Chapter Two

Words with Tuna were brief, he took Michael into his arms and the boy seemingly couldn’t have been happier about it, judging by his clapping excited hands when we left.

I had very little time to learn much about the human funerary practices of my local region of assignment, but I knew that traditions and social shifts blended together into something different. Something commonly referred to as ‘The Planting’.

Thankfully some common resource options existed for a quick overview which I will provide here. In the mid-twentieth century when the first satellite pictures of Earth became commonplace, additional technological development in imagery and environmental science began to reveal a world that was in a word ‘struggling’.

Trees were being cut at an ever increasing rate and environmental decimation became commonplace and most shrugged it off as simply the price of progress.

However the view of the Earth from above showing the damage industrialization was doing, along with widely publicized disasters including setting a river on fire, spawned the modern environmental movement. After a number of humans died by breathing toxic air in a major city, the movement picked up steam, culminating in the first large-scale legislation in industrial nations to start fixing problems.

You may be wondering what this has to do with human funerary rites?

As I wrote that very question, the answer loomed before my eyes.

A great forest of stone and trees lay in front of me, far from being a normal ‘forest’ of natural origin, this was laid out more like a garden with crisscross spacing allowing people to walk between each tree over a path made of stepping stones over which I could see some people walking, each path of stone was in turn framed by flowering plants in wild, vibrant patterns of blue, yellow, red, purple, and more.

The trees themselves were of considerable age in human years, at least some of them. They stretched up toward the sky where their branches created a canopy of shade beneath which the living walked.

I followed behind the Walkers after they parked at the entrance and made their way on foot into the interior of the forest. I caught sight of a few other humans along the way who knelt at or touched various trees with reverence.

The human race is strange in that they hold an abiding love for their dead that does not really ever pass away. For most races, the dead are dead, the living live, and when the living become the dead they simply matter very little.

But human bonds transcend this state, which was why others were there at these trees, touching the bark, the roots, or more notably, their belts of stone.

Yes, around each tree was a kind of ‘belt’ or ‘band’ of stone.

Guided by small upright markers indicating numbers and letters, we reached plot E-42, where a number of other humans were already gathered around an open hole in the ground deep enough to bury a human body. There I saw Percival Terrance Barnum’s body was already waiting to be lowered into place, he was contained in a black ‘box’ that wasn’t really a box, more like a biodegradable container enriched with fertilizing nutrients, only his face exposed.

If I didn’t know better, I would say he was only sleeping, his body had been preserved, frozen since his time of death to ensure he was intact, his eyes were closed I would say he was almost like a doll.

The people around the open hole were a diverse lot, united in that all were dressed in some form of ‘Barnum cosplay’ some dressed as young versions of himself, others as old ones, some carried photos of him clasped close to their chests as if they were hugging him.

Teresa approached us and shook our hands one by one, “Thank you for coming.” She said, a fragile smile on her face that quavered when she spoke, “My grandfather hoped you’d make it. Especially you, Byron.”

Unlike the rest of us, she gave him a hug that seemed ‘familial’ pressing herself close to the towering bodyguard. Humans love skin to skin contact more than most sentient species, and affection like that is typically reserved for those who have formed a close bond.

The tighter the bond, the closer the contact. I didn’t know at the time what the story was behind Byron and Teresa, and even as an alien I knew now was not the time to ask. She then turned her attention to Fauve, seeing the white dress, shoes, and everything she’d done with her hair, and after a moment’s pause taking her in, Teresa laughed a deep, belly laugh.

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“He guessed you would do something odd, Fauve, but making him a girl wasn’t on my list of guesses.” Teresa said and waved my humans and I over to where the gathering of Barnum imitators stood. Only when I came close to the hole did I see the sapling at the head of the grave, and every head bowed as his granddaughter returned to her position.

“Thank you all for coming.” She said and raised her head to look at the crowd of thirty odd people. “And thank you all for not leaking out the real location of his funeral, I’m sure the media are having a merry old time chasing their tails from one place to the next.”

A rumble of laughter came up from the many costumed attendees, and faded after a few moments, allowing Teresa to speak on, “My grandfather was a lot of things in his life. A media expert, a satirist, a performer, a public advocate for victims rights, for peace, and a guiding hand that made him renowned to both his detractors and his advocates as ‘The Last Big Fixer’ and ‘The King Maker’, but to those of us who knew him best, he was a friend, a confidant, a mentor, and an eccentric, absurd prankster who loved a laugh especially at the expense of people who in his words, ‘Needed a little crow in their diet.’ The world hasn’t had anyone like him in a very long time, nor will it again, and he will be dearly missed. Goodbye, Grandpa.”

She had a sheen of tears in her eyes that was utterly at odds with the crisp professionalism I saw on her face the last time we met, and then his granddaughter and three other adults I did not know, lowered his body into the hole in the ground.

He wasn’t ‘even’ with the hold or tightly packed, and I soon saw why. A handful of shovels were close by along with a small mound of dirt, after he was in place, they retrieved the tools and began to fill in the hole around him while four more approached a ring of stone.

This ‘ring’ rose to knee length from the ground or one and a half dalax units high in our reckoning, and was only point two dalax units thick. It was calcium white, and etched on one side I read the following:

Percival Terrance Barnum

Born November 30th 2420

Died April 21st 2518

“I lived a life worth writing about, don’t linger here, go live your own!”

Whatever the stone, it must have been heavy as the four humans grunted while they lifted it, their knees and backs bent, their muscles were tense, and they inched it over the grave step by step as the last bit of dirt was shoveled over his corpse.

There was one small depression in the space over Percival’s chest and when the stone sank a few inches into the dark soil, Teresa went to the sapling tree, picking it up in both hands, she brought it over to where her grandfather lay and pressed the base into the depression.

One by one the attendees approached, picked up a handful of soil in their hands, and dropped it over the base, continuing until the last paid their respects and filed away.

Byron and Teresa were the last, and when they finished, a new oak tree was planted. I and Boatswain cocked our heads at the same moment while we watched the strange ritual, and Teresa chose to explain. “We do this so that our bodies will nourish the tree after death, so that we can give back to mother Earth.” She touched the tree with reverence and looked down at the place where dark soil covered the roots, “Over the years this tree will grow, the trunk will run up against the stone and carry his stone up with it, reaching toward the sky while his tree gives us fresh air to breath, in this way our dead can still offer something to the living.”

It was humbling then, to look around, I and Boatswain tilted our heads back and looked at the trees with a kind of new reverence, some of the stone rings that served as tombstones were dozens of feet up in the air, carried upward on thick trunks, while others were only just beginning to brush up against the wood and more were barely more than saplings, the stone not even touched by what would one day be an old growth tree.

“Is it so strange to you?” Teresa asked, cocking her head in a dlamisa-like fashion.

“It is a good tradition.” Boatswain answered for the both of us. I didn’t say anything, only shook my head in denial, military dlamisans are an unusual breed, more accustomed to teamwork than many, they form closer bonds with their units and as such they feel losses more keenly than others of our kind.

I could see his hard eyes soften a little, and almost read his thoughts as he made note of the tradition. It should come as no surprise to anyone that this tradition made it to my homeworld and spread amidst the military ranks with great rapidity.

If you happen to be curious, Percival’s tree was still growing strong when last I saw it, and I expect it will continue to do so for a long, long time.

With that ritual at its end Teresa asked us, “If you’d like to join us, we have an after funeral service, a dinner at his ridiculous building where we’ll read his will and drink to his life and memory. You don’t have to go but-”

“I’m going.” Byron interjected and then clapped his jaw shut.

“As if. You think I’d miss the second half of the old man’s service?” Fauve asked, and her parents nodded along.

“Of course we’ll go, we owe him a good farewell.” William replied, his hand went up to Fauve’s shoulder, and his wife placed her hand over his, a silent agreement with their intent.

Teresa’s weak smile strengthened a little, “I’m sure he’d be glad to have you. Just follow my car if you would.” She said, and led us back out the way we came.

So, there is the connection, the rise of their environmental concerns reshaped their culture into one of caretakers who mixed their death rituals with a concern for the living, thus protecting their world for future generations, and in true human fashion, making even a moment of great sorrow, into a thing of great reverence and beauty that we could do worse than to imitate.