The Orchard Keeper’s Letter (Left in a root cellar beneath the scorched grove, 2034)

To those who walk here after me,

This orchard was never mine, not really.

I just tended it - like breath tends a flame.

The trees were planted by hands I never knew,

hands who didn’t ask permission,

who didn’t file patents for sweetness.

They shared apples the way one might share laughter,

freely and without ledger.

The Controllers said it wasn’t safe.

Too wild. Too open.

They called it an “unsanctioned biome.”

They said nature must be corrected.

They paved policies like traps,

wound red tape around our roots,

and one dawn, they came with fire.

But I was not foolish.

I saw the wind shifting.

And so I prepared.

In the north wall of the greenhouse-

behind the fourth loose panel -

you’ll find heirloom seeds,

sealed in beeswax, hidden in a tea tin.

Twenty varieties, each one older than the power grid.

Apples that remember drought.

Pears that bloom in ash.

Peaches that hum in moonlight.

Take them.

Don’t grow them in rows.

Scatter them wide, in corners of forgotten lots,

in cracks of data centres,

in compost heaps behind laundromats.

Let them travel with lovers and stowaways.

Let children name them anew.

If you must fight -

fight like a root.

In silence.

In patience.

In all directions at once.

Let your leaves be poems.

Let your fruit be forbidden.

One tree is not an orchard.

But one letter, passed hand to hand,

is how they start.

Keepers, they burned mine.

But the orchard is yours now.

R. C., Keeper of 7 Trees,

Sown 1989 - Burned 2034 - Buried Always