Work Text:
See notes on unusual tree disease affecting Winden forest. - Claudia Tiedemann
Pinus sylvestris, Scots pine, exhibiting burls most consistent with some kind of fungal infection. What I could find of remaining literature on similar pine diseases suggests potential cause could be gall rust fungus, though literature indicates that these galls are usually yellow to orange.
Burls/galls present on these pines are black, bulbous, almost honeycombed. I certainly don’t recall this level of blight in the forest in my youth. In fact, blight could not have been this extensive — these trees were planted for timber, and I’m sure these galls would render them functionally useless for that purpose.
Also of note is the black sap diseased individuals produce, like tar. Comes out of affected needles when snapped. On affected trees, the needles themselves darken as though covered in ash.
Strangest thing is the trees seem to live on with this disease. Reviewed literature suggests burls of this size can kill their host by interrupting flow of water from roots to branches through damaging cambium...but I can find no serious die off.
I never was a botanist but it troubles me that there is no die off. The darkening of the needles should impede photosynthesis…yet they live on. The strange burls bloom and multiply but still the pines live on. Raises hairs on the back of my neck sometimes if I think about it for too long. Far from the most inexplicable thing in this world — the fraction of a nanosecond lapse at time of apocalypse still keeps me awake at night — but it is prevalent and somehow insidious.
Jonas brought an animal to me that the boy Noah caught in a snare. It was a rabbit, at least on the outside. But when they cut it open to gut and skin it, they knew they had to bring it to me.
Further autopsy reveals the following defects:
- Heart deformed; outer surface of heart excessively wrinkled. Chambers variously underdifferentiated or hyperdifferentiated.
- Brain additionally lobed.
- Excessive lesions and tumors; black, bulbous. Larger than kidneys in some places.
- Lungs absent (??)
- Blood black; thick; tarlike
I asked Jonas to make some notes about its behavior. It was found in the snare alive. See below:
The rabbit kicked + struggled + its heart beat as I held it + it breathed lungs expanding in my hands + its eyes were wide + I saw the whites + Noah cut its throat because I couldn’t do it + it choked + died + its blood was black + that was the first sign that something was wrong + if you cut me open would I look like that?
The following is unscientific conjecture. The lesions and growths are similar in form to those affecting the Scots pine. I know nothing about rabbit pathology. Maybe this is a known condition and the visual similarities are pure coincidence. But then where were the lungs? And how was it alive at time of capture?
I am no biologist. The only models that come readily to mind are the dual states of an electron. A wave or a particle – collapses when observed. Really it is maybe some other thing we lack the language to explain.
Both alive and dead – alive when it should be dead. Some third state – I lack the language to explain.
What did my Regina look like inside at the end? Alive and dead. Dead when she should be alive. I lack the language.
Perhaps it is fungal. Perhaps spores were irradiated during the apocalypse and now cause intensified symptoms in hosts.
Hard not to think about what might have grown following the first accident at the power plant. Can’t help but think about those two, Elisabeth and Jonas, whose parents — my Regina’s contemporaries — lived in this town nearly their whole lives in the shadow of the towers. Were their children born poisoned? Was mine?
I acquired a few Petri dishes. It was not straightforward. Had to sneak past military perimeter, then find a car, one that worked. Took a couple days. Finally found one that would turn on; even had half a tank of petrol in it. I drove east to Brandenberg, to the hospital there. Amazed it is still running, seems mostly a military hospital now. It’s where Regina was born; there were complications and the Winden hospital didn’t have the staff to manage.
I lied to them. Told them I was a field medic out Winden way. Told them I needed to be able to culture patient samples. Don’t know if they believed me. Once I told them I worked out of Winden it seemed they wanted me gone as soon as possible and thought several Petri dishes + agar an acceptable price.
I considered not returning to Winden. Just briefly. Thought I could drive another 200km with what was left in the tank. Make a life somewhere — forget everything. Ha. I don’t want to forget. I want to fix it.
Cultured the P. sylvestris samples. Don’t know what I expected. The growths are dark, radiating out from the center where I inoculated them like black stars. No hope of identifying these without months of mycological study. Sometimes I feel I do things just to say that I have done something.
Shape is almost too uniform. Same in all dishes. No cross contamination even though I was sloppy. Careless petri dish inoculations are never so perfect. It’s like I’m seeing what I want to see. What I expect to see. But there is something else there. As though I could sneak up on it if I looked through the scope fast enough.
Tested the rabbit hair. Same radiating black shape. All dishes. No cross contamination. The same fungus, in rabbits and pine trees? I am not seeing the world as it is. I am missing something. The world stopped for one fraction of a nanosecond.
Did something get in from somewhere else?
Pine gall rusts require two different host species to complete their life cycle. The fungus must pass between both hosts to live. Some pass between two pines; some pass between oak and pine. To pass between two worlds. To need to pass between two worlds to live.
But it is not the passing that creates the fungus. It is already there; it evolved with the hosts. So why didn't it grow before the apocalypse? Possibly the wetter weather facilitating fungal growth…everything rots so easily now.
But I am still missing something. I am looking at the two worlds and the way rot has grown by passing between them and it’s not enough. There is still something else.
The apocalypse was not the moment of the meeting of the two worlds. The two worlds were already entwined.
So what created the conditions under which the worlds were entwined?
Earlier I was worried that something “got in” from “somewhere else”. I think I was tired and afraid and confused when I wrote that and well perhaps I still am. But this raises an interesting question:
Is there somewhere else?
- A third world?