It was a cloudy late winter day in Dysmal Nitch when cryptographer and AI language specialist Dr. Abadi found himself on a bus outside of Astor Woods. The programmer ran his hand through thread like white hair while he stared out the window thinking of the lecture he was supposed to be giving at that moment in sunny Burbank California, but through a series of mishaps had ended up on a bus in Washington instead. He was lamenting the lack of cell service when a stand of unusually striking trees at the edge of a forest caught his eye. Their bark mottled with white-white-black-grey and in spots and lines and … characters? It looked so much like language…
A large wooden sign in the grassy space at the edge of the woods read:
ASTOR WOOD: KEEP OUT
City council
It’s for your own good.
Thank you.
For inquiries, please email, or write, or call…
Really, we’re very sorry but trust us, stay out of the woods!
Debate rages why such a smart fellow as Dr. Abadi had neglected the sign. True, English was not his first or even his second language. Was he confused? However, since Dr. Abadi had proper grasp of Arabic, French, English and even some Japanese as well as the language of mathematics having published prolifically upon Calculus a language of its own accord – one can only deduce he didn’t see the sign. Possibly his focus was so gripped by the trees he did not carry out due diligence.
The bus pulled up and stopped at a derelict looking ‘gas & go’ named Curly’s fortuitously across from the dark wood. The doors opened. For an inexplicable reason the myopic doctor adjusted his glasses, grabbed his leather satchel, and stepped off the bus. He was staring at the trees.
Lou McDonald was driving past at the time and phoned the bakery, who then let everyone else know: someone was going into Astor Wood. Doors were locked. Windows were shuttered, well, there aren’t many shutters honestly in Dysmal Nitch, but if our houses had them: they would have been closed tight.
Dr. Abadi couldn’t hear any birds singing in the wood but the trees themselves seemed to make their own harmonies. It was more than the gentle cool sea breezes through Hemlock boughs and rustling the tops of Alders – it was melodic, he thought, mathematical. He figured that some of the sound was most likely far beyond human hearing, but it was definitely there.
There was a quite high old chain link fence around the parameter but it was missing in places and dotted with rust. Access to the woods would not be difficult… he mused.
Dr. Abadi in his sixties had not been seized by curiosity in years, his days had a routine greyness to them. He fed Eloise the cat at 4 am and solved crosswords over coffee, the rest of the day was work but it had started to lack energy. Dr. Abadi thought it was age catching up to him, a hidden health issue, or just being tired but… now here it was, this great wood that was talking. He was on an adventure. His expensive well shined leather loafers weren’t going to survive wading through the grass to the woods, let along stomping through the forest, they were his designated traveling shoes.
A decision was made. Dr. Abadi entered the wood. Dr. Abadi smiled.
The local constable saw him enter the wood, but was just a little too late to stop him.
INTO THE WOOD
There was a trail in the wood Dr. Abadi followed. Had Dr. Abadi been a man of the outdoors possibly he would have wondered why there were no spider webs, no birds chirping, nothing rustling in the underbrush, no hoof or paw prints. Additionally, since he was in bear and big cat country, he should have been cautious but luckily no predators at all lurked in Astor Wood although it was inhabited…
The harmonic sounds seemed to be resonating together, then apart, then coming together again. He was utterly entranced and kept walking deeper into the woods.
Finally in a copse of Alders he started to see it, the bark wasn’t just beautiful and variegated in striking contrasts, it was a language, a real language – just like that first crazy notion had struck him. It was more akin to hexadecimal then binary was his first thought, and then he jumped to his favorite subject of course, calculus. The trees had setup their own object oriented language and with calculus it should be possible to decipher.
But how, with no eyes were the trees actually communicating? Or was the language for predators or insect life? Why did the wood want to communicate? Most of all: what did it say?
The winter sun reflected off the white sections in the trunks of the trees, could it be that the trunks cast back a patterned signal that the nearby trees could read?
How long would a topic of conversation go on between trees? A millennia? It would be so slow as to go completely unnoticed by humans, as did the slow growth and slow movement of the trees. Would the trees be aware of Dr. Abadi walking past? Of course not, he thought, to them he would be a flash of an insect, moving so rapidly amoung them as to be inconsequential.
Dr. Abadi was staring closely at tree bark doing a few calculations in his head, throwing them out, starting over, when a cold feeling slid down his spine. He suddenly looked up, stared around with a feeling he was not alone. He had gone much farther from the road then he had initally meant to and could no longer see the trail he had taken into the wood.
A helium balloon was drifting towards him, not far off the ground as if it found the woods too oppressive to joyously find a breeze and take off toward some distant rainbow, no it hovered, slowly coming towards him.
On the balloon string was a card. Curious Dr. Abadi caught it in his hand and read:
BEWARE of the Bulbul!
The birds Dr. Abadi, the birds, look up.
Also: trespassing into Astor Wood is fineable up to $50. A permit to visit the woods can be obtained on the 3rd Wednesday of the month by going to city hall, first floor, room 8A and talking to Margaret, but sometimes Margaret is not there and so no permits can be given and you’ll need to return. No online formats exist to apply for permit. Permits are limited to one per day only and during daylight hours for more information about our permit system and fine ….
Dr. Abadi heard a rustle, he stopped reading and looked up. The harmonics abruptly stopped.
Birds…it had said…birds but Dr. Abadi hadn’t heard a single bird since he had came into the forest.
A terrible shrieking began, a squeal like a hundred angry fearful pigs, a PIG ARMY, then a cry like an angry woman screaming at the top of her lungs, a cacophony of the most horrible sounds Dr. Abadi had ever heard from a flock of aggressive ugly jay sized brown birds with long tails. They started to dive bomb him, the cries so loud he covered his ears. “Reeeeee REEE SCREAM!!!!” The sound had a sawtooth edge to it and cut into every nerve at once. How was it that a bird, a creation of Allah could make such a damned noise?
He started to run. First, he lost the left loafer then the right, but the footpath was full of moss and lichen and soft. Soon he was out on the grass in front of the wood. The birds did not follow.
As he found the road again by a stroke of luck he saw a police cruiser sitting there patiently waiting.
Dr. Abadi was shaken to the core, “those birds” he gasped to the police officer who nodded affably as he opened the back door to the cruiser.
“Don’t worry, they never leave the Wood.”
“Let’s get you back to town. Say, did you take a photo of the trees by any chance?” Dr. Abadi kicked himself, he had not. “That’s the real show you know, that is if you have an iPhone. That’s what it works with I hear, just iPhone.” Dr. Abadi was trying to calm his breathing, he hadn’t understood a word of what the constable was saying. [1]
“Yes, a photo, please, just give me a second to get one or two” Dr. Abadi muttered his feet getting colder by the second and soaked by the wet grass around the cruiser.
Dr. Abadi took out his phone and zoomed in, but on the preview the trees looked rather odd. He could see an outline like … a life force? And…and they were moving! “Oh my God!” he gasped, but when he looked up – they were normal trees, they were not moving or shaking or glowing…but in the view finder. He shut off his phone. “Nevermind” he said, “Let’s go.”
The officer nodded in a friendly way. “The college across the river would like for you to speak to them about your work on calculus and they can pencil you in for later today if you still have that talk ready to give.” Dr. Abadi, slightly confused nodded. How did they know who he was? How did they know where he had been to even find him? He was supposed to be in … Burbank? Maybe, maybe he had not been sleeping well. He rubbed his temples, they hurt in a strange way.
“We’ll go by Big 5 Sporting Goods, the officer said, Ian there will set you up with some new shoes. The college staff will get you settled after your talk and you’ll be on your way again Sir.”
And that’s how we have the new Chair of Mathematics. After speaking at the college, he learned they had an opening and it would put him closer to various woodlands to continue his research and it’s such a nice, nice little area of the world and we told him all about our summer sunshine and how for two weeks out of the year this is the most gorgeous wonderful place on the entire planet. He has relocated here with his kitty, one of those new builds, yeah the duplex ones down by the reclaimed pit, and he’s started frequenting the coffee shop on the pier.
For more information on Astor Wood or if you would like to visit, please read, “Cursed Forest Lands to Be Re-branded ‘Astor Wood’ in Smart Financial Move”
