Canopy CANOPY It was still dark when my eyes first opened, but here its always dark. Two years ago scientist first launched an experiment to make it rain here in the desert. They wanted a tropical forest, but the rain never stopped. They thought the environment would stop the rain but it didn’t, it rained on and on. The constant rain caused the genetically engineered trees that were engineered were for once a year rain and plenty of sun, in this daily downpour the trees grew to enormous size, up to a mile and a half (scientists are still curios about the lack of sunlight. Some of the trees seeds got under the buildings and brought the buildings up with them. The government made it work. They picked a tree and on the lower 700 foot wide branches they built cities,because the tree roots made the terrain unfit for building on the ground. I am living in the upper reaches where the old buildings are still stranded. Its perfect for a run away. Shelter in the colossal leaves, and an endless supply of the pentagon sized fruit for food. some may think this fruit is always a good thing but it can take out a building when it falls. So the city started the F.D.C. the fruit disposal committee. The F.D.C. uses a chemical concoction that they spray on the mid and lower reaches of a tree. So lucky for me I still have fruit up in my domain. Every day the city sends guided tours to the upper reaches of the tree in hover crafts. At that time I hide in my favorite building. Its the only one that held steady and flat. Its shaped like half of a tube and is about six hundred square feet, in the far corner when I first came up here were two new antigrav boots. Its how i get around so fast. Im sitting in there right now eating lunch listening as tour hovercraft passes. I here a ripping sound that only comes from a fruit freeing itself of the tree. I switch on my boots and rocket over to the whole I made in the wall and I watch in horror as I watch a fruit fall from the tree and hit the hovercraft. I here a screech as the vessel collapses under the wait and goes falling down through the leaves and finally hits one with a thud. Im already out of the building and speeding through the leaves towards the hovercraft. I see a man pulling himself out of the hovercraft through a serrated hole onto the leaf,he himself to the edge of the leaf leaving a bloody trail. He heaves himself over the edge and falls silently through the air facing me. Why did he do that I think in horror as I land on the edge of the leaf. I look into the hovercraft and see a smaller version of him in a young girl. His daughter, and now I no why he jumped. she’s not moving, I check her pulse. It’s pumping! I pull her out of the craft and fly out of the hole up towards the storehouse. Inside i notice the large gash in her arm, must have passed out from pain. I rip a part of my shirt off and rap it around her arm to stop the bleeding. Now all i can do is wait. I wake up and look at my watch, it says six a.m. I quickly replay in my mind the events of yesterday. The girl! I look at where I had put her down. And she’s gone. I flip on my antigrav boots and fly to the slit of garage door thats open and slide through it. she’s by the waterfall. The waterfall formed after a small stream started on the inside of a leaf. It fell from the leaf and onto the tree branch above mine. It eroded a little steam into the tree branch that finally fell into a large nook in my branch, creating a crystal clear ten by ten moon shaped pool. I made my way through the thick undergrowth to were she was sitting on a bed of moss. I stand there dumbfounded, What to say. “Hello” I say awkwardly. she turns around abruptly and stands up so quickly she almost falls into the pool, her eyes are wide with fear. “Who are you” she says, backing away around the pool. “ I saved you from the hovercraft crash” I try to say in a consoling voice. I start to notice her size. she very small. probably a lot younger than me. It obviously works because she drops her guard. “Oh so you’re the one in the building.” she says. “Ye.” I say. I walk over to the moss and sit down. “What’s your name.” I ask. “Ann, you?” “Brandon”. We sit there in silence for a few moments. “Did you see my father” she asks. “Yes, he pulled himself over the edge of a-” “a leaf.” she interrupts. “He must have thought I was dead”. “Im sorry” I apologize. “It’s fine.”she says loudly “I can stay with you right?” It took me by surprise,“You have a mom?” I asked “No she died in a train crash.” (The trains here run inverted and straight up the trunk. They run inverted was because some of the buildings go “underground” or upside down.) “The train derailed while upside down and crashed into the city below. She wasn’t in the train, she was below it. “Wow she’s had a tough life” as I tell her she can stay. SHAPE \* MERGEFORMAT * * * That night I go swimming in the moon shaped pool,using the small waterfall as a shower. the frogs making a loud chorus. I climb out, and dry off. I hear the noise of a hovercraft approaching, what is a hovercraft doing up here at night. I jump into my boots and go to investigate. i don’t go very far. I spot the hovercraft by the crash sight. It races back to the city as I appear. Its going to tell them the news, that means.... The fruit! Oh GOD! The F.D.C. will be here in the morning. With no food ill have to move down to the city or a different tree. That will be easy for me. But no Ann won’t she has no boots. and i dont know if I can carry her for a mile while i’m in the air. She’ll die trying to climb down. It will be a perilous two day journey and if she falls it could be five hundred feet till she lands. We'll have to travel through the branches. That will waste time. navigating through the dense giant ferns and moss. At least the vast beds of moss will provide dry bed as long as there under a leaf. I fly to the warehouse and slip silently under the slit in the garage door, then I slide my feet across the floor making as little sound as possible. I wake the girl and tell her what I and what we had to do. When it ended she said we should leave first thing. "Okay" I agree. I jump into the moss in the corner of the room and drop into a troubled sleep. * * * I wake up to a soft spraying sound. I t must be in the distance. I sit up abruptly, they've begun the fruit killing. We have to go now. "wake up" I yell at Anna. A throw on my antigrav boots and drag her out the door just as she stands up. I stop at the pool and tell her to wait there. I fly to the nearest fruit and pull off five or so apple sized pieces. And head back to the girl. I give the girl some of the fruit “Ew get that slimy stuff away from me” she whines “Well you’re gonna have to eat it at some point” I say and head off through the forest of ferns. We continue too trek through the dense forest until we come across a giant bed of moss That stretches on until it continues under a fern and I can see it no longer. Moss beds are tricky sometimes. The little stems cover up deep holes that can led into damp tunnels of dirt. and other times crocodiles can grab hold of you and drag you deep into its den. most moss beds are only ten feet high and 20 meters long. Those usually take two or three hours to cross. This one is 30 feet high and seventy or eighty meters long it could take a day. I step on it and realize how firm and bouncy the moss is. I jump up and down a few times. “This could take two minutes”. I yell to Ann. “Then what are you waiting for” she shouts back. A starts bounding up the side ten feet away. I here a scream and look to my side. I see a gaping black hole directly ten feet to my side. We are basically at the top of the bed so it had to be a long drop. I’m at the side of the hole in to bounds and I look down. I here an echoed screaming coming from way down at the bottom. The must be water at the bottom. I jump. Then I'm falling through the air yelling as the moss walls fly by me. Except, there widen out abruptly and i’m falllin into a small green cave. Finally I land and bounce back up 5 feet. And land on bended knees absorbing the impact. I look around and see that Ann is huddled in the corner of the small dripping cave. There is green hanging down from the ceiling like stalactites dripping huge water droplets all around the cave. They stay in one place for a few seconds, like a giant snow globe, wobble few times, and then sink into the tightly woven green ground. The ground is the texture of dreadlocks. woven together into a large flat surface. The floor is slanted and at the bottom in carved out bark is a pool. With a river that winds off into the side of the cave wall where there is a a small rounded hole, behind the whole the small stream slant down like a miniature twisting water slide. I turn around an look over at Ann. She is pressed up against the moist wall, taking in her surroundings. As I walk over to her she say’s “Can you see that hole? cause I think thats our only way out” “Ye I get it” I sigh “What’s you’re problem” she says matter-of-factly “My problem, My problem, we are stuck in a small moss cave on a giant tree branch!” I yell “somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning” she grumbles. I ignore it, as I begin to recover I come to my senses. “I guess we are gonna have have to go through the hole” I say, defeated “ I didn’t here you she say’s “ Can’t you try to show a little” I interrupt myself and take a long inhale, and then breathe out, “lets just get out of here” * * * As I’m slowly sliding down through the tunnel on my back, I notice something terrifying, the tunnel is getting smaller, hence why I’m on my back. I here Ann in front of me say my name in a quavering voice. “What’s happening down there Ann” I ask. “It’s getting smaller, and I am claustrophobic.” It’s to slippery to climb back up and it isn’t wide enough anyways. So it better stop going down and get wider soon. As if on cue I bump into Ann in front of me and get in response an indignant “ouch”. she has obviously stopped and sat up in a small tunnel. The tunnel itself is just small enough to crawl in and besides the fact that I can’t see I doubt that it ends for a while. We begin to crawl along and the tunnel begins to widen enough so we can walk. Up ahead see a dim light. “Hey Ann do you see that” I ask, “Ye its kinda creepin me out. We walk closer to the light and see it leads to a more open place. It must be a chamber I think. I stop at the edge and look inside. Its just a normal carved out chamber, except in the center there’s a whole with dim light coming through and a rope hooked to the roof hanging through it. On the other side the tunnel ends. “Again it looks like there’s only one way out of this.” I walk over to the rope, grab on, and look down. I see an intense brightness. I can't really see anything because of my eyes being so used to darkness. When I get to the bottom I wait for my eyes to adjust And then look around. I see a ladder directly above me that wraps up around the drastically thinner branch. I climb up it and look out. The view is the most breathtaking view i've ever seen. I see Giant storm clouds Shooting giant bolts of lightning over the other younger forests enveloped in the giant lake created from the rain. And in the distance I see our moon. Scientists had tried to pull it closer so it would be easier to populate but they overestimated and pulled it right into earth. So now its part of earth, and very easy to populate. I quickly climb back up to Ann. "Ann you have to come down here. our tree is at the edge of the oceanic plain and the ladder wraps up around the branch. all we have to do is cross the tree and we will be to our new home!" We climbed around the tree branch and scrambled up the side in hurry to see the amazing landscape. out of nowhere a gust of wind came screaming through and nocked me and ann off the branch. I started to reach for my boots but I hit a leaf and my vision became a dark tunnel. I wake up on a dry leaf looking around Where am I think to myself but my thoughts are cut off abruptly as I look out over the horizon and see the dead forest, I look down ad see a brown drying leaf. I look up and see a blinding white orb up in the sky. Then it hits me it stopped raining. I look up in the sky again and see a holo message projected up next to the sun. It says "Canopy city a war has begun between the USA and Russia there weapons have interfered with our atmosphere move to the hovercraft landings the forest is collapsing A new age is dawning in canopy city once the trees a remove you will be known as desert province. I couldn't believe what I was hearing but my will to survive pushed me to turn on my boots and fly down past the dying behemoth towards the hovercrafts.
Copyright © 2009 Cullen McCutcheon |