Part 5: Tree Art Bark Edition – Epilogue

My Heart.

I had just finished collecting plant samples on the moon of Regal V when I got your message. You were already gone by then but I didn’t know that yet. I would later hear accounts of what happened through the grapevine – how you took out half the enemy's numbers before you were cornered, how you held your ground till the last moment, how a tree sprouted on the spot you fell.

The days that followed were a blur. I don’t remember eating or going to work or even delivering the source code back to The Creator, for that matter. I only focused on breathing, to take one breath after another, after another, after another.

I'm not sure when I first noticed it. I would see the restless rhythm of your steps in the gait of a cat, the way you tilt your head in the nod a flower, that off–key way you sing in the song of the wind.

And every night when I close my eyes, I would see the tree, the one watered by your blood, in all its glorious colours. It’s as if you're trying to tell me something in a language I don’t quite understand and when I awaken, I can't shake the inkling that there’s something I ought to remember, like, maybe, I’ve seen that bark someplace before.

It took me a while but I think I figured it out. When you encrypted the source code, you also wove a piece of yourself into its algorithm. Seeing your quirks everywhere wasn’t simply grief driving me mad. It’s because you are now part of the source code and by extension, everything in the universe now carries a part of you in it.

See, I have a theory about why you did that. In botany, we use a cutting – a section of a stem, a root, a leaf – to grow a new plant. What if you deliberately left a part of yourself behind so that you could use it to regenerate? After all, the source code is the essence of life itself and by embedding a part of yourself within it, you planned your own rebirth.

If such a thing were possible, where would I find you?

Last week, on my way to Titan, I looked down at the class M planet we passed, at the marbling of colours sculpted by the atmosphere and ocean and land mass and it suddenly hit me. The pattern on the tree bark was how a world looked like from space and there’s only one planet in all of Creation that looked like that.

Nova Vita.

New Life.

And, so, I’m on my way to you. Wait for me under the trees. I will see you again when it rains and hold you to your yes.