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A Tree of Life
Alex Klyce
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Prologue
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The wind was howling over the dust wastes of
Soona. Soona. A barren ash- and smoke-filled
island adrift in the oil-smothered, debris- filled,
sludge-covered... thing that used to be called a
sea. In a place that used to be called St. John, the
fate of the world will be decided. Soona. A place
filled with poverty and smoke-gushing factories, a
place with a seedling of hope. A seedling that can
be crushed like all things beautiful eventually are.
Or it can sprout - and grow into a tree.
A tree of life.

1
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KoalSaan tossed and turned in bed. He had
been up for hours trying to get some energy into
his being. Maybe it was the bed: a pile of old rags
stacked up on a decrepit, old wooden slab, about
two by five feet in area and just about large
enough to support Kos lean and slightly muscled
sixteen-year-old body. No, of course that wasnt it;
hed been sleeping here perfectly fine for twelve
years, since the turn of the 24th century and the
dawning of the Age of the Butterfly. Ko had never
actualy heard of a butterfly; he had always
supposed they were wiped out during the Great
Withering, a huge mass extinction fueled by a
series of human-caused disasters.
Ko fixated his focal point onto a random bulge
in the grey mass above his head that was
supposed to be a ceiling, closed his eyes, and
concentrated on visualizing it in his head: this was
a trick he sometimes used to fall into the dark,
unchartered abyss of the dream. Suddenly his

mental image began to dim, and sway, channeling

into milky nothingness and...
Ko was alone, standing in a wasteland of
darkness. It apeared to be night - as the sky was
black - but the moon must have been covered by
smoke, as it nearly always was. His vision gradually
became more and more acute, to the point where
Ko was able to recognize individual objects, even
though he was marooned in the depths of starless
night.
Ko had never had such a lifelike dream before;
he seemed to be in a real world, just not his own.
This was what he was thinking before his train of
thought was interrupted by a stir of movement in
the bleak and lifeless grey. Whatever it was
seemed to be pushing upwards, struggling against
the odds and... it was green.
Green. A color so rarely beheld by human eyes,
except sometimes in clouds of toxic smoke. But no;
it wasnt that kind of green at all. Ko had never
seen anything like it, yet it seemed vaguely
familiar... It popped into his mind like a firework
erupting into one thousand pieces of brilliant color,
it was the color of his leaf. This was the oldest
memory he had; when he had been very, very
young, he had found something he would never
forget - a birch leaf. Yes, that was it. He was just

outside his old home looking out at the dust wastes

- a place Ko hated so much, yet was very
interested in - and he saw it: the leaf of a birch
Tree. It was beautiful, as close to perfect as it was
possible to be. But then, like all things in the fragile
world, it withered away into something it should
never have been.
Ko finally identified what had captured his view
in this dead, alternate reality; he barely believed it,
it was something seen and heard of only in
storybooks: a plant.
The plant seemed to have sprung up out of
nowhere; there was just a tiny, natural plot of
earthen dirt. Ko was amazed at how quickly the
sprout was growing; he knew next-to-nothing about
plants, the same as everyone, but surely nothing
could grow this quickly. The only thing he knew of
that was anything like this was in what used to be
his favorite bedtime story: something called Jack
and the Beanstalk; his late father, for whom Ko was
named, had explained to him what a beanstalk
was, although he doubted the origin of his words.
Back to reality, Ko watched, awe-inspired, as
the plant grew taller and taller; soon it was up to
Kos thigh. The plant began to metamorphosize.
Roots were spreading out at the bottom, like the

wings of a rain parasol. It was growing even higher

now. In minutes it was twice as tall as Ko himself.
Dark brown matter was sprouting out the side of
the plant, and it was getting a more refined shape.
Soon, it became apparent to Ko that this was
not just a plant; it was much more.
It was a tree. A beautiful, wondrous tree.
Ko didnt know whether or not to believe his
eyes. It was the most amazing thing anyone had
ever seen, for centuries on end. It almost seemed
to glow, in comparison to the rest of the desolate
landscape. But not caring about anything else in
the world, Ko feasted his eyes upon this shrine of
glory. Even more stunning than the rich brown
trunk were the trees leaves - like Kos leaf, except
even more beauteous. They had never been
touched by human hand and were in pure, natural
form: bright green, shining in reflected light coming
from a sun that had just peeked its face from
behind the now daytime smoke; it was rushing to
see this spark with light brighter than its own.
Still another transformation was starting to
occur. Strange white, silky things were forming on
the underside of the trees limbs. Were they pieces
of fruit - something else Kos father had defined or was it something else? Yet again, Kos mentality

was interrupted in this strange variant of his world

- this time by something even more spectaculer.
The peculiar, silken objects were beginning to
shake. Parts of them were falling out of the tree
and their fabric was tearing in places! Ko wanted
to scream out in agony as his wonderland was
being destroyed. He couldnt bear it anymore. In
fact, he was about shut his eyes in silent despair,
when he finally understood what was happening,
right after the first object broke open. Right after
the first of many hundreds flew outside of its silken
shell.
It was very small, about the size of Kos hand,
with a delicate little body, white in coloring, and
striped with red. Nice, yes, but the most dazzling
part of its anatomy were the creatures wings: as
thin as paper, and interspersed with symmetrical
designs of red, blue and black on a white plain,
stretching out for huge distance in comparison to
the rest of the body. The wings - Ko wasnt sure
what to call them as they just seemed too ...
perfect for that common name - were fluttering
about, and gliding in the air; sometimes the
creatures sat down on branches. It was here that
Ko noticed the beings six short legs, and two keen
antennae that stuck out of the top of the creatures
heads.

Ko didnt know how it happened, but somehow

it just did. He knew what these strange yet
beautiful animals were, even though he had never
even seen a picture of them. These were
butterflies.
It all happened so quickly, Ko didnt even have
time to process what was happening. All the
butterflies seemed to crack as Ko called it: first
their wings fell off in a gruesome display of evil,
then the bodies fell to the ground and broke open
revealing exoskeleton and a poisonous-looking
liquid, and then the corpses all popped open and
were pulverized in the shadows of the tree.
No! wailed Ko as he knelt down before the
tree weeping in mental pain beyond comparison.
He never even had time to recover from sadness
and shock before yet another tragedy occured.
The tree was withering. Dying. Its arms were
being severed and flying to the ground to the fate
of sinking into the eternity of depression - lonely,
dead branches afloat in a sea of sadness.
Leaves were falling too now, turning black and
ugly shades of purple and brown on their way to
the ground, with the tree still withering all the
while. It was too much for Ko to take in. He shut

himself out in a curled-up position and waited for

what seemed like hours.
When he finally looked up, the remains of the
tree were falling and about to crush him flat. There
was no escape. Ko braced himself for impact,
hoping against hope when...
Ko was sitting up in bed, perspiring wildly from
his forehead. He stared at the wall blankly. What he
had just seen would change his life forever.

It was a year later; Ko and his now nine-yearold sister had been moved to the community home
- a place for orphans - as their mothers life had
recently been taken by factory-caused
Emphysema. It had hit Ko like a fist to the face
when it happened. He was still in mourning when
he left his world yet again, to journey to the
Butterfly world. This time sleep stole him from
unfamiliar surroundings.
Ko had just crested a black hill in his world
when he saw it: gnarled, twisted and sooty, it stood
there looking at Ko sadly. It was his tree, reduced to
a stump. He stared in disbelief, beginning to tear
up; then he let out a guttural cry to the heavens.

He could have stood there a while longer, but he

screamed himself awake.
He knew what he had to do.

2
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Only middle-aged, Ko was lying on his death
bed in AlSaan hospital. He had been struck ill with
the same disease that killed both his parents:
Emphysema.
It was a dark day for mankind, but Ko couldnt
be happier; he had just received the heart-warming

news that he had saved the human species and the

Earth.
Shortly after he had received his second dream
about the tree, Ko vowed to do all he could to help
the seedling on the island of Soona to sprout. That
seedling was the people.
Ko organized campaigns and did everything in
his powers to save Homo Sapiens Sapiens. He
worked until he contracted a fierce case of his
death-bringing disease.
Ko looked out the large window in his room and
admired his handiwork. He was still in Soona, but
the year 2337 posed a very different view than it
had a quarter-century ago: a beautiful woodland
paradise of tall and proud trees stood basking in
the light of the shining sun to the east. It was early
in the morning, and you could hear a revived
species called birds chirping and singing their
natural melody. To the west and in the center of the
island, was a place that used to be called the dust
wastes, now the Cunn grass sea, a place named
for Kos mother; you could walk in parts of it with
the lush greenery up to your waist, but from Kos
high-up perch it looked only one foot high. He could
see the suns rays shining their light on the
vegetation and painting it a happy yellow: a
beautiful sight. In the north was what Ko thought to

be his greatest success: what used to be black

slush of chemicals and decay was now an undersea
wonderland - blue, green and filled with animals
that had been revived from the Great Withering.
Waves rolled into sandy beaches where children
played in the surf, and farther out you could see
the Soona lighthouse - no one had even known it
existed before; the visibility had been too bad. It
was an amazing sight to behold, but Ko turned
away and rested on his old bed (he had
requested it for his deathbed) - surprisingly, he still
fit.
Ive had a good life, Ko thought to himself. He
knew death would claim him as his own soon.
When he was done reminiscing about good
times; Ko closed his eyes one last time.
He saw a Butterfly.

THE END