I hope whoever is occupying my body will look after it, but you know what these rich ethereals are like: use, abuse, and dump. But they are the ones with the money, which the government hungers after, claws at, and devours voraciously. Whoever came up with the wheeze of imprisoning criminal quantum physical souls in plants while renting out their healthy bodies to the aged weak rich ought to be worse than just shot. It encourages the courts to find us “young ones” guilty of the flimsiest charge. What a racket!

Of course I wanted to stop the justice system’s unfair ageism, or should I say youngism? I pushed to reintroduce the old tax system of a percentage on income, sales, and profits. It had worked successfully in the past, why couldn’t it now?

Guess what? I was charged with Scrooge-ism, an obscure law against punitive imposed taxes. Since when were my suggested taxes punitive? It was the “imposed” they got me on.

So here they stuck my “soul”; imprisoned in a tree for nine months. The judge had the cheek to say I should consider the sentence an enforced tax on me and see how I liked paying it.

The geeks said plants’ souls are so minimal, I would not notice them. Totally wrong. I have to share this cramped quantum space with a bunch of prickly ants trampling over me in eternal circles. Only those ants are of course the quamics—QUAntum Mechanical Intrinsic Cells—that circulate inside the tree like blood cells do in our bodies. But if they’re unhappy, their prickles turn into stings.

Take now for instance. These persistent frosts have frozen the water around its topmost roots. Not as much water getting into the tree makes it as thirsty as hell. The quamics are forced to curl back the leaves to prevent water vapour escaping through tiny holes on their undersides. Trouble is the cold is also causing dieback in the leaves’ edges that makes them rigid. The quamics do their best to stop this, but find it hard going. When they reach a damaged area, they get agitated and wildly dance around repairing what they can. This stings me. When the damage is really bad, their stinging becomes painful. It is enough to drive me mad.

Snowdrops nestled round this tree’s base come to my rescue. Their blossoms have a neat little trick. Their bell-like flowers open out in the Sun’s heat and then, as the day’s temperature drops, they close up, capturing the warmth inside. It’s enough to keep their sap flowing. It also keeps the very bottom of this bole slightly warmer, enough for the tree to drink some unfrozen water through its topmost roots. Oh the relief! It’s so calming.

This night is the coldest I have ever known. I’m crazy-mad due to the quamics’ stinging. I want to scream my nightmare away, but have no voice.

My one hope is the snowdrops. The centre of my quantum soul moves down the tree to reach out to them. All I can sense of their roots where they touch the tree is brittle dryness. They are parched. Their roots do not go deep enough to find water. And without the precious liquid their flowers will stay closed in the morning. They will freeze to a withering death without the chance to trap the Sun’s heat.

I must get water to them, and the only place to find it is deeper down in the soil. I shift downwards along the tree’s roots, to the very bottom tip of the lowest one. Dry dust surrounds me. The tree has sucked all the water up it can. If only I can push its root further down into the water table. I thrust my soul against the tip. Nothing. I settle what little weight I have against its end. Zilch. I encourage it to grow a few more cells by concentrating nutrients to it from the rest of the root system. It touches water. I pull at it and try to gather it into my soul. It comes into the root’s tip.

Too late, the quamics notice the droplet and steal it away from my control. All I can do is sense it being moved to a very thirsty branch. Damnations!

I try again with growing the root, but this time I am ready for the quamics. As soon as the new droplet enters the root, I push it as fast as I can towards the nearest touching root of a snowdrop. Made it! Just!

The snowdrop sucks the water out of the tree’s root like dry sugar and swells up a little. Its root feels smoother and presses more strongly against the tree. It also feels ever so slightly less cold. The itch from the quamics abates by a tiny amount, and for that brief moment I feel blissful relief.

Having succeeded once, I keep trying for similar results. The quamics steal three out of four droplets, but I keep going through the night. I need to stop their infernal itchiness. As I feel the first stirring of warmth on the tree’s bole, I notice a quamic with a stolen droplet push it towards a snowdrop I have not had the chance to water.

The tree is, or to be precise its quamics are learning. Worse, they are doing so from me. This should not be happening. It must have been a mistake.

Another quamic waters a different snowdrop. Then another. The process continues. Soon the quamic itch reduces to a tolerable level. Its irritation is replaced by my fear: what if the tree learns how to get rid of me?

I have no way of contacting my human guards. There is nothing I can do until they release me from my sentence. All I can do is remain as quiet as possible within this tree. Another worry emerges. Will the ethereal occupying my body permanently change the way my body behaves? I become very scared about my return and how I’ll cope with an as-yet-unknown different lifestyle.

*     *     *
It’s taken me a couple of months to internalise ignoring the prickles on a quiet day.

Today is definitely not one of those days. It’s blowing a rain-laden gusty gale. It wouldn’t be so bad if this tree weren’t an evergreen. The gusts buffet the leaves and pull a few of the more brittle twigs off. They force the branches to swing so that the leaves rub against each other, making their points scratch and dig into their leafy flesh. The boughs spring back and forth against the pressurizing winds, sending shudders down the trunk and on, into the main roots. These vibrations lash out against the soil, loosening the roots’ grip and nudging aside other plants’ roots, bulbs, seeds, and corms. The tree wobbles a little more with each passing gust.

The quamics try to mend the scratches to stem the loss of sap, make the tree more pliable to avoid breakages, and grow roots for a tighter grip on the soil. I notice some broken twigs are snagged in the tree roots poking out of the soil and chaff at the bottom of the trunk. This gives the quamics an extra job of trying to repair the bark there. They rush around so fast that their stings merge into a burning sensation. It’s everywhere in the tree. I feel as if I’m on fire. I want to scream but dare not for fear of agitating the quamics even further.

A bough cracks and half snaps off. It sways to the tune of the blustery wind over a large clump of anemones. For brief moments, the quamics slow down slightly to give me a cooling feeling for all-too-short intervals.

It peaks twice for each complete swing there and back, most likely when the bough protects the trunk most from the wind. But the peaks are out of sync with the protection. So what is the bough influencing? I search from the tip of the topmost leaf to the deepest point of the root system despite the pain. It is like glimpsing snapshots through the opening flames of the tree.

I find nothing and search again, this time bottom to top.

Again nothing. It has to be affecting something outside of the tree. I let the centre of my soul search the roots. There in the most southwest surface root is where the relief rhythm enters the tree. Just beyond it is a clump of anemones in flower.

The bough swings directly above them to regularly stop rain dousing them. That is when only the wind touches them, briefly drying them, particularly their petals. Is this the cause? I am not sure.

As the bough swings past once more, I notice there is less chaffing on the trunk and ground roots from ground debris such as twigs. The wind must be partially blocked from blowing on those twigs. How?

A distant memory about anemones floats into my consciousness: when the wind blows on the flowers, their petals dry and open out. That’s why they are called the windflowers. Their open petals must be diverting some of the wind away from the chaffing twigs. I need to encourage the drying out a bit more.

I stall; in fact I go into some kind of immobilised suspension. The business with the snowdrops had changed the way the tree behaved permanently. What if I ended up teaching quamics another trick to change the way they and the tree behaved? What harm could that do to the environment, or people for that matter?

On the other hand, it will help save the tree from some damage and maybe extend its life a little. Trees are supposed to be good for the environment.

Water is the key to controlling the anemone’s petals. I examine the tree’s roots near those of the anemones. One actually does a full three-sixty degrees curl around an anemone root. I pump water away from that part of the tree’s root as fast as I can, making it drink more water from the soil by osmosis. That volume of soil dries a little compared to the rest around the tree. In turn, that anemone plant dries a little, making its petals open a smidgen more. The twigs’ chaffing reduces, allowing the quamics to move the tiniest bit slower. Wonderful relief, short-lived though it is. The burning still gets to me.

I work on the other roots near the anemones, pumping away as much water as I can. The burning lessens. I can do no more. Only the quamics can now increase the water take-up through osmosis by increasing the polysaccharide stocks behind the roots’ membranes.

A few quamics shift some of these stocks away from the tree’s roots. It reduces the water flow away from the anemones. The burning intensifies. They are not satisfied and take more molecules away. I feel as if I’m in the centre of a fire, despite all my efforts. And the quamics take yet more molecules away. I can’t think straight, trying to pump water from the roots, and from the anemones.

Suddenly the quamics return a few of the molecules. There is a fleeting cooling. More molecules are brought back. And more. Soon the polysaccharides are back to the normal levels. The quamics add even more molecules. Water is pumped faster, and faster. Pain reduces to a persistent stinging that is flamed by waves of burning. The roots can take no more molecules without bursting. I can just about cope with the quamics’ irritation. Thank goodness.

Worry eats into me instead. Have the quamics associated their new trick with the right conditions: spring; anemones in flower; winds from the southwest; and chaffing twigs? It only takes one automated reaction at the wrong time to damage the tree, maybe even kill it. I shouldn’t have taught them, using my freedom of choice without thinking through the consequences properly.

I feel mortal twice over: once for this tree, which I need to stay alive to keep my soul intact; and the second for my own body where its ethereal occupant could be teaching it new tricks that would kill it. I’m terrified.

*     *     *
With each passing day, the sun’s heat warms parts further around the tree. The quamics have less to sort out and take their existence at a slower pace. Their prickling is much less than it used to be. But it’s still there and after all this time, it is very wearying. I wish it would go away.

There hasn’t been any decent rain for quite a few days. Even the morning dew is a thin glaze compared to the heavy water globules that used to weigh down the leaves. The tree draws its water from deeper down in the soil and less water vapour is allowed to escape from the old leaves. The quamics can’t do much about this year’s green growth. The new leaves are soft and transpire a lot through their surfaces, particularly when in the direct sunlight. Little white flowers on last year’s twigs add to the huge demand on water, if only to keep their nectar sacs full to attract the insects. So the tree’s water keeps on coming from deeper and deeper levels in the earth.

Then there’s the dust. It gets everywhere: into nooks and crannies that I didn’t know this tree had; grazing the bark and leaves, especially the new tender ones; blocking the flowers’ stigma entrances, stopping them from being pollinated; and the finest dust even gets inside the leaves through their ventilation holes.

At least it doesn’t irritate me. But as this dry spell continues, the winds pick up even more dust from the arid soil. The quamics work harder to repair the grazes on living tissue, squeeze the bunged up holes, and reshape the leaves and stigma to clear their insides of the dust. As soon as they have dealt with one scratch, two more appear. And once they’ve got rid of some dust out of leaf or stigma, a breeze veers to throw even more dust into the vacated hole. The quamics have to move quicker and their prickling turns into burning. I can’t help them heal the grazes, but try to ease the leaves and stigmas around to eject the dust particles.

Dust isn’t the only thing in the air. There’s pollen from other trees and plants. It’s softer than the dust and doesn’t cause the grazing, but it does gum up some leaves’ holes. Yes, it helps stop the loss of water vapour, which is to the tree’s benefit. But it also stops the vital air needed to help produce the tree’s energy. The tree’s activity slows down. The quamics fight this, but even they have to abandon parts of the tree, letting leaves yellow and die. Their fighting gets more ferocious, their burning turns to scorching. I feel as if I’m in an endless hell; the excruciating pain is everywhere. I want to die.

The quamics in some parts of the tree are less painful than elsewhere. This lessening seems to be centred on the ground towards the west where the nasturtiums are in flower. There, the tree’s surface roots, trunk, and low hanging branches all feel like a haven from the sharper pain. I try to squeeze my soul’s centre there despite the little room. It hurts so much that all I can think of is the scorching pain and how to escape it.

The evening brings a slight cooling of the scorching, more so on the west side. I slowly figure this isn’t right. The setting sun should be making the quamics more agitated compared with the other sides of the tree. Yet the scorching there is less intense, but it is thankfully noticeable.

There is definitely less dust getting into the stigmas and leaves on that side. The leaves aren’t so gummed up with pollen either. Something must be cleaning the dust away, incredible though this is to believe. I try to work out how, but the scorching distracts me from thinking. It’s agony.

I keep squeezing myself towards the west to ease the pain all through the night and on into the next day. The relief, still towards the patch of nasturtiums, heightens again in the evening.

A spot on a surface root close to the nasturtiums out-burns my scorching pain, worse than any agony I’ve ever known. The quamics rush to repair the charred bark and the part of the live root immediately beneath it. They just make the scorching there worse. It’s almost as if the bark burning has been caused by a lit match or lightning strike ... a childhood memory surfaces of a burning-prickling in the school physics lab. I had been rubbing amber with a cloth when electrostatic sparks flew across from the stone to my finger. That lesson, Mrs Mackenzie went on to teach us about how an electrostatic field was used in air filters to clean out dust particles.

My memory flies to a similar sparking on a blue-skied summer day that brought a plummeting temperature in the evening. The nasturtiums in my parents’ flowerbeds shimmered fiery yellow, orange, and red petals. I reached out my forefinger to feel their silkiness. Just before contact was made there were a few flashes of orange light and I felt pinpricks at the very tip of my finger.

Those nasturtiums beside the tree must be generating their own electrostatic field that is clearing air. If only they could fry more dust. The scorching impedes my thinking. I concentrate hard on how to encourage the nasturtiums. Today is drier than yesterday and the relief has reduced. That cannot be right. Hold on, air around the tree’s new leaves is damper. The heat is actually making the new greenery transpire more water vapour. Same must be true for nasturtiums leaves. No wonder the electrostatic zapping is not working as well.

I need to make the air around the flowers drier. The obvious way is to reduce their water uptake.

Terror freezes my thoughts and soul, but the effect of quamics’ scorching jumpstarts my mind. Dare I show the tree a new trick? I was exceedingly lucky with the snowdrops and anemones: the tree did not then go on to use what it had learnt in a stupid way. But the risk is there for any new techniques it uses.

On the other hand the new technique I am about to teach will save the tree from stress and damage and, when I think about it, help the environment in its own ways. It is the same arguments I went round when dealing with the anemones.

I blow hot and cold over whether I should help the tree or not. The pain interferes with my coming to a decision. It’s think, pain, fear, think, pain fear ...

Fear, this is what is driving me: fear of the quamics doing a nasty twist with new tricks. They can also do unexpected good. Who was I to prevent them from doing that?

Like with the anemones, I take away a water droplet from the soil around the nearest nasturtium. Then I pull it up the tree. Then another, and another. I soon start to feel some relief on the west side where there are fewer dust problems for the quamics to get agitated about.

After about the twentieth such droplet, the quamics are imitating me and taking water away from the nasturtiums. The relief from the scorching is ecstatic bliss.

I also find a sense of inner contentment. For want of a better description the quamics have learnt to trust me and copy what I do to help themselves. Such a blinding trust demands me being responsible to them, to not deliberately lead them into danger, or even burden them.

Burden them ... this phrase sticks in my consciousness. The tax system I was proposing would be a burden to people who have other desperate calls on their money. Paying it would stress them. Better to let those who can afford it volunteer the cash. In fact, they have the responsibility to do so.

That wily old judge had a point after all. I’ve learnt my lesson. I want to escape this tree. But I realize the ethereal occupying my body is paying the government tax for the privilege. My stay in this tree is my tax contribution, albeit through a proxy.

*     *     *
When my soul is returned to my body I find I have lost weight and feel fitter with more energy to run around to do more athletic things. I quickly get up from the stretcher. Gently pushing aside the attendants, I step out of the ambulance. In front of me a ten-meter tall holly tree is heavily laden with red berries. Even the half-broken bough sags under the extra weight. This is the tree that has been my soul’s home for the past nine months.

An attendant comes to stand beside me. I guess he wants to make sure I’m all right.

“What happened to the ethereal occupying my body?” I ask.

“Returned to where it came from. Not allowed to say more.” He pauses. “Bizarre.”

“What?”

“That’s the only holly that’s got berries to speak of this year. And look at it. It’s chock-a-block with them.”

“Oh,” is all I can say, thinking of what I had taught it. I wonder if it learnt new tricks all by itself to produce those berries.

“It’s a godsend.”

I turn to the blonde youth and raise my eyebrow as if to question why.

“It’s been swarming with fee-paying photographers for the seasonal cards. It’s going to be a very berry Christmas, especially for government income.”

I inwardly groan, but politely smile. I don’t want to spoil his fun.

“No doubt,” he continues, “the scientists will be up next, trying work out why it’s behaving so differently from all the others. They’ve already put a tree preservation order on it.”

I’m speechless. I have not only made the holly’s life more comfortable, but I have also extended its years. But what other consequences am I responsible for?

“Is there an ...” I croak. I try again. “Is there any chance I can help them out?”

He purses his lips as if in thought. At last he says, “Don’t see why not.”

I’m finally at peace, knowing I have the freedom to discharge my responsibilities to the holly, as well as society.