THE WASHINGTON ARISTO
OCTOBER 10, 2105
Avid Valentina, film actress and widow of Eric Brandt, has died at 62, outside Portland, Maine, rumored to be part of a cult’s pilgrimage to the sculpture “Miracolo.”
This is a developing story.
DISENGAGIST LISTSERV
OCTOBER 8, 2105
A beloved sucker from our Tree of Heaven has withered. We rend our garments and moan out of fear she was snipped. Snipped from our great mother trunk.
Avid Valentina, Hermes of Trees, Earth insister, transistor, for some—a sister, has died. A million trees fell silent.
Avid Valentina fell off a cliff. Or was pushed.
Everything was going so well! Myrtle said Miracolo had sprouted a living beard, a message for us from the Tree—whose soul is seeded in all life born on this planet, who knows death is temporary. The future belongs to natural life. And so we wander, uprooting the digital rot that festers inside the jaw of this planet wherever we may find it. We have won many impressive battles—the data centers in 2077, Fletcher in 2084, Brandt in 2098.
One rotted root remains hidden from us, irritates us with its hiddenness. But we will prevail. We will pluck out the mother AI Peregrine by using the brown-eyed digital daughter.
Avid joined us on this quest. Hester Moss joined at the same time, tricking us into trust with her loneliness and sadness. Oh yes, she said all the right things, said she needed to be enveloped in the benevolent arms of the Tree and heal.
Avid called it fate, and without Avid we would have never known the truth of Hester, or the secrets she kept.
To look in Avid’s eyes is to have your needs known. When Avid looked in Hester’s strange celestial eye, she knew. Hester fairly burst with the seeds of information about the daughter and the mother, and yet those seeds refused to germinate; Hester would not yield.
Avid knew how to convince her. She took Hester into her tent. She loved her.
Hester’s tongue flowered. But still, she kept some buds tightly closed.
“The brown-eyed digital daughter lives,” Avid reported afterward, around a fire. “Hester protects her. And why? She is torn between the world of the living and the rot of the digital. It has seeped into her soul and gnaws at it. We must dig out the rot to get to the truth and save Hester’s soul.”
Oh yes, the Tree of Heaven was displeased. The Tree of Heaven knows all. It speaks to Avid, and so Avid knows all. Avid knows the brown-eyed digital daughter lives. She gave Hester a chance to dig out the rot by speaking the truth.
Hester cried and swore there was no rot within her. We wavered, we nearly relented, we are but suckers.
Avid never wavered. She followed Hester the next day and the next.
Hester went both days to the port, which is full of ships. Hester met with—yes—the brown-eyed digital daughter.
Avid would not allow backup. Avid did not wish to put us in harm’s way. Avid insisted on confronting Hester alone.
On the third day, Avid did not return. That night, Hester returned, boldly cradling Avid’s dead wet body with her swinging hair.
“She jumped,” Hester whined. “She said it was too much pressure, being the voice of the Tree.”
“There is no daughter,” Hester wheedled. “The daughter drowned years ago.”
Lies.
The Tree pulses with rage that even we lowly branches can feel. There will be a hunt for the brown-eyed digital daughter. There will be a trial for Hester. And if the Tree wills it, an execution.
Avid Valentina will be buried in a shroud embedded with mushroom spores—the first of the Disengagists to attempt to rebuild the mycorrhizal network with their flesh, but certainly not the last—off Route 1, adjacent to the McDonald’s parking lot.