A man planting trees during the singularity — afternoon, evening and weekend, part two of a serial

3

The Thursday before Easter

It’s the Thursday before Easter and now I am driving back to the house from the supermarket, whilst the old gardener was preparing the drive for the trees and soil being delivered. Restoring the drainage ditch on both sides of the drive and digging deeper holes for the larger trees. The small orange digger humming in the sunlight. His assistant loosening the soil in the holes and adding white rooting powder into the enriched soil he is spading into the hole. The the lorry driver offloads the trees. They are being placed in a long row on either side of drive, large white bags of soil craned onto the ground. She was enjoying herself telling the old gardener where to plant the first set of trees along the drive. By the end of the day they will have planted a dozen or so three metre tall trees on both sides of the drive. They put galvanised steel guards around the trees and black mesh protection around the trunks. The drainage ditch empties out into the pond slightly downhill from the house and into the field. The second and third lorries are taken to the back of the house, the trees and bushes for the woods are off loaded at the base of the hill. I arrive back as another lorry is leaving and trees are still being planted beside the drive. Before that there is the gatehouse at the beginning of the drive which was rebuilt first. Its the only building with a good network connection. The main house itself is a dead zone, isolated from the world, even mobile phones don’t work there. Engineers are completing the installation of a BT green box from which black fibre cables will emerge to the telegraph pole standing beside it, there are five other new telegraph poles running alongside the drive to the house. The last two were put in place this morning. The fibre cables will be installed next week, and the house will be connected to the outside world… The order words being exchanged are of little consequence, almost ritualistic in there meaninglessness…

unloading the groceries from the back of the old range rover and carrying the bags through the house placing them on the table and putting the contents away, chatting inanely about the town, the driving, what the children had been doing. Alice/spider joined us in the kitchen and is leaning against the doorframe into the dayroom. She wants tea, and is waiting patiently for us to clear some table space. Where is peter/pongo/angel? i ask her as I don’t know what his current name is. She smiles, out there planting a few things… Through the window I can see him digging in the walled garden. After a few moments I say, I’ll go and help him, if he digs like that he’ll hurt his back. I can hear Alice asking what I’m talking about as i leave. We have planted a lot of trees over the years, she tells her, eventually we will have planted trees all the way up the valley and into the hills.. It’s one of the things we are good at. Planting trees on Thursday… I collected my bag of tools from the back of the range rover, walked back through the house, taking the steel rod that is as thick as a man’s thumb and about a metre and half long. The handle end is wrapped in leather, the bottom end has a removable brass cap, which disguises the sharpness of the pointed end. I strolled across the garden to where he was digging holes to place the dry sticks into the ground and handed him the tea. I thought he might object to my intervention but not at all. He had come this far anyway and I explained that he was using the wrong tools. I showed him how to make a hole with my steel rod, dropping the enriched soil and dipping the stick in rooting powder. We were planting hawthorn and blackthorn sticks. I planted a few sticks, dug a hole for a small pear tree. Then watched him put in a few more. Before we walked back to house I covered the unplanted tree roots and sticks with damp canvas. Planting trees.

[ (( So this brief introductory passage ends not with the house but the question of whether the singularity had already taken place, was in the process of happening or hadn’t yet begun. Of course this thought is from long afterwards and we are fully aware of the fuzziness of the singularity and the impossibility of identifying the process until after its complete and unavoidable…)) In a sense I am writing this because we were completely unaware of what happened. Even when we drove south again some two weeks later after having planted hundreds of trees, the beginnings of the new wood, the avenue of trees on the drive and so on and so on. Visited the tea shop alone and together a few times. I asked her the other day when she realized >> what had happened? << >> I have no no idea — not until much later did we understand something had changed. Even then the change appeared to be very slight, though it wasn’t… << ]

4

Voices and Dinner

In that first evening on the edges of the world, where the internet was unavailable, mobile phones didn’t work, and the landlines were all down, even the television wouldn’t connect properly, and we had no radios… the outside world hardly existed. Still in this large half-reconstructed house you could hear the voices of diners, the tinkling of glasses, wine and glass tumblrs, plates and cutlery, the noise spreads out from the kitchen and dining table, spreading out through space and time. These are people who could only be happy and safe together. How did this happen? The ground floor of the house is lit, some of the first floor and the garden lights are on. One of the windows in the kitchen is open to allow smoke and steam to escape, our voices mingle with the quietness of the night, flickering like the humans and non-humans out there between the lights of the building and the darkness of the moonless night. It is the memories of imaginary rustic hospitality, an evening idyll to which we can never return, which we all pretended we were living in permanantly, and which our voices pointed towards. We are rewriting our imaginaries, committing to becoming friends, perhaps we were before but we had different relations . We belong to the cloud we are creating, not to the particular places we originated from or even travelled from. Instead we sit around the table talking about this landlocked island until we collapse in sleep. The kitchen dining room glowing in the night, light spilling out into the space of the walled garden. A simple place, we breath and talk about the world that we have left behind. The spider is talking about summer dresses and whether the weather is ever nice enough to wear them here. Here though, remember that only together, and with the others who arrive later could we afford to have existential doubts and crises. We ate katsu curry, with chicken and jasmine rice, fruit and fool…

The children have been taken to bed, and rejoining the others I sit and start drinking some chablis, washing my mouth with the wine, listening to the words of others. Work and relationships, I am telling stories of my terrible youth. Sadly its impossible to understand why these things were done to me, why did they make me like this? A rhetorical question. spider and peter told us how they ended up a together, accidents and eastern european work, (perhaps this needs documenting, explaining, counting.) (In cheese world it took them longer to be together.) He makes a paper plane from a piece of pale grey cartridge paper. and launches it across the dining room, in the hope that it will circle the room, avoiding the red glass lamps hanging over the table flying round the kitchen and perhaps returning to us, to be launched again. A neutral angel circumventing our restricted space. Vain hopes because we cannot imagine the world being different than this, if it was summer we would be sitting outside watching the summer storm approach us and thinking of the warm bodies beneath the summer clothes. As if these people would be like that in the summer. More likely that the storm would avoid the house out of fear of its inhabitants. I wonder, as the plane fails and crashes in the kitchen, what spider would look like in a diaphanous summer dress, the muscles and scars might show, I thought. Just as the tattoos across my back, shoulders and down my arms would be displayed. I notice that he is looking quizzically at me, reading my mind, thinking of how ludicrous the desire flickering across my face was — Always the most beautiful man, in the room, at the table, drinking chablis. i shrug embarrassed — spider demonstrates how to use a lifejacket stretching her arms and body, laughing… I am saved by the the door bell ringing….

[edit this] When I returned with the others who have arrived. He was saying to Alice — The takeover of Nexus, looking at her blank expression, the Inspector job, do you remember that? Yes, i remember Alice said. Well one of the other parts took place here, the house was a partial payment for not doing something… i was part of the assemblage that came north, I said as I offered food to the new arrivals, the younger woman was also from cheese world, the slightly older woman was from strawberry world. It’s an old way of acquiring property, perhaps even how things were done before capitalism, pure primitive accumulation, afterwards someone spoke to the real owners and Nexus was taken from them.. Peter asked me — How many names have you had Song? Three proper ones, plus some borrowed identities. Why did you choose that name? It’s not really settled but I thought I should have a family name, Song Park or Park Song neither are my original names. I think they are better names for this new lineage. I thought about changing my surname, to Park or Song but since she cannot decide…. They are all his fault, I said pointing at him as I served some food to Osaka and Jess who had arrived and joined us at the table. Osaka was laughing, That will never happen, your bosses would get nervous if you did that. I thought you were coming tomorrow, I finished early so we drove up today.

That was Thursday and Friday, really, later we sat around chatting watching the drizzle fall. Whilst wood was burnt in the open fire.

Coffee

This is how the weeks went as the singularity took place in the distant south, in a place we were not allowed to travel to, this is how the weeks went by as the singularity took place in the distant south, except for those days when we drank coffee out rather than in, we would rise in the morning and after breakfast which is I think indescribable, apart from the days when Peter ate smoked salmon in a toasted bagel, we would slip between the slivers of time, an hour or two spent planting trees and bushes, slipping between the shims of the machine of time, with the gentle precision that planting trees brings. As we tried our best to stop destroying the world. And then in the late morning stopping, putting down the tools and rejoining the others, the living, making coffee in the espresso machine and the red grinder, it arrived on the Saturday morning, an acute process — sometimes I made the coffee and sometimes one of the others, in which case I’d learn against the table with my elbows supporting me as i watch them make coffee, the black/brown liquid pouring from the portafilter into the 7oz cup, hot semi-skimmed milk poured chaotically into the cup, we know longer talk about the world, simply about the micropolitics that is us. With half an eye I watch the changing structure of the walled garden. To then drink the coffee, talking about what you don’t know about since the world is outside of this place, the drinking is unexpectedly real, he offers you a still warm brioche that he made this morning, dipped into the coffee it slides into your mouth and down your throat with a memory of past mornings and nights, this, is, the appearance of the vague waiting for you, us to act on the world… more trees It’s spring and whilst still cold I am staying warm in my jeans, jacket and boots digging with my spade to to plane the mix of sticks and small trees a few of which are close to 8 feet in height. The planting mix is one small tree, four sticks another small tree in a loose row along the valley away from the house. The usual mix of enriched soil and white powder. Following behind us others are putting protecting around the trees. Plastic tubes, mesh surrounds.

On the Sunday

In the morning I practiced with the long sword in the garden, my invisible enemies dying as the sword cut through their bodies, my older daughter sitting on the swing watching me pirouette.

The others went for a walk along some disused railway tracks, went to the nearest pub, sat in the garden drinking and eating crisps. It was quite cool in the late afternoon. A shame about the railway, somebody said as they walked along the tracks. The trains had stopped running here long ago, the trees and bushes had invaded the space again and I was able to lookout on this landscape split into two as if it was a nightmare all along the long gradient to the tunnel, where rather than continue into the darkness we turned arouund and went back the house. Who knew what monsters would have been in the tunnel ? apart from us…walked back alongside the tracks through the meadows, beneath a blue sky. We, he, I and Osaka roasted the leg of lamb, roast potatoes, carrots, parsnips, greens, gravy, nut roast and salads. A long slow process and then made the trifle putting it into the fridge… A disparate group of people who are sitting around around eating and enjoying spending time together. Were we human at this moment? Possibly. A group of people who are sitting around around eating and enjoying spending time together. Were we human at this moment? Possibly. We ate the dinner drinking wine and carbonated water. Talking about / what we were doing during the week/ about the spotify / about london and Patrik Hamiliton / about wireless internet and optical fibre / about Jess’s last attempt at a boyfriend / about Cecil Taylor / about edinburgh / about the dead goldfish of your childhood / about the people being interviewed for the IT support job / snow / weather / climate / cinema / the uses of silver needles / lamb / sheep / pigs / goats / types of mayonnaise / sardines / types of ammunition / rifles / carbines / gun safes / additional letters in the german alphabet / where the boundaries of the land were / we should explore the tunnel / the boundary is fuzzy we explained / the builders and architects for the computers — where the Quantum Computer would eventually be placed/ target shooting/ whether to open another bottle / playing games with the children/ pushing them on the newly erected swing / a list of things to buy — sofas chairs rugs paper wine shower gel napkins Meile dishwasher new shelves for the library a woodstore outside of the house curtins and blinds more solar panels heat exchangers/ we did not speak about the person who would be arriving soon employed to spy on us/ best if they did not know… /An afternoon of food, drink, words, tea, coffee playing/

Much later I heard that on this particular Sunday a man in Tokyo turned on a quantum computer for the first time and completed loading the seed software whilst a young woman who was an infiltration and surveillance expert, a gangstress you might call her, made a simple mistake and accidentally became infected with a virus. Neither event looked terribly serious, though she sensibly ran before they could experiment on her body, and yet together they marked the end of the human species.