The Masque of The Big Ag

The big ag had long devastated the country. No taint had even been so inescapable, or so despicable. The lunacy and horror of monoculture was its seal. There were clear cuttings, and swift harvests, and then depletion of the nutrients, causing soil decline. The pesticide stains upon the Earth were the pest ban which shut any injured area out from the aid of her fellow-life forms. And the whole attack, advancement, and termination of the human domination, were incidents of two centuries.

But Trierarch Arbor was merry and intrepid and shrewd. When her realm was depopulated at nine tenths, she bid to her companionship a hundred wholesome and chirpy friends from among the plants and animals of her court, and with these withdrawn to the ravine retreat of one of her fortified wineries. This was a widespread and awe-inspiring mould, the creation of the trierarch’s own sublime yet maternal taste. Many an incense-bearing trees and ancient forests girdled it in. This natural wall had gates of fertile ground. The living species, having crossed the threshold, enfolded in sunny spots of greenery.

Outside, the human raiders left themselves no means of introspection and shut down their impulses of guilt and wildness within them. Their machinery was amply streamlined. With such provision and disregard these courtiers might bid command to Nature’s resources. So far it was folly to torment their conscience or to listen to their science. Nature had provided humanity with all the appliances of pleasure. There were nutrients, there were garments, there were landmarks, there was wine. All these and power were without. Within was the “Big Ag.”

It was toward the close of the man-made Global Warming that the Trierarch Arbor harboured his hundred friends and all the humanity at a masked ball of the most sublime rarity.

It was an indulgent scene, that masquerade. However, underlying my narrative are the fields on which it was rounded up. There were seven – a sublime pasture. In many human palaces, the view of the whole architectural extant is at the centre of the observer’s sight. Here the illustration of magnificence was very divergent; as might have been expected from the hostess’ love of the “outlandish.” The fields were so regularly arranged that the apparition of humanity embraced itself in observational attention. There was a symmetrical meander at the right and left, in the middle of each angle, a tall and spiral tree looked down upon an open shrub alley of which pursued the cracks and stripes of the natural mosaic. These stripes belonged to wild animals whose attitude was calm in accordance with the prevailing tinge of panorama of the meadow which it populated.

It was therein the seventh field, that there sprung from its roots, a tremendous tree of ebony. Its branches were the home for a dull, heavy, drab croaker; and when the next one hundredth human soul entered the fertile grounds, and the equilibrium was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the croaker a sound which was clear and loud and heartfelt and overwhelmingly passionate, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each coming of a hundredth human brethren, the humming of butterfly wings were hushed to pause, momentarily, in their animation, to hearken to the call; and there was a brief meditation of the whole gay company over their future fate in union of nature and humanity. And while the croaks of the croaker yet rang in the ears of the revellers, it was observed that the giddiest human grew pale, and the full blossom of the flora turned colourless. But when the roars had fully quitted, a light laughter at once infiltrated the rally; the guests looked at each other and smiled as if at their own fuss and regret, and made whispering vows, tree to tree, branch to branch, leaf to leaf, that the next cry of the croaker should produce in them no similar emotion; and then after the entry of another one hundred humans (which

embrace one hundred hungry guts of Humanity that feeds), there came yet another cry of the croaker, and then were the same worry and anxiety and meditation as before.

But to the field which lied most afield of the seven there were now none of the maskers who wander, for the time dwindled away; and there poured a polluted light through the pesticide-coloured plants; and the muddiness of the water stream nauseated; and to them whose foot fell on the spotless soil, there came from the near tree of ebony a baffled chirp more vigorously honest than any which resonated amidst the gay party of the other fields, dim and distant, yet not impervious.

But the other fields were thickly teeming with life, and here among others beat feverishly the hearts of men. And the merrymaking continued on and on, until in the long run there was heard the tenor chirp of that terrified bird. And in the quiet, there was a grave halting of all euphoria. And thus too, it happened, that amidst the bird’s song, there were many life forms in the swarm of life who had found respite to notice the company of a masked figure which had gained the attention of very few hitherto. And a whisper became a buzz, until this new companion having unravelled himself through and through, there arose from all that was living a buzz, or a cry, or a growl, or a hiss, of terror, and of antipathy.

Even with the limitlessly desperate, to whom consumption and waste are alike hoaxes, there are experiences of which no gag can be made. The united camaraderie, indeed, appeared now profoundly to realize that in the visage and behaviour of the stranger neither humour nor convenience existed. The personage was towering and robust, and shrouded from head to toe in the garments of fossil fuels. His mask was made so nearly to mimic the expression of a survival necessity that the closest inspection could hardly uncover the cheat. The mascot’s uniform was coated in pesticides – and his homogenous brows, standing out amidst a featureless face, were spattered with a jade panic.

The Trierarch Arbor went forth to welcome the unwelcome guest, with the same natural curiosity that penetrated all the seven fields. It was amidst these fields where stood the trierarch, with group of nosey elephants by her side. At first, as she espied, there was a gentle rushing advance of the inquisitive herd in the direction of the intruder, who, from the opposite direction was nearing the hostess. But it was the trierarch who inspired the awe in her protectors, so there were found numerous species who put forth a hand, a paw, a wing, a claw, a hoof to slow down the intruder on his way to their benefactor; so that, thoroughly investigated, he passed within a yard of the trierarch’s being. And while the vast assembly of people, as with one impulse, shrank from the centres of the fields to hide behind the natural tapestry providing them shelter, the masque’s tail of agriculture machinery made its way uninterruptedly, yet with a destructive and erratic pace through all the levels of Nature’s beauteous fields.

It was then, however, that the Trierarch Arbor, moonstruck with grievance and the mortification of her own prompt sacrifice, rushed hurriedly through the six fields, while none followed her on account of a more imminent danger that had seized upon everyone’s attention. She yielded underneath her being a drawn dagger, and had approached, in slow caution, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having reached the end point of the poisoned field, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry – and the dagger flew across the field stopping at nothing left to the tree of ebony. At the heroic hand of Trierarch Arbor the ebony tree started bleeding its sap and the sap’s smell filled all the seven fields. Then giving into a desperate agony, the human and natural revellers at once threw themselves into a

common fight, and seizing the machines whose tall wheels drove across the seven fields within the shadow of the ebony tree, gasped in unutterable terror at finding the wheels of the Big Ag domineering over the animal and human corpses laid on all-pervasive dead soil.

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Big Ag. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the human visitors of this natural feast in the blood of their sustenance. And the life of the ebony tree went out with that of the last of the gay. And the Consumption and Waste and the Big Ag held illimitable dominion over all.