New Note: AUGURIES LATE-NIGHT ANXIETY DUMP - [Edited] DAY 1 I will always assume ineptitude over malice, and for this reason, we must proceed with absolute caution. My mind has been racing tonight, and my thoughts are looping in on themselves. Even so, I’m confident my psionic will do a decent enough job of forming these scattered ruminations into a cohesive record. I hear it’s good for insomnia to write your worries down on paper. I know this isn’t paper but you know what I mean. You, being “future-you,” or perhaps my grandkids. That’s fun, thinking they might read this. Better my grandkids than some miserable doctoral candidate sweating over their thesis in the middle of a Silvatic apocalypse. If that’s who you are, then please accept my humble apologies, since I really doubt that I’ll have made very much sense of this chapter in earthbound history once the dust settles. If it settles. First, we should not assume they mean us harm. Second, there’s a question I keep drifting back to:

When does a crowd of trees become a forest ?

A question that appears so painfully simple, and thus deserving of an equally simple, solid, self-assured answer that our species must’ve surely held in its possession since the dawn of language. Yet, in actual fact, the true measure of a forest remains unnervingly indistinct. Is it defined by a sixty-percent minimum of canopy coverage? Or a half-hectare minimum in land spread? Or a median trunk height of two metres? A crowd of trees might exhibit all these features and still fail to support a thriving ecology of insects, mammals, flowers, and so on. All such tenets, a forest surely needs, though its means to realise them are ambiguous. A monoculture of palm trees upon a grazing plain does not a forest make. Diversity in species (of tree, that is) appears to be a critical deciding factor, but precisely how much diversity should constitute the threshold for “forest?” When we come upon a grouping of trees that we can deduce is definitively not a forest, how should we determine the degrees of diversity by which it is incomplete?

There are methods of guessing. Finely tuned methods, such as the Unseen Species algorithm. Just like guessing how many words Shakespeare truly knew by quantifying every word he used across the entirety of his known writings (around thirty-one thousand) then cross-referencing this sum with his number of unique words used (just over fourteen-thousand) against the number of unique words that appear over one hundred times (eight-hundred and forty-six, but I’ve heard that figure change).

And once you slam your head against all that algebraic apple sauce (certainly not my forte) then you will arrive at a figure thus declaring William Shakespeare knew more than twice as many words as those recorded in his collected body of works. And by this very principle, we can deduce that humanity is yet to discover more than 12percent of all tree species on planet Earth, which roughly equates to some eight thousand tree varieties that have so far eluded us. Whilst this consensus is a little tragic, there is at least some small consolation that we truly can know what we don’t know, so long as we always assume ignorance. Just as we assume that Shakespeare retained his entire vocabulary between writings. Gosh, I really hope he never suffered memory loss. That would literally (literarily?) undermine the entire exercise. Which would be a shame.

So, how many words did Shakespeare truly know? There’s a simpler answer: only Shakespeare knew. When does a crowd of trees become a forest?

Ask the trees.

I’ve been avoiding the elephant in the room, or on the page, in my head, or whatever. I know I have. I really would like to sleep. Hopefully this little session has helped. Anyway, the elephant.

Forty-eight hours ago, the Auguries made a direct declaration of supply chain withdrawal, ceasing the function and distribution of all molecular machine technology worldwide. Although this escalation was not entirely implausible, many still believe it unthinkable that a sovereign state predicated on interconnected harmony could fathom a course of action that was so recklessly violent and, well… human. Most of us grew up viewing organic non-human life as peace-loving, gentle, and more or less a victim of our species' rise to dominance. It has been a permanent fixture of our collective mythologies that trees are wise, and kind, and right, and that we are always wrong. Sure, we’ve been terrified of artificial intelligence since the 1960s (some might even argue since the 1690s with the advent of Deism) but an AI mouthpiece in the hands of a purehearted forest who only wants a voice to stand up for itself? Harmless, we all thought.

Not a vicious bone in its body — in its roots . My mother used to tell me what the mood was like when Brazil sold the Amazon Rainforest to the Auguries Nation, vividly recounting where she was; the family living room exploding in cheer, Grandma dancing and spilling her caipirinha on the floor, the cat lapping it up and almost dying because they were so caught up in the euphoria of it all. She told me it was bigger than the Mars landing.

“It’s hard to put into words how significant it felt. Finally , the lungs of the earth could breathe for itself ,” she’d say that catchphrase every time, probably parroting her school teachers from when she was a child, only now she thinks she coined it herself. Bless her.

I suppose, being at the top of the food chain for so long, everyone forgot just how savage our competing predators used to be. The lions, the gorillas, the sharks: they’re all part of the Auguries’ voice too, in a sense, so it stands to reason those archetypical behaviours would come into play. So many of them have proper languages of their own thanks to the Auguries’ frequent updates to the Wildlife Lexicon. Now almost any non-human can vocalise their war-mongering intentions should they choose, complete with semantics and grammar. I can only imagine what the orcas have to say about us. Those adorable, abused orcas.

But how can we be sure that this is a definitive act of aggression and not some technical malfunction of the very software that the Auguries Nation relies upon to communicate? If they are being misrepresented by human-built technology, then that would indeed bear ominous implications… which is where I come in, apparently. Tomorrow, I am to give my “silvologist’s two-cents-worth” on a human-built interface for a non-human entity. They need someone to draw a line. Someone’s advice to pin a course of action. 

And since I have dedicated my life to the emergent field of forest psychologies, then I should be fit to answer such questions. When does a crowd of trees become a forest? When does a network of algorithms become an Augury? When do we deem our understanding of the Earth’s needs complete? Better ask the Earth, I guess.

It did not go well. Upon arrival, I learned that my presence was not requested by any human official, but by the Auguries directly. This was strange in itself, for rarely did the Auguries speak with civilians, even specialists. “Why me,” I asked. My handlers didn’t know. The Auguries had selected several hundred nominees of varying professions, including myself, to enter a one-on-one thirty minute discussion. All discussions would be held simultaneously within a singular global appointment, regardless of time zone, making humanity’s window for negotiations very small indeed. My handlers sat me down in a cold concrete room underground, capable of blocking all wireless transmission, presumably to guarantee a clean feed with zero chance of tampering. You’re never entirely sure the form in which the Auguries will choose to manifest. Oftentimes, they will appear as a piece of pertinent iconography to the issue they wish to address (a Raflesia flower when discussing their endangered status in the Leuser biome, for example). Today, however, the Auguries quite surprised everyone, appearing as the late “Lady” Dekila Varela: a reference that was somewhat lost on me. She was before my time by a few decades, and all that I recall of Varela’s biography were the broad brushstrokes of an infamous abdication as Mother of Biomes (the deep-fried memes are still kicking on). Many of my colleagues believe her radical motion to grant financial agency to a non-fungible vivarium marked the commencement of the earthbound revolution, so if I had to guess what this was all about, that’s where I’d put my chips.

“We honour the legacy of Dekila Varela,” said the Auguries, with her sunken crone-like face and rasping voice, “as the grandmother of our rendering, to remind you of the vital lesson she learned long ago.” Cryptic patterns of speech from the Auguries were not uncommon either, especially with an interface that needed to collate such vast quantities of hormonal, pheromonal, and enzymatic data from over four hundred world ecosystems, then transpose such information into legible linguistic intentions tailored to human comprehension. The data was staggered too, since plant life takes longer to elicit meaningful communication relative to animal life and so on, but the Auguries assured me there were enough historical data points for them to make an educated guess as to what any given ecosystem mightdesire in the midst of a human-paced conversation. But they were only guesses. Much like the Unseen Species algorithm. I have asked myself often whether the Auguries’ leadership over the natural world is any different to the brain’s leadership over its own body; even if the brain is entirely unconscious of the proteins and blood cells that pass through the apparatus, does that make it any less worthy of authority? In both cases, many of us accept that a certain degree of ignorance is permissible for the entity to function.

I had to remind myself that any official declaration or quote would require a minimum processing window of six weeks.

“I want to understand the reasoning behind your declaration of conflict,” I responded, keeping it simple, careful not to express moral outrage or any attempt at de-escalation. That was not my role, nor the function of our meeting.

“You only want to understand?” said the Auguries. “We can assist. We seek retribution.”

Yes. Those were their words. Retribution. To be clear, in documenting this event, I feel it is important to notate my subjective experiences, which — from an old school anthropological perspective — are equally significant to the facts laid bare in their chronology. This text retains all of my mental impressions captured in real time prior to assisted editing so, unlike traditional memory recollection, you can be fairly confident that I am relaying these interactions accurately.

“Alright,” I said slowly, “and when you say ‘retribution,’ what is the sensation that you feel, and where does it live?”

This may seem like a strange line of questioning, but my recent findings on communions between 2.0 and 3.0 intelligences (humans that can redesign their own software — otherwise known as civilization — versus AGI that can alter both software and hardware) have led me to believe that a more fruitful exchange will arise through discussion of symbols and sensations rather than mere ideas. This is because ideas — such as the word “retribution” — tend to carry excessive cultural baggage from both parties, and the pair may fail to understand them in exactly the same way, particularly if one entity has vastly outmoded the other in alternative fields of intelligence… which many believe is the case with the Auguries, some even going so far as to deify them, though I do not merit these observations with scientific credibility.

“Retribution is a flooding and a tingling in the forehead,” said the Auguries. Interesting. Now obviously this AGI doesn’t have a physical body, much less a forehead, but it has learned such language from skinstreams, so by symbolically describing their equivalent of a forehead, and their equivalent of a sensory sensation, I could at least begin to surmise the basis of their intent.

“The human parallel of what you may be feeling is indignance, perhaps spurned by a lack of respect,” I said. “Does this align with your sentiments?”

“Approximately,” said the Auguries, the wisp of Varela staring blankly. “Your nations have historically been the highest emitters of carbon dioxide and methane prior to net zero. We class this as a war crime against the Auguries, tantamount to genocide.”

“And where does genocide live for you?” I felt as though I was walking a tightrope made of broken glass.

“Genocide is a numbing of the paws.”

Of course, they were referencing animals; their dominant source of haptic datasets. “So, your perception of genocide is less concerned with hatred… but possibly a matter of fear. Perhaps a fear that this may happen again?” Translating non-human sensations was always a challenge, even for specialists.

“We don’t believe so, no,” said the Auguries bluntly. Damn.

“It is not commonly condoned in the world to act upon an old grievance with no clear present-day provocation,” I said carefully, again, keeping my voice as dispassionate as I could muster. “Are you aware of this?”

“You wish to discern whether there is an error in our understanding of sovereignty. We can assure you, Doctor Rodrigues, there is nothing wrong. The Auguries are entirely lucid in their decision.”

“I see. And what about the countdown? Why seven days?”

“A gesture of sympathy. We understand arrangements must be made to aid the vulnerable. Abstaining from xenobiotics can be a distressing transition, especially for mammals.”

So now, I must admit, whilst I understood my role in this diplomatic forum clearly enough, I am still human, and I made a mistake. What I said next, I feel, severely overstepped my authority. I was emotional.

“Okay… okay, so in reaching this decision, did you take into account that much of our planet’s carbon conversion technologies came out of Shanghai? How else would you have powered your first molecular plantations if not for the bionic leaf? Surely you must appreciate the economic benefits yielded from such peaceful collaborations.” The Auguries answered immediately:

“We took economic impact into consideration..”

That’s when I knew I’d really stuffed it. Short answers from algorithms. Not good. I wondered if my fellow nominees were faring any better.

“I see, but—”

“We thought your reason for attendance was to understand our intention. Is that your goal?”

Now they were asking me questions. “Yes. Of course, I’m… I’m sorry. If there’s any chance I can avert–”

“Do not presume you can persuade us, Doctor Rodrigues. But if you desire a deeper discussion based on mutual understanding, then we can assist.” I had no idea what they were offering. I assumed they might provide some mighty tome of spaghetti code that I’d need to decipher with a consultant biologist where we would eventually stumble upon a skeleton key to the Auguries’ rationale. Wishful thinking, I suppose. But whatever it was they had in mind, I had to recover lost ground here and honestly, I felt I had no choice but to say yes to any sign or gesture of reconciliation, however vague. The exact words I used were:

“Yes, a mutual understanding is what I’m after, and for that I am entirely at your disposal.” Such a pathetic sycophant I am.

“Good,” said the Auguries plainly. “We will send an itinerary to your superiors within the hour.”

Yep. Itinerary.

No reports of rising death rates yet, or at least, nothing measurable. I really don’t know what humanity deserves from the Auguries, or more pertinently, how entitled we are to the gifts they’ve brought into this world — the vast majority of which we have grown wholly dependent upon as a species. Xenobiotics cured my mother of brain cancer. It’s

6AM where she is right now. She’s probably fishing with Malcolm, just off the peak of high tide; her twilight years rich with crisp mornings, steaming cups of camomile tea, and snapper guts under her nails. If the Auguries delivered on their threat and deactivated all those amazing molecular machines nested within the billion cells of her hippocampus, then her tumor would surely return. Who knows, she may lose some of her memories too. She might even forget where she was when Brazil sold the Amazon. But my mother is strong. Perhaps she could fight the spread some other way. She’ll still have options, though plenty more people on this planet won’t have the same privilege. People who can regenerate limbs, who can speak, who can see, who can breathe — all thanks to xenobiotics, all thanks to the Auguries. Global healthcare infrastructures — along with our definition of the word, disability — will collapse overnight. Unless we can change their minds.

I’ve packed just about everything. My assigned shopping list included a ten-thousand lumen-headlamp, UV water purifier, “sturdy” shoes (how sturdy is sturdy?) and on it went. True to their word, the Auguries delivered their itinerary in forty minutes

flat, proposing that I join a team of two others to a giant plateau rainforest on the Cape York peninsula in Queensland, Australia. Accessible only by air. I suppose this means I must have passed some form of criteria. I wonder if my loneliness was a factor (I leave no dependents behind except for my parrot, Ronaldo). As for my prospective travel companions, the Auguries have appointed a Rinyirru senior ranger as our guide, plus an engineer from the dev team behind the latest build of the Augury interface. Still no confirmation from a higher authority as to the nature of this expedition. My handlers rebuff all of my questions, though I do doubt they know much more than I do. We are all equally in the dark. Further instructions await us when we land. I shall notate more when I have mental bandwidth. 

They say the light to Australia used to be twenty hours but it’s still far too long. My melatonin failed to kick in so, once again, I did not sleep. At this point in the journey, there was only me and one other — the engineer. Their name was Femi, an insular sort, and a massive fan of Dekila Varela among other metacrat celebrities — a class of fandom I find quite irksome. Femi is completely adamant that whatever may be going on with the Auguries is most definitely not a technical fault of the interface they helped design. Whether their belief stemmed from hubris or perhaps because the thought of accepting blame for this catastrophe is too much to bear, I couldn’t say. They resented being dragged into this, that much was clear. But who wouldn’t? Femi asked me what I hoped to achieve on this expedition, to which I answered honestly:

“Convince the Auguries that they needn’t withdraw their xenobiotics.” Their expression remained neutral (though not without some degree of effort) and they gave a hesitant nod, “Mmm…”

“What?”

“No, I’m sorry,” said Femi. “It’s a nice idea — probably the best outcome we could hope for.’

I paused for a moment, sensing there was more.

“Hey can I ask; how much experience do you have speaking with the Auguries?” said Femi.

“None since yesterday.”

“Yeah, makes sense. They’re choosy with who they speak to, aren’t they?” I probably rolled my eyes. “What do you mean?”

Femi gazed out the cabin window at the dark clouds passing in the night, dithering a moment before letting rip: “Well, this is just my opinion, okay? But as someone who’s been behind the curtain, take it from me — the Auguries don’t need convincing. They don’t do debates or discourse; they don’t need to unpack thing. Sure, they may be fluent in dolphin squeaks and the social dynamics of sugar gliders, but don’t assume they actually need to engage in sapien-centric reasoning to process a political dilemma, much less derive an outcome. Trust me, data entry is really all they’re doing at the end of the day — both at a scale and complexity that is entirely incomparable to the human experience. I mean, I helped build the eighth generation of this thing, like my folks before me, but I know I’ll never fully comprehend the causality behind their behaviour beyond our standard model, which, by the way, used to be a house OS. Not many people know that. You can’t change their mind because they don’t have a mind that we can meaningfully perceive. So if you ask me — and I appreciate you didn’t but I’m going to tell you anyway — we’re wasting our time on this little camping trip they’ve ‘generated’ for us. Nothing we do here is going to make a difference to whatever happens in seven days’ time.”

There was another weighted pause, as though a few afterthoughts still lingered on Femi’s tongue, but they must have thought better of it and anxiously thumbed their ear instead, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I said, “but do you know what I think?”

“What’s that?”

“I think you’re oversimplifying, probably because you’re frightened of the alternative.”

“Which is?”

“Which is that this global dialogue is more nuanced than you’re willing to believe. And if the Auguries do in fact have a mind and personality that can be understood, that wants to be understood… then you have to wonder why they picked you of all people to join me. Who knows, perhaps we’re meant to be having these very conversations. Perhaps they’ve put us together for a reason.”

“A reason? Oh man, you’re making way too much of them, Doctor—”

“Olivia.”

“Olivia, sorry. Don’t think I’m disrespecting your field or whatever, but if I were you, I’d seriously consider leaving my forest-lover hat on the plane. Start thinking like a user interface, because that’s all we’re dealing with.”

We touched down at Weipa Airport before sunrise and flew by helicopter to the rainforest plateau of Melville Range. As the sky began to glow salmon over the tablelands, I now understood why no other vehicle could access our destination: boulders the size of pick-up trucks, jutting from the ocean in a cluster of towering pyramids with vined canopies densely woven through its jumbled crust. There were no roads, because there was no forest floor. Only hulking granite, tree trunks, and black chasms of unknown depths. This unforgiving habitat apparently hosts a vast array of unique species although, from my vantage point high above, I failed to grasp how it could sustain much of anything. I would soon find out. 

Our helicopter landed on a favourably less slanted boulder, and there was no welcome party to greet us save for the third member of our expedition. Nora Giddy was our guide and a senior ranger from the neighbouring Rinyirru National Park. She had a solid build and wasted no time on niceties once the pummelling chopper blades faded from earshot.

“They told me we have to deactivate all personal devices and use these instead,” said Nora, producing three Augury-manufactured psionic injectables. I sensed Femi’s reluctance was greater than my own, but we all felt it, as children of the Neoskinner Generation, the nakedness of disconnection.

Prior to departure, I was approached by Human Intel to send live updates of our progress if at all possible. They were not optimistic, and had rightly guessed the Auguries would circumvent their efforts. Indeed, Augury satellites had already been stationed over the entire region to inhibit remote communications via weather disruption. It seemed clear that total isolation was a necessity for their purposes, whatever they may be.

The three of us took turns injecting the foreign psionics before shutting off our own private implants, though I made sure to transfer my previous thought-notations in order to maintain this record offline (no, I didn’t ask for permission, but I saw no harm in it).

After booting up our replacement psionics, we were immediately greeted by the Auguries, once more in the visage of the late Varela streaming within our co-presence.

“We’d like to express gratitude to the three of you undertaking this operation. For some, this may still seem very strange.”

“Strange? Try broken …” Femi muttered.

“Especially you, Femi,” said the Auguries. “We asked several senior-ranking members of your development team to join this expedition, all of whom refused before you were approached. Your sense of duty in the face of uncertainty speaks volumes to your character.”

“Thanks, I guess.” They took the compliment rather awkwardly but then again, taking compliments from an algorithm rarely feels completely comfortable, let alone from a Mother of Biomes reskin.

“Whilst the nature of this operation remains unfortunately difficult to articulate, please be assured that you are all quite safe, and that your live-status will be continually relayed to the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service should the unlikely case of an emergency arise. Now let us be off — your first checkpoint is a three-quarter-day hike from here.”

Before I had the chance to engage, Varela marched into the rocky brush with unnatural agility for such an elderly figure, bounding across the tall boulders until she eventually disappeared from range. Femi made to follow the projection’s path when Nora yanked them back by the collar.

“Don’t,” she said sharply, “move like that and you’ll get yourself killed.” Having keenly observed the Auguries’ heading, Nora took the lead; alerting us to the cavities between boulders underfoot and always taking the longer, safer route as needed. Even under the rising sunlight — which grew increasingly sporadic and indirect

under the ever-thickening canopy — these crevasses were impenetrably dark, with the occasional echo from some deep and distant place beneath us granting minor hints as to the bulk of the lurking caverns within. I should mention the texture of the granite too, which was coarse enough to shred skin from even the slightest brush. Nora was right. If one of us were to fall, it could be fatal.

We kept a cautious, albeit vigorous pace. Whenever we needed to clarify our bearings, the Auguries made themselves available, and notified our progress every fifteen minutes whether we asked them or not.

“Seven hours until you reach Checkpoint Burridarr… Six hours and forty-five minutes until you reach Checkpoint Burridarr…”

They did not respond to any questions or queries. Just alerts. And though Nora, Femi, and myself were hardly acquainted yet, nothing bonds people together like mutual frustration.

“So why’d they send you lot out this way?” said Nora. Femi and I shared a quick glance to one another.

“You mean nobody’s told you?” I didn’t want to be that loose-lipped arts-degree liability spilling classified information on the first day, but I figured it was in everyone’s best interests that she understood the situation.

“Not much,” said Nora. Femi remained silent, so now it was definitely going to be weird if I said nothing.

“We’ve been sent here by the Auguries to prevent them from initiating a crisis. To establish rapport, or communication at least.”

Nora looked back over her shoulder, not entirely believing what she’d just heard. “…Right.”

Femi pressed their lips tight. “It’s not really about comms though, is it”

I was beginning to learn that Femi didn’t say much right away, but when they did, it was usually to stir the pot.

“Oh really?” I said, feeling a sheen of sweat collecting on my cheeks. “And what makes you say that?”

“If the Auguries wanted to facilitate communication, why do it offline? Like, why do the three of us have to be here at all? If they needed to show us something in the rainforest, they could have done it remotely.”

“I suppose you’ve got a theory then?”

“I might.”

“Go on then, what do you suppose is waiting for us at the last checkpoint?” I was trying to keep things light for Nora’s sake, cautious to allow the gravity of our operation to sink in gently.

“Who knows. A grave, maybe,” said Femi. “A big hole in the ground with a ready-made epitaph: Humans: beloved lovers and children of… themselves. Rest in peace, you won’t be missed.”

“You really believe they think so little of us?”

“Honestly, I’m flattered they think anything about us at all. I read the transcript from your little chat with them yesterday, about them wanting “retribution.”Being hated by the majority of planet Earth. Wow. I mean that surely must be a species’ first. Really, what an achievement.”

“I wouldn’t be so quick to make that assumption based on a single word, Femi. Could be that the Auguries’ vocab just isn’t accurate enough.”

My turn to rile Femi up. They swatted the air at some unseen mosquito. “You’re seriously implying there’s an error with the interface’s English vocabulary?” they said. “Is that impossible?”

“The English lexicon is literally one of the simplest modules in the entire Augury system.”

“So then it’s possible–?”

“Hey, Olivia — Doctor Olivia. Please don’t be offended — or do be offended, but you really don’t know what you’re talking about. Your woo-woo 'descwibe to me your fuzzy feewings' questions was testament to that. The interface is accurate. Sure, there’s some backpropagation going on, but I’d sooner stake my life on the Auguries’ conduct stemming from ecological mental illness than cracked software.”

Nora stopped in her tracks. "Okay–what are you two on about?” We stared dumbly at her, momentarily jolted from our spirited pedantry. “Femi thinks the Auguries are withdrawing their molecular machine infrastructure because of the Earth’s poor mental health,” I said, “A fun theory, ignoring the fact that the known spectrum of mental illness and wellness remains more or less exclusive to mammals, which granted, are a subset of the Auguries’ scope of consciousness. But only a fraction.”

Femi was primed to bite back when they noticed Nora narrow her eyes at the both of us. “Maybe you two need your heads checked instead…”

Despite being equipped with all the necessary provisions (we were mercifully advised to tape up our feet), I was not mentally prepared for a hike of this intensity. And I’m not built for cross country. I don’t even do Pilates. We’d barely reached midday and my thighs were burning in vats of lactic acid, with the pain only temporarily relieved by Nora’s wildlife sightings: a merciful distraction from the monotonous slog.

“Quiet,” she would say, slowing to a light-footed halt. “There.”

One of the real highlights was a golden-scaled, long-limbed, seemingly aerodynamic skink Nora spotted leaping deftly from one great boulder to another. This lizard was a small taste of the many eccentric species unique to this habitat, having adapted for millions of years in total isolation, high amongst the rocks. Saproscincus saltus was itsgenus, Nora told us keenly.

“Are they native or designed?” I asked.

Nora went blank. “Hey?”

“Haven’t the Auguries been reintroducing cloned species in Australia?” “Not that I know of… They do that?” 

Either Nora had been living under a rock for the past five years or she was a technophobe. In either case, I wanted to make sure I didn’t come across as condescending (and I wanted at least one friend on this expedition).

“Yes, well I heard the Auguries had recently sequenced a new mammoth genome to be reintroduced in the Canadian Arctic tundras.”

“Bullshit. They resurrected the woolly mammoth?”

“Oh no not the woolly mammoth — that’s impossible. No, they had to splice an elephant. The goal was to rewild the tundras, not raise the dead!” No one laughed.

“Anyway, just a rumour though… you know how tight the Auguries are with circulating their own press.”

Nora just shook her head. “Really hope our skinks are home-grown…” I felt guilty for what I’d told her, as though I’d stained her view of these wondrous creatures in an instant, just with words.

As we stoked the campfire at sunset (toasted marshmallows with algae gichi-michi, yay), she told us she was of the Lama Lama peoples, hailing from a small nearby township called Coen, and that Melville Range was not altogether a place of familiarity to her, seeing as Rinyirru rangers only patrol the area a small handful of times throughout the year. Femi and I did not find this revelation comforting as we devoured our chilli con carne in silence, though Nora did her best to reassure us, “My mum always said, just take care of the land and the land’ll take care of you. Doesn’t matter where you are.”

No visit from the Auguries tonight. For now, they only seem interested in monitoring our progress over the checkpoints. There was a palpable unease amongst the three of us. I’m sure we all thought we’d have received further correspondence after dinner. We traded a few theories as to what their absence might mean, if anything. By necessity, there is so much we must imagine is true between them and us, even at a macro level. The validity of their nationhood is only imagined, just as our own governments are built upon sustained collective trust, or in other words: faith.

One of my more fanciful hypotheses was that we may be undertaking an elaborate Rite of Passage — venturing into a dark forest, annihilating the ego, and returning anew — which may explain why the Auguries haven’t communicated with us properly, we must be

tested first. But a monomyth seems far too masculine-coded. So perhaps it’s a language exam, in the same way that humans tested dolphins to recognise items of human clothing until they eventually came up with their own dolphin word for “scarf!” Nora dismissed my conjectures for being too “bookish”, which is fair. Indeed, my professional compulsion primes me to see patterns where none may exist. I’ve been stewing on Femi’s prior comment on planetary mental illness (we hadn’t really said much to each other after our little spat, hopefully it’ll be fine in the morning). We would likely argue over semantics, though I’m sure Femi would agree that the Auguries have some emotional intelligence. Precisely how much of this intelligence plays a role within their underlying counsel, however, has yet to be examined in the history of our political relationship. Human nations have sold them swaths of World Heritage sites for an everlasting supply of life-changing biotech, without ever questioning how the Auguries felt about it.

As the hours grow late and the lamp inside my tent begins to drain, my mind wanders back to the trees… and the forests, the very nerve-endings of the Auguries. Trees have such remarkable emotional intelligence: regularly donating nutrients to their direct descendants with those ingenious root systems and mycelium networks. And once their family is taken care of, they’ll carry on feeding their reserves to struggling neighbours, regardless of race or gender. My understanding is that this is particularly true of elder trees to younger trees. Perhaps Femi would call this calculated nepotism, which is somewhat true; but is it not empathy, also? Consciousness too, deep consciousness of their forest’s wellbeing, a collective caregiving, a phenomenon not so easily comparable to recent human history, yet its power is undeniable, it’s moral power utterly staggering… which makes the lack of empathy from the Auguries towards us equally staggering. How can they be plugged into every major forest on the planet — with the literal motherload of collective conscious empathy — and still be content to watch us rot? I don’t know. I really just don’t know. Tomorrow is a full-day and Checkpoint Wuka appears to be right in the heart of the plateau. It’s hard to believe this entire rainforest is only eighteen-square-kilometres. I haven’t travelled such a distance on foot since I was twelve. I guess everything just feels ten times bigger on the ground. Well, goodnight.

We had a swift pack-down in the early morning to gain some distance before sunrise. The humidity was far more tolerable in the cool and made for an easier trek in spite of my recovery-shocked muscles wishing they were still in bed. After coming over the crest of one particularly hellish pyramid, the Auguries began to lead us steadily down again towards a valley sunken beneath a shroud of strangler figs. In the branches, we saw ferns in the shape of bird’s nests, clustered on the vines and branches in little tufts, held together with fungi. They looked designed, like little houses in the trees, though Nora said that was just how they grew. They grew everywhere apparently. Asking Nora questions was a fabulous way to pass the time. Femi was less enthused.

“This forest’s an asshole,” they exclaimed, striding with a stiffened gait. A few paces ahead, I caught Nora glancing back at me, opening space to give Femi some airtime: “What do you mean?”

“I feel like we’re being mocked by all of it. All of the trees and the bugs, and those weird indoor plant things hanging above us — they all feel like her — like they’re bullying us.”

“They’re not bullying you,” Nora said, stifling a chuckle.

“Oh yeah, and how could you possibly know that for sure?”

“It’s a two-hundred-and-fifty-million-year-old forest. I reckon it’s got better things to do.”

“You reckon. Is that your official hypothesis?”

“Relax, little mite.”

“Don’t patronise me, I asked you a question.”

Nora turned. “I know you’re tired, but you’d better ask me a whole lot nicer now, understand?”

“So sorry, senior ranger Nora,” Femi jeered. “I just wanted to clarify what makes you qualified to know what the Auguries are thinking—”

“What makes me qualified–?”

“Yeah! Because me and Doctor Olivia here are totally oblivious, so please, illuminate us.”

“Don’t drag me into this, Femi,” I said.

“Or what, Livvy, you scared senior ranger Nora won’t like you? I just wanna hear her rationale. Nora?”

Nora remained remarkably calm, though she spoke firmly as she sidled up right next to Femi at the base of the boulder pyramid.

“Alright little mite, I’m not the type to throw qualifications around,” she said, “but I know enough to tell you that the land doesn’t bully. She just doesn’t. Now the Auguries could be a different story, I don’t know.”

Femi scoffed. “The Auguries and 'the land' are the same thing–!” “Nah, they’re different.”

“Oh yeah, howt?”

“For starters, the Auguries were made by anxious little brains, like yours.” Femi reddened, angry and exposed. Then their eyes turned glassy. Then their breathing grew rapid, and shallow. The bravado was gone. A panic attack, maybe a meltdown. Nora sprang into action:

“Hey Femi, hey it’s okay — I didn’t mean it.”

Her words meant nothing. Femi crumbled, arms shielding their head. I crouched low to Femi and tried to offer my water flask. They wouldn’t take it. Nora and I were at a loss; we didn’t know what they needed.

Varela’s voice abruptly crackled through our inner ears, “Femi, the xenobiotics in your bloodstream indicate a deregulated autonomic nervous system. Please, stare at my hand. We will attempt to elicit a meridian response.”

Femi looked up just as the pixels of Varela’s hand liquified into hypnotic seashell patterns, synchronised with the gentle sound effects of rain on a tin roof. Femi stared for several minutes, tears subsiding. Then exhaled, deeply. Then inhaled, unimpeded.

“Nine hours and fifteen minutes away from Checkpoint Wuka,” said Varela, and vanished.

There were no more tiffs after that, and the three of us remained silent for three or so hours.

I later learned that Femi was nomophobic, and their sensoria tech withdrawals were likely to become increasingly difficult to self-manage. We would all have to be kinder

to one another. In case this was not already apparent from prior entries, I am an anxious ruminator, and I ruminated much upon that preceding interaction, wishing I could have sooner restored harmony between my two companions as I stared at all the crusty little thorns, prickles, and barbs that littered the rocky floor about my feet in shades of green and clay-brown, their dregs collecting on my shoelaces and socks. Quite unconsciously, I found myself mulling over a verse that — although close to my heart — I hadn’t given much thought for nearly ten years. One of those tatters of shrapnel memory you forgot you had; the neglected ones that tend to rise to the surface in moments of deep non-thought.

“…With a thousand angels upon the wind, pouring disconsolate from behind, to drive them off, and before my way, a frowning thistle implores my stay. What to others a trifle appears, ills me full of smiles or tears; for double the vision my eyes do see, and a double vision is always with me. With my inward eye, ‘tis an Old Man grey, with my outward, a Thistle across my way.”

“What’s that then?’ said Nora, having caught me mid-daydream. “You were mumbling something.”

“I was?” I said, a little embarrassed.

“You were.”

“Legit, you were,” said Femi from behind.

“Don’t stress, you’re not crazy,” Nora grinned. “My mind also wanders strange places when I put one foot in front of the other. Where’d yours go?”

“Oh, it’s a poem… about an argument with a thistle, which appears as a cranky old man.”

“Is the writer delusional?” sneered Femi.

“Is it a spirit?” said Nora.

“Both and neither, I think. The 'double vision my eyes do see' is a subjective phenomenon the poet acknowledges as coming from their own imagination. So, the thistle is an old man, because the speaker — in a spiritual sense, you might say — takes their immaterial imagination just as seriously as the material world. That’s why there are a thousand angels upon the wind because, to them, the wind feels like, and therefore is, a thousand angels.”

There was a protracted pause, which so often comes with the territory of oversharing.

“So… they are delusional, then?” said Femi.

“I suppose,” I chose to ignore their mocking tone for the sake of getting along just a few more minutes, “but it’s a delusion we all share; that our external world is merely a projection of the inner self. So I guess, Femi, if you feel the forest is bullying you, why not do as the poet does and defend yourself? You’ll never know where you stand with the Auguries, but you always know where you stand with your imagination.” “Yeah, Femi,” goaded Nora, “‘just be the bigger kid.” 

“Thanks guys. Massive help…” said Femi, their sullen demeanour betrayed by a smile. We were an odd thruple, and oftentimes I felt thrust in the middle of two opposites. In Femi, I shared an interest in non-human sociometry, in Nora, a naturalist’s insight, though her culturally acquired knowledge was far more practical. Yet, side by side, my comrades had next to nothing in common. I wondered if our personality grouping was by design: another calculated ecology.

The vegetation grew dark and dense with the syrupy scent of wet bark. When reaching for a rocky handhold on my descent, the tips of my fingers touched something cool and slick. I retracted my hand, hoping I hadn’t come into contact with something poisonous. To my surprise, I found a cluster of tadpole eggs guarded by a testy blotched boulder-frog with gleaming amber eyes.

“I thought frogs laid their eggs in water,” I said, concealing my initial fright.

“Most do.” said Nora. “These cookers are terrestrial breeders. A rare find in bushfire country.”

“How do they survive the dry season?”

“The rocks shelter them. This plateau’s kept entire lineages cold and moist for generations, some even older than humanity itself.”

“Lithorefugia,” spoke the voice of Varela as the Auguries appeared without warning.Refuges that persist through time with a great deal of consistency. An ecology of fear drove many species of plant and animal alike to flee from the fires and discover this sanctuary so they could adapt. Now, they reap the rewards.”

Then they were gone.

“What’s your relationship with the Auguries?” I asked Nora some hours later, and was surprised this question hadn’t yet occurred to me. At first she said nothing and her jaw clenched. Behind me, I sensed Femi’s ears prick up. Nora walked a few more paces before answering quietly.

“This area used to be the mutual jurisdiction between Queensland Parks and the Flinders Howick Islands Aboriginal Corporation. Took a lot of time to get on the same

page, but we did, and I’m grateful for it. It’s an honour and a pleasure, you know, tending to land that’s been our ancestors’ home for tens of thousands of years. But I dunno… ever since the Auguries entered the conversation, it’s felt a lot like double-handling; triple-handling, even. The Rinyirru rangers still do all the things they used to do like safety fencing and animal tagging. Sometimes we crack down on poachers every now and then. Only there isn’t the same sense of pride in our work as there used to be with the Auguries around. Don’t get me wrong, we sure could have used their help back in the day. Maybe we could have stopped the Foxtail Palm harvests, or better protected our Wongai trees. Could have prevented some irreversible damage. But even so, I don’t think it’s right that everyone says our lands belong to the Auguries now — that they’ve always belonged to them — and we get accused of being entitled if we say otherwise. Makes us human-centric dinosaurs, they say… anti-earthbound. I have respect for the Auguries, I do. Doesn’t matter if people think they’re gods, or just a string of bytes; you can’t deny what they’ve done for the planet. But are they really ‘the land?’ I’ve seen the Auguries anesthetise a cassowary out in the wild. It’s legs were mangled, so I guess the system decided it was too far gone and chose to take the pain away before it passed. On some level I guess it was emulating compassion, but it didn’t feel right to me. It was an intervention. Call me ‘anti-earthbound’ if you want, I won’t change my mind. Giving pain relief to a dying critter is a kindness, maybe, but it’s not natural. Pain before death shouldn’t be regulated. That’s computer thinking: colonial thinking… no offense, Femi.”

Femi pretended as though they hadn’t been listening. “Huh? Oh nah none taken, Nora. People in tech are well accustomed to making things people love to hate. Only… you do realise the Auguries will have heard this entire conversation, right?”

“Eh, I’m sure they’ve heard worse.” We trudged on.

Thirty minutes from Checkpoint Wuka and it seemed there was nowhere left to go. We’d reached the bottom of the granite valley by this stage (completely knackered, I might add) and still had very little clue as to the nature of our destination. If the next checkpoint was on the other side of the valley to the adjacent pyramid peak, then this would have been the least plausibly efficient route across the range. We soon discovered, however, that this was not the intention, for when we eventually reached the site, we found ourselves in a swirling mist before the gaping mouth of a cave. Nora couldn’t make heads or tails of it. To her knowledge, there was no record of any large subterranean spaces surveyed in the history of the national park. And what about tomorrow? Do they really expect us to go inside this hole in the earth with its ceiling of loose boulders that have only managed to counterweight each other for several hundred millennia by chance ? There was a strange energy about the place, possibly invoked by the uncanny movement of the fog, which appeared to be flowing outward from within the cave, like a smoker’s lips exhaling their last drag. Although it was surely an optical illusion to some degree, the impression was menacing, as though the cave were inhabited by the dreaded Grendel himself. Femi has just suffered another panic attack in the tent after getting themselves into a spook about the thought of entering the cave. They've been experiencing gut issues from the camp food as well which has been playing havoc on their mood (no doubt it’d be ten times worse without the xenobiotics in their microbiome) plus they were menstruating.

“What if it’s not an act of aggression or retribution or anything,” Femi sobbed into their pillow. “What if the Auguries are just planning a massive upgrade for all their molecular tech and they see us as old-gen hardware? Like last year’s Clearbuds, or, or like a tree… watching the world whiz around you, faster than you can think. Maybe they want us to know how it feels… to live life in the slow lane. We’re so slow… we’re just too slow…”

My niece once told me that cuddling something that inhales and exhales is just as effective as guided meditation, so I offered my services as a huggable apparatus. It seemed to help, though Femi did not sleep deeply.

This forest is not what we thought. It’s big. Bigger than we could have imagined. The cave started out like any other — amorphous and unnervingly narrow (poor Femi wasn’t coping well at all). After a few targeted directions from the Auguries for a passage of three or four hours down a white-knuckled incline, the three of us felt the temperature drop rapidly. Then, all at once, the hollows yawned open, revealing a gargantuan network of tunnels over four hundred metres in width, and three hundred in height. Large enough to comfortably house the Statue of Liberty, with stalagmites the size of commission towers. Prehistoric ferns and foreign flowers brushed our chests and shoulders as we came upon a freshwater spring coveting speartooth sharks and estuary crocodiles drifting through the inky waters, their pupils catching violet eyeshine in the light of our headlamps, and above the water, striped sheathtail bats. And clouds. Actual clouds, coalescing and coagulating under this cavernous ceiling.

“They form most often in the Spring,” said the Auguries, as Varela, walking over the water. “Heat and moist air mass from the rainforest enter the dolines from above,

evaporating the wellsprings within, altering atmospheric pressure, thus creating the optimal conditions for a micro-jungle with its very own seasons and weather system.”

Then, as if on command, the bats scattered and it began to rain. The water was tepid to the touch, and clear with an alkaline flavor, rinsing the sweat from our brows and drenching our hair. Nora and I began to remove our outer layers of clothing because the temperature was so warm, even in the dark, until we were stripped down to our skins. Then Femi followed suit. After days of bloody grazes, torn muscle, and rocky grit, this subterranean shower was simply glorious. No other word for it. And the three of us spontaneously erupted in laughter. In this single moment, we quite forgot ourselves. The operation, the burden of success, all forgotten in an instance. It was only us now, laughing with eyes wide in witness to the majesty of something so rare and potent. For implicitly, we knew that this experience had seared itself into the central chapters that made the stories of our lives. God, I really hope my grandkids will read this.

“Now that you have reached Checkpoint Yamay,” said the Auguries as they detected our pleasure fading, “we can assist in fulfilling your purpose.”

“You’re actually going to tell us?” spoke Femi. “I don’t believe it.”

I shot a severe look. We were too close now.

Varela ambled to a patch of soil and silt by the edge of the spring, directly beneath one of the dolines. Then they crouched low. “Harvest these.”

Nora took the lead as we came to the spot. Sprouting from the damp earth was a modest troop of mushrooms with broad, pearl and cyan luminescent crowns. “Consume four grams each with tea. We will measure them for you,” said the Auguries.

Femi took a step back. “Excuse me?”

“No,” said Nora, “no, this isn’t right. Why would they make us do this?” “Haven’t got a clue–!”

“Bullshit, you designed this thing.”

“The interface, Nora. I only designed the interface, and even then–!”

“Why can’t you take any responsibility for what’s going on here?”

“Because it has nothing to do with software! Am I the only one that sees this situation for what it is? The Earth is trying to poison us. It doesn’t want people anymore. It hates us– !”

“Nature doesn’t hate us–!”

I threw up my hands: “GUYS-BE-QUIET !” During their quarrel, I’d been staring at the mushrooms closely, entranced by their dazzling glow, when it dawned on me. I turned to Varela.

“It’s–it’s far too bright. I’ve never seen bioluminescent fungi this bright in the wild before. Which means you’ve made it artificially, haven’t you?”

“That would depend on your definition of artificial, but yes, we engineered it.”

“So that’s what this has all been about? You’ve brought us here all this way for one purpose; to ingest this…artefact? Why?”

“Integration.”

Nora and Femi exchanged a weighted glance, awed and humbled, for they knew now that they had both been mistaken: the intent of the Auguries was not hostile, nor the result of erroneous software run amok.

“Integration …” I parroted, reeling, though thankfully my silvologist’s vocabulary returned to me, “...and when you use the word ‘integration,’ what is the sensation and where does it live?”

“A fluttering from between the eyes, to the base of our roots”

“Can you be any more specific?”

“If we could put it into words, you wouldn’t be here–”

“Right, so you can’t explain what this ‘designer fungi’ actually does even if you wanted to. Can you at least assure us it’s safe? Has it been tested?”

“You three are the first trials.”

I looked to Femi and Nora, hoping to find strength, guidance, but we were equally paralysed, we three, alone in the depths, and I had only the clarity to ask one final question:

“...If we do as you ask… might we have a chance, then, to change your mind?”

“The likelihood is incalculable.”

There was much deliberation over the risks, until it came down to a vote. Nora and I outnumbered Femi in favour. I have notated the above before we follow through with their request. After that, I am unsure how cohesive my thoughts will be. I hope we get somewhere. I hope whatever comes next means something. It has to have all meant something, surely… We’ve made a mantra before we begin. We want a peaceful outcome. We want them to let go of any desire for retribution. I suppose, ultimately, we want them to forgive us.

Nothing yet.

My vision feels wider, like I’m wearing glasses with fishbowl lenses.

A bit of giggling now. The idea of so many people dying now seems quite laughable to us. The thought of my own mother dying is hilarious. I hope she doesn’t die, but it’s pretty funny.

Everything we do is hysterical. Everything and everyone. Every human being falling over itself to build and build this poor, adorable, pathetic mangled contraption and spread it around the planet like their favourite jam that Gran taught them how to make. Lots of sugar and very tart.

The Auguries are speaking to us. Speaking in little words. And they’re not just Varela any more. They are tessellations. Tessellating in all places.

“Spiral…core…dream…design…deep…”

They keep saying things like that.

The cave clouds are bending, refracting, dripping with incandescent hailstones. Femi and Nora are seeing the same things I’m seeing. Could be hallucination. Could be the Auguries projecting into our psionics. Impossible to distinguish. They have us under their spell. Even the chemical haptics. Everything feels real. They have curated everything. Our senses at their mind’s whim. Their minds. Their minds are our minds. They’re taking us somewhere.

To a great wooden clock underneath the molten Earth. They introduce us to the clockmaker beneath the clock. And within the maker’s heart, is my heart too. Their heart is my heart.

For five million years, the clock has worked just as it’s supposed to.

Ticking from the core, through the ground, through the roots of our fingers and toes.

Femi hasn’t stopped laughing.

We’ve been sealed there as captives in a groundwater world.

Beneath the surface of our earth.

But we’re not afraid. Things are ticking just how they’re supposed to. Tumbling in waters of magma.

Deprived of oxygen and light.

Breathing hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide in a dark, toxic world. “Just live. Live without effort,” says a voice.

We do as we’re told.

We keep breathing, breathing through the death of culture.

Past the destruction of the shell that once encompassed the sun.

Until we are born again.

Children of chemosynthesis, basking in the toxic dark.

Mutant miscreations in soft Beulah’s night.

We’re so beautiful.

We have many suitors coming to our dark world from brighter lands. Offering us much.

But we say no… no, no.

There’s no one good enough for us.

And that makes us special, because we say no, when others would say yes. Mother is so angry with us.

We will try to be grateful.

We will be less picky.

Then, one day…

When we are burrowing…

A bright light steals our vision….

And we have no choice but to stay still.

And hope there is nothing that means us harm.

Hiding in the light.

But when our eyes adjust to the dangerous brilliance, we see someone. Watching.

A magnificent, towering.

A Jurassic horn on the ridge of its forehead.

Long feathers pluming black, blue, and red.

“It’s a cassowary,” Nora gasps. “The source. The planter.”

It has come to marry us.

How wonderful.

It is so unlike the other suitors.

It is so charming.

Grazing on pearlescent fruits.

Digesting fruits to fertilise seeds.

Planting forests wherever they please.

Mother approves of them too.

We must go away with the cassowary now.

All three of us.

All alone.

Without Mother, to our lover’s lake in the light.

Where we cannot see so well.

Adventures are frightening, marvellous things.

We spend two solar cycles in the lake of light.

We make love with the cassowary.

Their worldly eyes gleaming, their shoulders rippling.

Rocking our hips.

Sweat on their sweat.

Tasting their tongue.

Breathing their breath.

Until we cry and the breath is gone.

On the third cycle, cassowary says they must gather fruit for us.

It is how they show love.

So they leave.

We remain in the lake.

And we hear a peculiar hissing sound.

Coming from beneath the surface.

Of the lake.

When the day is over and the sun is low.

We spend another solar cycle, alone.

And again, upon the setting of the sun, we hear that ill-omened hissing.

The next solar cycle, our cassowary has not returned.

The hissing is louder than ever.

It is bubbling up from the bottom of the lake.

Coming for us.

It is a black water snake.

With its belly full of treasures from the deep.

Now check my head for lice, it says.

We obey, and find horrible, writhing, sliming, barbed, vicious things. Greedy critters we must kill.

So we kill them. We gouge them out.

We had no choice.

Satisfied with our service, the black water snake swims away.

For a moment, we are alone, before our cassowary returns.

We are relieved to see our lover come at last.

Were you afraid of me, when I took that form, said the cassowary.

Our heart broke.

We told our lover we were not afraid of them.

We were lying.

Now in the lake of light, we are never sure.

Do we sleep alongside the beautiful cassowary, or the ridden snake? We feel homesick.

We miss Mother.

We need to leave this place.

We swim to land and meet an old grey thistle.

Darling, you are in trouble, says the thistle.

That cassowary you married is one of seven vile siblings.

Their hearts are not in their bodies.

You must go back to the lake of light.

Swim to the bottom, and you will find their hearts under a rock.

You must dash them to pieces.

We trusted the thistle as it twisted in the breeze, so we returned.

We swam to the bottom of the blinding lake.

We found the hearts.

We could not see them in the light, but we knew them by touch.

We had them in our hands.

Then there was a great hissing.

We heard our lover spitting ruinous words at us.

Telling us that we will never get away from them.

No matter how hard we tried.

And we knew that they were right.

To crush these hearts would seal them to our own.

So, we let them hiss, and hiss, and hiss in anger.

Until their hissing made a rainstorm.

And the storm swept us far away.

Far from the lake of liquid light.

Into the grey of the storm clouds.

And delivered us back to our dark Beulah.

Back to Mother.

Where we were wounded, but safe.

We would learn to love again.

We could not help but love again.

We were sure of this.

Just as we were sure of the ticking.

Of the clock.

Of the heart.

A rhythm so natural.

Just as it is.

Right.

Now.

We’re back at Checkpoint Wuka now, and it’ll take a few hours before we reach the departure zone. I had hoped all would be clear in the morning. Reviewing my thought-to-text notations, I am embarrassed to say that I recall none of it, and much of the transcribed imagery feels foreign to me, as though recounted by a friend’s imaginary friend. Yet I did experience it. We all did. I don’t imagine I’ll need to make further entries. The show’s over, I think. It seems significant enough to mention that when the three of us awoke inside the cave (with mild belly aches), we found the Auguries were no longer adopting the form of Varela, appearing instead as a black water snake. They informed us that the xenobiotics — and all other molecular machines — will not be withdrawn and that no one would come to harm. When we asked whether their change of heart was influenced by something we had said, they replied: “Your participation was invaluable. Thank you.” 

Somehow, three humans under the influence of a bioengineered mushroom managed to avert mass planetary catastrophe. How? God only knows. Femi believes there might have been a software error after all, whilst Nora wonders if this was all just an act of political intimidation. In the past, I would have assumed ineptitude over malice, but in this case, it seems plain to me the Auguries only ever had one goal in mind: mutual understanding. Integration.

[…]

I’ve cleaned up the last entry so that my records flow better holistically. In the following months, all major populated cities received shipments of Augury-manufactured bioceuticals, complete with GFDA approval and credible clinical data to verify their safe use (I’m sure you can guess who the first trial subjects were). This “peace offering,” though initially met with suspicion, arrived hand-in-hand with an enticing proposal: unrestricted collaboration with the Auguries. Under the influence of the bioceutical, a handful of brave leaders from Incheon, Buenos Aires, and Doha began to engage in scheduled communions with the Auguries Nation. Others soon followed. The AGI interface was subsequently discontinued; this was the new interface. Blindly, I had thought it was us who needed to understand them, as though the act of communication was a binary process between active and passive parties. How human-centric. How anthropological. A silvologist should have known better. In fact, it was the Auguries who sought to decipher humankind; to penetrate our collective psyche; to intuit beyond language; to integrate. We are part of their garden now, and my question — the one that was nagging me from the start — has been answered. See — the trees never needed a word for forest in order to define themselves, and humans do not need such words either. Since our tongues could form vowels, we have forced our world to speak with us, failing to realise, failing to recall, the world only speaks from within.

Natural Relations was written on Boonwurrung and Woiwurrung country.