TMA02.

This is my second story created for my university course. 

 I was very upset when my tutor gave me my mark for this piece, but after having time to digest her comments, and review my work with her comments in mind, I can see that I was over ambitious and will possibly rewrite this story one day.


THE MARTEEN PLANT. – A WORK OF SCIENCE FICTION.

In the beginning, when the first trees appeared, it was a shock to the family; they had hoped and wished for something special.  In this strange world, far from their own, they had been told that they would receive a gift, a gift chosen by the planet itself just for them; no one else would have this same gift...

THE GIFT

Catus, the new world, full of promise for a better life.  Two moons, one huge fresh water sea wrapping itself around the planet.  Two land masses, North Island and South Island.  North Island almost uninhabitable, too dry, a sterile desolate expanse.  No water anywhere, no streams, no lakes, no ice caps; just rocks and sand and the mineral mines.  South Island, lush with natural vegetation, groves of trees never seen before, pinks, blues and purples.  Huge great monoliths down to tiny twigs, each species a microcosm of life.  Waterways, lakes, animals both frightening and intriguing.  Yet it also had one big surprise in its animal life, a species also seen on Earth since the Oligocene period, over 25 million years.  It was this discovery that gave its name to the planet, the species Felidae, the cat family.

Wave two of the transportation of the chosen human population to Catus, this new world, had brought the family here to lower South Island, to a four bedroomed home almost identical to its nearest neighbours, to all of the ranch homes on the planet. Each home had an acre of land.  The first thing they were told when taking possession of their home, ‘the planet will give you a gift, and until it does, the land must not be touched’.

It had been ten cycles of the green sun before the first tree appeared nothing more than a sapling sprouting from the purple soil.  Ten cycles of the sun, six months on Earth, but here it seemed an eternity.  White stems appeared, first one, then another and by nightfall a field of widely spaced shoots filled their land.  Water had to be pumped from the well, and so they pumped bucket after bucket.  All the time struggling to carry the metal like buckets with their vine covered handles, but they had known that each plant needed a nourishing drink.  By nightfall, exhausted, they retired to their beds, they had jobs to go to the next day, all except the mother, who would tend the field and feed the others when they returned.

At first everything was provided for them from the company stores, their wages for the work they did, clothes to cover and protect their skin from the harsh winds and high temperatures during the morning, and cold of the night.  Groceries to feed them, rationed out each week, marked off the sheet.  The meat was in short supply, animals proved hard to hunt, and even harder to domesticate.  Powdered milk was transported in twice a year, vegetables strange yet pleasant tasting made up the bulk of the diets.  The furniture given to them was basic, functional, and bland. 

There was no electricity; no way to ensure their towns were always well lit after night fell.  A dam was almost finished, which would provide for the future.  Wind turbines were being erected, huge farms of them to take advantage of the morning winds.  Each day some new discovery was announced, from fabulous minerals and ores in the mines of the North Island, to new plants and animals that would support and sustain them in their new life.

All new discoveries had to be tested and explored; what properties did the minerals have?  Could they be used to make equipment, aid with transport, or developed into weapons?  Were the plants edible or poisonous?  If they were poisonous, could they be used to make drugs, or for protection?

THE MOTHER.

“The saying ‘money is the root of all evil’, you know they could be right, that person who first said it.  The human condition I call it, the more money you have, the more you spend, the more you spend, the more you need.  The people who don’t have money, well it’s twice as bad for them.  They can’t feed themselves, pay bills, keep a roof over their heads, so what do they do? They steal what they need, then what they want, and eventually more than they would ever use.  Money is a drug, an evil addictive drug.”

When I found the trees growing in my garden, well at first I didn’t know what they were.  They looked like just another beautiful alien plant.  My son, daughter and her husband all helped to tend those new shoots on that first day. 

Small white fragile shoots sprouting from the purple soil, tiny black wart like growths along the stems.  When darkness fell we went inside and ate our meal, tired after the work of the day, we retired, readying ourselves for an early start the next morning, when everyone but me would leave for the jobs allotted to us.

My daughter Margaret went to the scientific research labs, chemistry is her field of expertise.  She came here to help test the new ores and chemicals and minerals brought up from the mines. 

“It’s okay Mum” she told me that first day “I’m not expected to experiment on any live creatures”. 

Jon, my son, went off to the wind farm, his job to help wire in the turbines, get the pumps and alternators up and running, work on the mechanical side of things.  He loved working with his hands, was good at it, but he was lazy too, if he could get away with not working he would.  Then there was Daniel, my son-in-law.  He had worked at the armoury, a job he had enjoyed on Earth, logging in and out all the guns and knives and tasers for the police.  Here he did a similar job, issued ammunition each day to the armed guards, the troops on patrol along this stretch of the island.  As well as working with the guns, the ammunition and other equipment he was trained to take each weapon apart, clean it, repair it, rebuild and enhance it.  He issued replacement weapons where needed.  He did all of this and keep records, much easier on Earth with computers, he had said, but on Catus he had done all the logs and records on paper. 

“Someone has to do it I suppose, they say we need to make sure the wild creatures don’t bother us, but me, I think it’s about control, making sure we don’t destroy this place like we did Earth”.

With each day that had passed I saw the trees grow bigger until after a month they reached knee high, when they stopped growing in height.  From then on they grew thicker, their trunks filled out; black buds got bigger, branches grew fuller.  The black buds changed colour, before developing into either leaves or flowers.  A week later they started to wither.

“I didn’t know what was wrong? I had tended them every day, making sure to water them but not over water,  giving them liquid fertilisers made from recycling our waste and left overs.  I made sure all the damaged leaves and branches were pruned away.  Soon though a ring of cracked earth formed around each plant, and all I knew to do was uproot the trees and put them in pots of fresh soil and compost”. 

I remember how as I gently pulled them from the now pale purple soil the roots were exposed, red as blood, running sap where they had ripped or been cut by the spade.  Margaret brought home a bucket of powder, bright yellow with the consistency of the softest talcum.  A substance she had helped to develop from the minerals brought up from the mines.  Mixed with rich purple soil, and a little of the compost we made, it had been used to plant the trees into. 

The planet had provided the answer; it had given us the right tool to save our gift.  When the trees first produced fruit, we were stunned. This gift from the planet wasn’t food, or fuel for the transport, or even fibres for materials to make clothes.  The fruit was hard, small, and unlike anything yet seen. The flowers had grown and unravelled into one single petal, not unlike the appearance of the now extinct Calla Lillies from Earth.  Each petal had inside it a fruit. Some were big single lobed fruit, others clusters of smaller lobes, like huge blackberries, wrapped inside the one single petal.  Each tree produced just one type of petal and fruit; yet all were the same genus.

As a family we had soon realised what the gift was. On Earth people had dreamt about having one, just one. Here on this planet, the authorities had been waiting, who would get the gift of all gifts. Who would control this commodity which had led to the downfall of Earth?

So this was our gift, our burden, our Saviour and destroyer.

JON

As far as Jon was concerned, the tree was the worst thing that happened to them.  It was a terrible burden, especially for a family with an obsessive personality like his in it.  Jon had always been a gambler, he took chances others wouldn’t, oh he knew it was silly, but even knowing the dangers of an action, he still had to do it.  

“I live for today, tomorrow will take care of itself” his mantra. 

Money was something to be spent, cars to be driven to their limits, in love he gave everything, in friendship he was always available, and he could be relied on.  Why?

 “Because if I don’t try to help a friend out when they need me, what sort of friend does that make me?” 

He lived by this rule; he didn’t always make good choices, and had learnt the hard way that he had only a few true friends.

He had been unlucky in love.  Rejected twice, though he never cheated, never abused them, was totally committed to them, they had both gone off with someone else.  He fathered two children though, grown now, a son, Samuel, and a daughter Faith.  He loved them and missed them terribly.  Both were living on the second moon, they had been brought to the planet as part of the gifted children program, each had unique talents that the authorities had felt were needed.  Two thousand children ripped away from their families.  Most of the families had perished when the Earth finally died.  His children’s Mum amongst them.  Faith and Samuel had excelled, become respected members of the planet and its moon colonies.  When time allowed they visited their family here on Catus, worked the trees, helped Jon with whatever he had found to keep his mind busy.  He was so proud that they had managed to use their gifts for the good of all.

At fifty five Jon had been on the planet now for nearly thirty Earth years, six hundred times round this sun.  When the significance of the trees had finally been realised, we had been here just one Earth year.  The trees had grown and matured.  

Jon’s job has now been given to a younger person, after Jon had trained them.  Our family has moved on with our lives, Margaret controls investments, she was chosen to decide what was good to invest in on this planet, what should be avoided.  She helped to set up the first ‘bank’.  It had been her scientific investigations into the plants which had led to the discovery of the exact properties the trees possessed.  This had meant that the government now knew how to use them.  Margaret had not realised that her discoveries would one day rip this family apart.

“I still tend the crop; at 80 I’m still strong, yet I can feel time slowing me down.  My bones ache by nightfall, and my eyes are failing.  Oh I have help now, a work force more like an army, and I’m the general”. 

The trees would not grow for anyone else, just the family.  But the more trees we had the more help I needed, and so I got to handpick my workers, that way I trust the people who help me.  Every day they take me from one tree to the next, from one plot of land to the next.  They carry the buckets full of water. They shovel the compost and nutrients, but I still have to talk to the trees, tend their leaves, and give each a drink and food.  When I had tried to delegate these jobs, bring in others to do some of the jobs for me, the trees had died, when we gave friends their own tree, strong and full of life, within days they had withered.  So I continue, teaching my replacement now, Gabriella, tall and strong, bright as a button, but with a quiet, thoughtful nature; the youngest of my grandchildren, learning how to handle the army, mix the compost and nutrients. 

For the last 5 years Gabriella and Jon have sat and watched the trees grow;

“They’re close those two, more like father and daughter than uncle and niece”.

They have watched the human condition return, and now it begins all over again.  Greed is a cancer, a human disease, Jon should know, it is a cancer he suffers from.

“We called our gift The Marteen Plant.  Back on Earth everyone always dreamt of having one, only there it would have been called THE MONEY TREE”.

Word Count: 2,276.