bird missing its feathers, still covered in the slime of the egg.  He wiped his brow of the sweat that seemed a constant side-effect of the stress of the work environment.  "It sticks out like a sore thumb."

"I think it's beautiful.  It has color, it has life."

"So do I.  Do you think I'm beautiful?"

"That's different."

"Come here Everett, give me a kiss!"  He puckered his lips mockingly, in a way that made him even more grotesque than he'd been when he grimaced.

"Stop it!  I'm serious."

"Ok, ok, take it easy nature boy."

"It's the last fucking tree in the world!  Give it some respect!"

The apparent absurdity of my asking he give respect to a tree put an end to the conversation.  Although I felt a little foolish for the comment, it bothered me that he couldn?t see the importance of that tree.  If anything could be said to have meaning, it was that tree.  It sat there, the lone bastion of the old world, of the natural world, holding on and surviving in spite of everything mankind has done to this godforsaken place.  And to be honest, I think it's true.  If God ever existed, he's certainly gone now.  And if Jesus ever lived, then somebody lied, because he is never coming back.  That's all they ever do: lie.  They only ever lie, except when they tell you the truth to make the lies more believable.  So really in the end even the truth is a lie.

[Seraph]

I turned my eyes back to the Apple Tree, looking out from the windows of the asylum where they keep us running up hill like an army of Sisyphuses rolling our boulders up the mountain only to have them role back down again come midnight.  Ignoring the sound of the multitude of my fellow employees jabbing away at keyboards and jabbering into headsets, scribbling away at their useless formulas, I try to focus on the tree.  I examine every detail of it: the sculpture of its branches and the dance of its leaves in the wind.  But my gaze is steadily drawn upward, up that thing that reaches straight up to the top.  The Core does not move in the wind, does not branch out and twist, it has no leaves and no fruit, and it has no color.  It is a tower in the center of the biosphere we live in.  It is the center of all of our operating systems.  It is there that the Neural Net is based, and through the Core pass all commands that teach us to read, to write, to do arithmetic; all commands to teach us to operate the exosuits and perform maintenance on the Sphere; all commands to teach us to create new programs for the rationing of vitamin tablets; all commands for the distribution of oxygen and life sustenance; all commands for the Reeducation.  The Core is the center of our society.  It is everything the Apple Tree is not.

I left the Orchard at midnight with everyone else when the shift was up, but I hadn't been working for hours.  The Apple Tree, and further out, in the center of the biosphere, the Core, dominated my thoughts and my attention.  It had occurred to me the irony of our present situation.  The air we breathe is created by synthesizing oxygen and nitrogen to simulate natural air.  Having been raised on such air, no one could tell the difference, but apparently this simulation is slightly heavier than true air.   Nevertheless, it is not natural--we make it ourselves through our mastery of technology.  Once, we depended on plants like the Apple Tree for our oxygen supply, but no longer.  We destroyed the environment that kept us alive with our technology, so now we must emulate that environment with the very technology that destroyed it.  If something were to happen to the Core, we would all die.  Without the Core, the air we keep stored would not be circulated, and we would all suffocate in a matter of hours.  We claim to use technology, yet we are dependent on it.  We claim to be masters of the world, yet we are slaves to our own creation.

"What approach did you take?"  I was roused from my reverie by Cameron.

"Sorry, what was that?"

"What approach did you take?" he asked again. "On the bot program?"

"Oh, uh, standard, I guess" I responded clumsily, my mind not truly on programming.  "Just tweaking what we have now."

"We can't progress if we keep up with the same old thing.  We need new ideas, new innovations, and new ways of doing things if we are ever going to improve our situation."

It occurred to me that none of those things had ever drastically improved our situation in living memory, but I didn't say that.  I was concerned with bigger issues.

"Do you think God is dead?"  I asked.

"What?"

"Do you think that God is dead?"

"Who is that?"

"Never mind."

"Does he work for the Company?"

"I said never mind."

It was useless trying to have deep conversations with Cameron.  He had no capacity for abstract thought.  He was only concerned with that which is immediately in front of him.  Perhaps that was why he couldn't see the importance of the Apple Tree.  His tendency towards tremendous thick-headedness made him both the ideal employee and at times a very annoying friend.  Obeying without question, Cameron posed no threat to the order that the Company so valued.  Only dimly aware that Escape Syndrome even existed, there was little chance that he would succumb to it.  No, rather Cameron was one whose peace of mind depended on the system working properly.  It was known to his friends that he spent his time at his Company Apartment compulsively checking for new software additions to any systems, for updates required or even presented as optional by the Company, for any changes in rationing or any change in anything whatever.  Afraid that he would lagging behind in either productivity or social awareness, he would immediately use up any and all of his credits, to the expense of his proper nutrition, in the case of an available update.  Few of us were aware that his fanatical devotion to the Company and to the system might be his most dangerous quality, for I was one of the only people to have seen the effect his mania had on him.  

I remember one such occasion, when the Company had announced their new operating system.  It was not yet listed as a mandatory purchase, but for Cameron, all updates were mandatory.  I stopped by at his apartment with the intention of discussing to discuss whether the marginal benefit of the expansion was worth the cost of the upgrade.  I hadn't announced my arrival beforehand.  It was easy enough to do, to merely open up a channel in the Neural Net between his apartment and mine and send him a message.  It was quite commonplace for meetings to be arranged in this way, but for whatever reason, I was frequently compelled to go over such details in person.  When such details could not be arranged in person, I would not bother arranging them at all, and would simply appear.  I had done this to Cameron on several occasions before, with various results, but this time was different.  I announced my arrival on the VidScreen, using the intercom connected to his apartment, but received no answer.  The VidScreen showed nothing but a blank wall and some scattered papers and documents on a table.  I asked again, and still there was no answer, but the receptionist had assured me he had not left the building in days, which was odd in itself.  I tried the door, and found it unlocked.  I peeked my head inside and called out, but heard no answer.  I stepped over the threshold and into his abode, and began looking around.  In the entry way was a table covered in old paper files that Cameron was apparently using to try and work out some formula for a program he had been attempting at the Orchard and failed at.  His computer was on, displaying an e-notification that the Company had released the OS ˆ' Cheetah.  As I stepped into the bedroom, I was greeted by the letter ˆ' up on the wall.  It looked like it had been scraped out of the wall with the flat of a knife.  There were chips of drywall on the bed and the floor, and in a crumpled heap, lay Cameron.  He was filthy, in clothes that seemed to have been worn for days on end, which were now thoroughly yellowed with sweat.  He was pallid and feverish, and mumbling something about his reputation.  Possessed of insufficient funds to buy the new operating system, Cameron had suffered a nervous breakdown.  He refused to be taken to Reeducation, however, and at the mention of it he could be seen to visibly pull himself together.  Apparently it was a mark of shame to him, of weakness to be taken to Reeducation.  

I don't know why I talked to him at all.  His conversation was never pleasurable, never stimulating.  Presumably I spoke to him because he needed to be reminded that in the end none of it mattered.  He was one who couldn't grasp complicated concepts, and what concept is more complicated than nothing?  Wrapping one?s head around the idea that something could not be can be difficult.  How can there be nothing?  When we're dead, are we, or are we not?  Are either of these the same as to not be?  I think we still are.  We may not live, but we still are.  Our body still is.  What about our soul?  Do we have a soul?  I think not.  To have a soul would imply that life has some sort of meaning, which, of course, it doesn't.  And if life has no purpose, then why would we have a soul?  This is the key, the secret that keeps us being--that there is no soul because there is no meaning and that this meaninglessness is the Nothing.  There is no meaning, so all there is is just to be.  

Filled with such thoughts, I busied myself with being all the way back to my apartment.  Until I arrived, I thought of nothing else, not even the Tree.  I sat at my computer to see that I had a chat request from a user I had not met before.  Opening the window, I see that it is from a "Johnny_Appleseed."  

Johnny_Appleseed (1:10:41 AM): Hello Everett
Johnny_Appleseed (1:10:49 AM): I've been waiting for you

Who was this person, who knew my name, and claimed to be waiting for me?  Who was this Johnny_Appleseed, and what did he want with me?  I had to ask him the question, there was just nothing for it.

Nihilist (2:11:22 AM): Who are you?
Johnny_Appleseed (1:11:50 AM): Who I am is not important, all that matters is why we are now speaking
Nihilist (2:12:09 AM): What do you mean?
Johnny_Appleseed  (1:12:26 AM): You are the one I have waited for, Everett.
Johnny_Appleseed  (1:12:36 AM): You are the one I can tell.
Johnny_Appleseed  (1:13:34 AM): There is something you've always known about the world--something that no one else can see, but something you are as keenly aware of as the fact that you have hands and feet.
Johnny_Appleseed  (1:15:09 AM): You look out of you office window at the Apple Tree and you see what other people don't; you see a lost world of sprawling forests and lush greenery; a place of beauty and tranquility and oneness

So this was about the Apple Tree.  What was this connection, this suddenly ubiquitous apple?  An Apple Tree, the Apple Corps., and Johnny_Appleseed, not to mention the old Druid.  I read on:

Johnny_Appleseed (1:15:45 AM): but your associates see only a barrier to the perfection of the structure around them, and it is slowly driving you mad
Johnny_Appleseed  (1:16:29 AM): You keep telling yourself that it doesn't matter, that none of it matters, but deep inside you long for a purpose just like all the others
Johnny_Appleseed  (1:17:16 AM): You lead a pointless life, it is true, but you are not content as you say
Johnny_Appleseed  (1:17:45 AM): The lies you tell yourself fill your consciousness as fully as any of the lies of the Company
Johnny_Appleseed  (1:18:37 AM): When you act on them, and try to break out, you will be Reeducated, and your memory of the events leading up to your breakdown will be erased
Johnny_Appleseed  (1:19:27 AM): You will forget that the Apple Tree ever existed, you will forget that there was ever such beauty on the planet.  You will forget everything, but still you will yearn for some meaning.
Johnny_Appleseed (1:20:09 AM): They may reprogram you all of ten thousand times, but they will never take away your soul, your core
Nihilist  (1:20:20 AM): I don't have a soul
Johnny_Appleseed  (1:20:25 AM): Of course you do
Johnny_Appleseed  (1:20:42 AM): You are merely telling yourself lies again
Johnny_Appleseed  (1:20:59 AM): How else could you explain how life has meaning?

Now he was challenging my entire philosophy on life.  How could he know things about me that I hadn't told to anyone?  Was it Cameron, playing some trick on me?  Was it a stalker who had been tracking my movements, or an iPol officer having me watched?  Whoever they were, they didn't seem to understand my philosophy.  I had to make him understand that there was no meaning, that there was no greater purpose, and that that was why there was no such thing as the soul.  I meant to explain it to him in detail, in glorious depth and inarguable completion, but all I said was:

Nihilist  (1:21:13 AM): Life doesn't have meaning.
Johnny_Appleseed (1:21:41 AM): Does the tree's life have meaning?
Nihilist  (1:23:10 AM): The tree is different
Johnny_Appleseed  (2:54:24 AM): of course the tree is different, which is the crux of the matter
Nihilist  (1:24:38 AM): I don't understand
Johnny_Appleseed  (1:25:43 AM): It is a rare one who has the sense of nature
Nihilist  (1:26:18 AM): Look, I don't know who you are, or how you came across me, but I think you should leave me alone
Johnny_Appleseed  (1:26:39 AM): You can't hide from it, Everett.
Johnny_Appleseed  (1:27:30 AM): It will follow you.  It will nag you.  It will stick at the back of your mind and make you wonder what it is about yourself that is different.

By now the guy was scaring me.  Having decided the man was out of his mind, whoever he was, I thought of the one thing I could do to put a stop to this.

Nihilist  (1:27:41 AM): I'm going to block you now
Johnny_Appleseed  (1:27:49 AM): It will never leave you Everett!  No matter what, you can't escape!

Escape.  That word stood out with as much emphasis as the red of the apples stood out from the white.  Had he used that word on purpose, with all its connotations of madness, or was it merely a turn of phrase?  I still could not help but form the mental image of my small frame pounding feebly against the Bay Doors before being taken away by iPol officers who were not quite human, with their cybernetic implants.  I shuddered at the thought, composed myself, and pressed the fateful button.

Nihilist  (1:28:59 AM): Blocked.

No response came, which I took as a sign that it had worked and that my troubles with Johnny_Appleseed were over.  But who was he?  How did he know me and my secrets?  How could he know my disaffection from life; from meaning?  Why did he insist on contacting me?  Surely I was not the only one who found the tree beautiful; who admired its colors--its majesty?  I could not have been the only one to notice how it moves and seems to speak, with its creaks in the artificial wind and the rustling and good-natured chuckle of its leaves?  Surely I am not the only one to notice how it defies the rules of the Company, who would enclose it and encase it, as it stretches out its knotty arms over the edge of the Plexiglas shield and grows ever taller, as if to escape the confines of the imprisoning circumference.  There must have been someone else; anyone else.  Yet my conviction faltered as I repeated this fact to myself, and another voice replaced it, saying You are alone, Everett.

In this moment I felt the overwhelming need for society, for companionship.  I needed someone to share my feelings and my opinions.  I needed to find that one other person in the world who believed as I believe, that tree is beautiful and special; that it is important.  I needed it as fundamentally as I needed to breathe.  They don't exist, said the voice in my head.  I ran outside, not even bothering to close the door behind me, and set out onto the street, still bright with the Company's artificial light.  But it was well after midnight, and no one was about.  You are alone.  I cut through the streets, my eyes darting back and forth for signs of other humans.  I was not even thinking where I was going, but my feet knew the way; they had been there a thousand times before.  I arrived at my destination, still companionless.  The Apple Tree loomed up ominously above the Plexiglas circle like a heathen god whose tribute has not been paid.  

"I will find one for you, I promise!" I beseeched the tree, and its branches grumbled impatiently.  "There is another, I know there is and I will find him for you!"

I fell to my knees, groveling.  I laid myself in supplication to this mighty god of the old world.  A sign, any sign of what to do next; that was what I begged of my deity.  An apple fell from the branch of the Tree.  I looked at the fruit in wonderment.  It seemed to call out to me, a gift from the Tree itself.  This apple was the key to finding the one who I could belong to and with.  This was the key to finding another who thought the way I did, who worshipped the tree as I did.  I knelt before the tree in homage and thanks, and took up the fruit that was my divine mandate and gazed into its crimson skin.  I knew then what must be done and I bit into the apple, tasting the sweet, succulent ambrosia.  Eating the fruit of the Apple Tree was forbidden by the Company, but I went on, devouring the gift with zealous hunger until all that remained in my hands was the core.   That cylinder of nothingness, how could something that came from the Apple Tree be as empty as something that came from the Company?  As if in answer, my eyes were drawn from the white shaft in my hands up to the tree, and to the towering white shaft in the distance.  The Core.  

When the fruit of the world has been eaten away, all that remains is the Company.  The Company is the world's empty Apple Core.  It keeps things in place, but it is not what makes life worth living.  A life without fruit is not a life worth having.  I snapped the core in my palms in two, and there found five seeds, arranged like a star.  Seeds.  Here too seemed to come the answer.  Everything the old Druid said, about nature enduring, about bringing something back, it all made sense.  The seeds of new life were inside, if only we would let them grow, but to get at them you had to break the core.

For the first time I felt one with the world as I drifted towards my destiny.  The Core loomed larger and larger above me, and, for the first time, I viewed it not with hatred but with excitement.  The time had come to break the core in half to get at the seeds within.  I reached the towering edifice and came to the automated glass doors.  They would not be operational at this time of night, I knew, so I smashed one and stepped inside.  That would set off an alarm, and iPol would be here in minutes, I was aware of this, but none of it mattered.  All that mattered was the task.  I knew the elevators would not be running either, so I took the stairs.  I went up to the third floor, to the Neural Net Center.  It had to be destroyed and it had to split the Core in two.  An electrical surge would do it.  I logged into the Neural Net and began to write the most inefficient program that I could, requiring an amount of energy disproportionate to the output effect, which was something trivial.  I repeated this on every access port in the room.  When the energy was maxed out, jamming a metal object into the CPU would cause an explosion that would destroy the Core and end my life, but it would be worth it for the Apple Tree and for nature.  

"Stop Everett" said a voice I did not recognize.  I looked around for the source of the voice, but found no one in the room.

"Where are you?"

"We are iPol, Everett.  We have you surrounded."  It was true.  Looking out the window, I could see them below. They were all around.  The entire force appeared to have congregated here.

"We have officers heading up there now to bring you back down for Reeducation."

"You don?t understand," I said.  "I have to do this."

"Everett, if you do this, it will be the death of everyone."

I couldn't tell who was speaking.  It might have been all of them.  I've never known how iPol thinks.  I"ve heard stories that they are all connected on a network, that they have a collective consciousness, and a myriad of other things about them, but I have never known the truth.  I have never been in iPol.  I spoke to them all.

"The Company destroyed the world!"

"No Everett.  The Company saved the world."

"The world is dead!  It isn't saved!  It's dead.  All that?s left is the Apple Tree."

"None of that matters Everett.  What matters is that people survived."

"Why?  So we can destroy something else?"

"Human life is more important than anything else."

"Do you call this life?  Do you call this endless monotony of working for nothing life?  What is life if you don't have the freedom to do what brings you joy?  What is life if we are stuck on a computer at work and then stuck on a computer at home?  What do we do for ourselves anymore?  The computers do everything.  What do we do?  We work the computers!  I have to do it, for the world, I have to do it for the Apple Tree."

"You'll kill the Apple Tree too, Everett."

"No!  It was the Apple Tree who told me to do it."

"Everett, you have to come down."

"No!  It must be done!"

"We can't let you destroy everything the Company has worked for."

"I have to break it open to get at the seeds!"

I went about the room to finish what I had started.  I knew that they would be up here any minute and regretted having allowed them to distract me.  The Computers were not running hot enough; the surge would not be strong enough.  The enterprise was doomed.  

"You leave us no choice, Everett.  We are burning the Apple Tree."

No!  Not that!  It couldn't be that.  The Tree wouldn't let them.  It would do something, fight back.  It had to.  I saw them sending iPol officers over to the Tree.  I could see them, diminutive as they were from here, with their flares, standing next to the tree.  It wasn't happening.  It couldn't be.  The officer casually tossed the flared over the Plexiglass circle and the grass ignited.

"No!"

I hurtled through the door and down the stairs. Halfway down, my foot caught on a step and I felt a crack as my head hit the steps.  I was at the bottom of the stairs.  I was bleeding.  I staggered to my feet and hobbled out the door into the lobby.  My head was swimming and I could see the iPol officers approaching so I ran clumsily the other way. Adrenaline pumped in my veins as I made it through a door and shut it behind me.  I saw that it had a digital lock on it, so I pulled of the interface and rewired the lock so I could reprogram the locking mechanism for a new code: Cameron.  Behind me I heard the ringing of a new iChat message.  I looked to the computer behind me.

Johnny_Appleseed  (2:42:30 AM): The Tree is burning
Nihilist  (2:42:39 AM): I know!
Nihilist (2:42:50 AM): How did you find me?
Johnny_Appleseed  (2:42:55 AM): It doesn't matter!
Johnny_Appleseed  (2:42:59 AM): Save the Tree!
Nihilist (2:43:15 AM): But how?
Johnny_Appleseed  (2:43:21 AM): It's simple:
SYSTEM FAILURE: This user has been deactivated.

"Shit!"

I bolted out the back door and ran through the side streets of the city.  I ran with all speed to the tree, ignoring the throbbing in my skull, and the blood trickling down my face.  I ran all out, through an alley and around a corner where I felt the sting of an iPol taser against my leg which suddenly crumpled.  As I struggled to pull myself forward through the pain and voltage I could see it before me.  The conflagration of wood screaming against fire gouged at my courage.  An entire branch snapped off an came crashing to the ground--a blackened and charred thing, no longer even wood--and the husk fell to cinders.  The scene reeked of destruction, and a smell like hard cider.  The Fire laughed maniacally, that evil cackle as it consumed my consolation.  I barely felt the iPol officer's grip as he pulled me to my unsupporting feet.  I just stood there dumbfounded, and all feeling left me.  I was numb.  

The image of the burning still plays before my eyes even now, as I sit in my little room.  It is nice and clean and white like everything else.  A voice in my head taunts me, saying You are alone.  I am reminded of the fact that there is no one else like me; who shares my admiration for the lost world of before the fall.  I am reminded that no one else ever shared in the beauty of the Apple Tree, as I sit here at the edge of the end.  I console myself to think that none of it matters.  None of it has ever mattered.  I have no soul.  In a few moments, I will be a fully functioning employee.

[SDragon]

A nihilistic dystopia, with hints of a postapocalypse? I'm guessing today isn't your ray-of-sunshine day :p

Seriously, though, this is a wonderful piece of work, very well done. I'm a bit curious, though- was Johhny_Appleseed supposed to be the Druid, or was the identity intended to remain mysterious? I can easily see the former, as the Druid was the only mention of anybody other then Everrett that showed any interest in (or even real acknowledgement of) the Tree.


Good work, keep it up!

[Seraph]

How do I phrase this?  You are right to suspect the Druid, but the identity is meant to remain a mystery.  So, my answer to the whether Johnny_Appleseed is the Druid is a resounding maybe.

[Haphazzard]

Hmmm, 1984 minus the crappy love story...I like it.  But, when he breaks the apple core open and finds the seeds instead of telling you what his whole plan is it could have said something to the effect of "I knew what I had to do" and then gone to him going to the core to destroy it.  It's almost like the entire implied meaning of the apple was spelled out.  Other than that I really loved it.

[Seraph]

I do see what you're saying.  I guess I've gotten so used to writing about the meaning of symbols that I wrote about the meaning of MY symbols too. :-p

[Haphazzard]

I guess the educational system will do that to a literary artist.

[Seraph]

It's probably why my roommate (who wants to be a writer) is choosing not to be an English Major.

[Haphazzard]

Very probably.  Just out of curiosity, how was the tree surrounded by plexiglass?  By that I mean, where was it open?  I ask because I became utterly confused when the main character grabbed the apple and ate it (I thought the tree was completely encased), and at the end the police threw the flares in over the top.  So, did he climb in and out when he ate the apple?  Just to get a clear picture in my mind.

[Seraph]

The plexiglass forms a fence around the tree,  not a bubble.  The apple actually dropped--he didn't pick it--but it dropped from an overhanging branch.  

[Haphazzard]

Ok, I knew the apple dropped (I think you said so in the story), but I didn't realize it was a fence and not a bubble-like structure.  That makes a lot more sense then.

[Seraph]

I will most likely do some revision eventually.  I will expand on things that are not clear or feel rushed.  Maybe I will do something about excess overtness . . ., etc.  For now I do appreciate input, it's just going to be a while before I use it.

[Haphazzard]

Well, it certainly is good, and I'm done critiquing as I feel I'm picking it apart too much.