You and Us Silent Beings
By Ségolène Guinard
Someone said: “before the mine, this area was not livable.”
“I don’t recall that time. I can't tell what "livable" meant then. I know what it means now. For all I know, except for the Mushroom and the orific biominers, I am alone. I recall the first touch of air on my leaves. I recall the difficulty to breathe. I recall the silence. I believe this is what you call surviving.”
“Silence does not contradict the constant buzzing of the machines you use to tear the ground apart: “Silence” means the absence of our tongue. Silence does not mean you can’t hear anything. This is a different kind of silence.”
“My language flows in my sap. I exude it from my roots, my stems and leaves. My words are what you call chemistry: subtle elements that I capture, assemble and exhale. I use a chemical tongue made of signs you can sometimes smell but not hear. I can hear you, but you can't hear me, and often, you don't listen. We use them to make sense of our worlds; just as your words, ours exist because they can be shared. Words are to be made flesh and world. They can travel in-between beings, in-between plants, and in-between insects. In-between rocks and soil. In-between rocks. Rocks.”
“Yet I am speaking my own tongue. Though no one can eavesdrop on what I am saying. I have made a world of my own. My world’s name is nothingness. I sprout in silence. In a silence you cannot seize. You tried to give me companions: they didn't make it through the Catastrophe.”
“They were too weak. Their genes were your masterpiece. What was flowing in their stems was not their sap but yours. Their roots were not reaching the ground, and when they did, they got poisoned from your own waste. They were your children and you poisoned them. They were doomed even before it all started (or ended). There are so few of us now. And so few of you. I have memories that don't belong to me. I carry them as if I were a capsule. I had them whispered to me, by all those beings you didn't care to listen to.”
“They told me about the time before the great fires. Before everything became ashes...”
“Then came the silence. Most of us had died then. Most of you had died already but you kept going. Your machines were still alive. And they were keeping you alive - or at least you thought so. Giant beings of steel and iron. How could we convince you that you needed us? With them, you kept on extracting. Trying to reach the last remaining pieces of Earth that you thought were still valuable. The rest was waste to you. For a few grams of shiny or solid rocks, you had burnt down forest, turned everything into that barren land. With some of those rocks, you were making more machines. They were your body. With them, you were metabolizing the world - digesting it, turning it into shit.”
“With them, you built domes you thought would protect you from what was affecting us all. “
“You foolishly thought you could make it without us, without all of us. You tried to trick time, but the only fools were you. I heard some of you are still hiding. I don't know where. I believe you followed our path and went underground. Did you bring some of us with you? Or did you trust the ability of your screens to "mimick the original"? I've seen some of you once. Wandering. Lost. Walking slowly, as if your slowness was of any use now. I heard some of your machines are keeping you from seeing what you have done. I heard some of you are put to sleep, and that your machines feed you with dreams and memories of the ancient world.”
“In them, the sky is clear. You can hear children playing. You can contemplate the quietness of life. You can recall the time when you were truly happy. A time that never existed probably.”
“But truth is you emptied that world. You emptied by filling it with so much. I am alone. I am silent. I am nothing. I retain you memories. I became a repository for your laughter, your tears, your moments of boredom and joy. I pulled myself out of the rocks. I bear the future. I am both the archive and the prophecy.”
“We struggle through your ruins. We are the invisible people of this planet. The world-breathers. Some of you are like us. Surviving modestly in between rocks. Retaining their ability to speak and hope. We will cover buildings. We will cover our dead. We will grow in cracks. We will swallow the dirt. We will recover from the loss.”