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"One can see the free software movement as a precusor for a "free hardware" or "free wetware" movement--one that will provide free libraries of designs for biological or nanotechnological products that replicators can be programmed to churn out."
- Charles Stross
 |
| Balloon Tree | ||
| Also called the "Migratory Tree", it uses a gas-filled bladder to ascend into the sky. |
This remarkable creature was worshipped by the jungle primitives.
| ""You will have in these islands,"
wrote the professor, "a rare opportunity
to investigate certain extraordinary
accounts given me years ago by the
Jesuit missionary Buteaux concerning
the Migratory Tree, the cereus ragrans
of Jansenius and other speculative
physiologists..."
"I have no doubt," continued Professor Quakversuch, "that if it shall be your great good fortune to encounter a specimen of the Migratory Tree described by Buteaux, you will find that it possesses a well-defined system of real nerves and ganglia, constituting, in fact, the seat of vegetable intelligence. I conjure you to be very thorough in your dissections. "According to the indications furnished me by the Jesuit, this extraordinary tree should belong to the order of Cactaceae. It should be developed only in conditions of extreme heat and dryness. Its roots should be hardly more than rudimentary, affording a precarious attachment to the earth. This attachment it should be able to sever at will, soaring up into the air and away to another place selected by itself, as a bird shifts its habitation. I infer that these migrations are accomplished by means of the property of secreting hydrogen gas, with which it inflates at pleasure a bladder-like organ of highly elastic tissue, thus lifting itself out of the ground and off to a new abode..." |
| Technovelgy from The Balloon Tree,
by Edward Page Mitchell. Published by New York Sun in 1883 Additional resources -
|
What was it? When the professor, lost in the jungle, was rescued and carried to the coast, how was this accomplished?
Can I describe its form? No, not
with the definiteness that would satisfy
the Quakversuchs and the Brierys. I saw
that the trunk was massive. The
branches that lifted me from the ground
and held me carefully and gently were
flexible and symmetrically disposed.
Above my head there was a wreath of
strange foliage, and in the midst of it a
dazzling sphere of scarlet. The scarlet
globe grew while I watched it but the
effort of watching was too much for me...
And as night came on it seemed
to me that the scarlet bulb overhead
became enormously distended so that it
almost filled the sky...
Call it tree, or call it
plant-animal—there it was! Let men of
science quarrel over the question of its
existence in nature; this I know: It had
found me dying and had brought me
more than a hundred miles straight to
the ship where I belonged. Under
Providence, gentlemen, that sentient
and intelligent vegetable organization
had saved my life.
Compare to the stage tree from World of Ptavvs (1965) by Larry Niven.
Thanks to SFFAudio for pointing out this story; don't miss his site full of podcasts and public domain works.
...The next time my senses returned I saw
that Something was bending over me
-something majestic if not beautiful,
humane if not human, gracious if not
woman. The arms that held me and
drew me up were moist, and they
throbbed with the pulsation of life. There
was a faint, sweet odor, like the smell of
a woman's perfumed hair. The touch
was a caress, the clasp an embrace.
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