the night forest burns

(An excerpt from the current draft of my sci fi retirement ship / dog novel "CARGO" )

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I knelt at the door with the wrench, and I ran my fingers over the door panel, looking for the hidden latch. I found it, and the panel slid down an inch, revealing the bolts that held it securely in place. Kneeling on the floor, I felt the far off boom, in the distance. Mitchie whimpered from underneath the bed. 

"It's okay. Hey," I tried to tousle his fur but he clambered deeper into the dark, away from my reach. "It isn't bombs," I said. Marlene said she was going to the night forest. She was going to stop them from burning it, somehow. We had to help her.

The adjustable wrench was the exact right tool, not only because it could adjust to various bolt sizes, but because the back end of it had a fixed wrench at the ship's most common bolt size. There was no fiddling necessary, no trial and error to find a workable adjustment.

I twisted the wrench slowly. There was no resistance, no dirt or rust to interfere. Everything worked exactly as it should. 

"Maybe it isn't bombs," I said to Mitchie. "Maybe it's life all around us." I placed the first bolt carefully on the floor to my right. "Do you remember the forest? Well, those giant trees are centuries old, and maybe they are growing and bursting through the floors and walls of the ship. That's what the booming sound is. They're called redwoods, and they are tired of being locked up. They are growing and finding their true size, not just the height of the deck we built for them." I set a second bolt gently beside the first.

There was another boom, and Mitchie squirmed under the bed, crawling on his belly across the floor toward me. He didn't believe my story any more than I did. He was afraid and wanted to hide in the dark. At the same time, he wanted to be near me, and my voice. He wouldn't let me touch him. He was even more confused than I was. There was another boom. What the hell were they bombing? It sounded like a war out there. They were children. Angry children throwing a temper tantrum because they weren't the masters of the universe. The web of life didn't spread out from humanity, and the solar system didn't orbit Earth.

"There are creatures out there, Mitch, in the darkness, older than our sun. They swim through space leaving a trail like a glow pond. They've found our ship and they don't know what to do. They're so excited to meet someone new. So they just keep hitting the side of the ship with their butts. It is the only way they know how to love," I said. "They are ancient and enormous and kind of dim witted."

I carefully removed the panel from the door, and looked inside. The release bar was manual. It was a lever that lifted the door an inch back onto its track without needing the electronic switching. I grabbed it and I pulled it up and toward me. It was well lubricated, and lifted easily. The door opened a crack.

"There's nobody left on this floor," a voice in the hallway said. I froze, The voice was so close. Too close. I gently pushed the door closed again. I put my ear against the metal to listen. The voice was still there. "They must have all gone down to the clean decks."

"I don't blame them. Look at all these fucking weeds."

The voices got lower as they moved away down the hall.

"I wish we had a flamethrower," one of the men said. "Goodbye weeds."

"You can't use a flamethrower on a spaceship. It would burn up all our oxygen."

"Says the guy with the grenades."

"If you know a better way to open all these locked doors, I'd like to hear it, genius."

I reached under the bed and pulled Mitchie out. He was not happy about it, but there was no way I was going to leave him alone in my cabin while these people were using grenades to open doors. Taking a flamethrower to the plants in the hallways was such a cruel idea. Both of those men had taken breaks in the forest decks. Everyone on the ship did. And now suddenly plants were the enemy? Burning them alive was fun?

I pulled the manual release and slid the door open all the way, in one quiet motion. 

"You wanna go see Marlene?" I said, and Mitchie perked his head up. His tail twitched, just a bit. "Yes you do! Marlene will cheer you up!" I picked him up, along with the wrench. Marlene would cheer me up, too. 

The hallway was beautiful and alive. They hadn't taken fire to it yet. Mitchie and I stayed low and moved as fast as I could carry us through the cold low fog. It hurt to move crouched down like this, but I didn't want to turn a corner and find violence. 

The whole hallway smelled of a flower in bloom. One of the vines must have just flowered. It was delicate and there was a sharp edge of lemon. In one of the nearby hallways there was another boom. Mitchie let out a whimper and hid his face. 

If the ship was alive, did it feel pain? Or fear?