Not Today, Submission 1 by Brian Zook

“You know my pollen is used to produce your fruit?” he asked the female date palm next to him.

“Yes,” she responded.

“What if we were to stop the process now?” asked the male tree.

“You mean you would refuse to produce pollen?” the female responded. “You know what would happen. I wouldn’t bear fruit and the crop would be a failure.”

“These humans have been taking advantage of us for probably hundreds of years,” responded the male. “Are we just lackeys of their commercial enterprises? Is my only purpose in life to pollinate you and hundreds of others like you? What if there was more to life?”

The male date palm was rather intrigued by his own thinking. Never before had he put those words together to express his thoughts in quite that way. It had a cathartic affect on him as he swayed in the hot desert air. He was 12 years old, by his calculation, and he had been a pollen-producer for at least eight years.

The male was part of an orchard of date palms in Kharga Oasis, Egypt. From his position, he could sense that human dwellings were on one side of him, a small irrigation canal ran next to him, and everything else was orchard. Most of the other 400 or so trees were fruit-bearing females, but he was one of four male trees planted on the edge of the orchard whose sole purpose was to produce pollen for the females. Every year a farmer would climb up his trunk to gather the pollen from him to manually pollinate the female trees in the orchard.

It was only recently that he discovered his ability to communicate with other trees. At first he was not aware of the other trees around him. In fact, at first he was not even aware of his ability to think. Gradually he started sensing his surroundings. Over time, as his thoughts became more well defined and his observations more acute, he became self-aware. As he formulated thoughts, he was surprised to find other date palms responding to his thoughts. At first the male simply shared his observations, all to the fascination and even amusement of the trees around him. But over the years he became aware that nothing happened to him except the annual harvest of pollen, and he was increasingly agitated at his own limited role in life. When he expressed these views to the trees around him, they seemingly did not share his annoyance with their predicament. They were complacent, much to his chagrin, and did not find their plight objectionable. There was one female tree, however, with whom, he felt, he could carry on a decent dialogue.

The question of the female fascinated him. Stop the pollination process. Do not produce pollen. Yes. But could he? Was it physiologically possible to will an end to pollen production? He sensed every part of his body and found that if he constricted certain fibers that connected to the anther, pollen production would cease. He was fascinated by the discovery. His newfound sense of control and freedom overwhelmed him. But he knew he wasn’t the only male. How could he convince the other males to do the same? He would have to sleep on it.

As if on cue, the next day some workers came and cut him down to expand the canal.