The Fallen Trees of Mars

Another perfectly healthy tree collapsed inside the first biosphere of Mars, and Caroline McGregor's throat tightened with anxiety. Growth accelerant, nutrient rich soilage, mixed foliage to continuously replenish the grounds fertility, all in vain. Nine months of waiting for the trees to reach maturity and the results where a broken forest that smothered the eatable biomass. Another small step towards starvation, if Caroline couldn't solve it first. Caroline looked up towards the sky and stared down the small blue dot above her, Earth. She imagined it's slow descent into the horizon as a guillotine travelling towards her neck. Current estimates for the arrival for the first civilian Mars colonists are a little over nine months, which means she has maybe a week to find out why all the trees are deciding to opt a more deadly horizontal lifestyle.

McGregor filled her lungs with the still dry air out of the habitat, one, two, three times and regained her composure. Time for the autopsy, she thought mockingly. Caroline's hand ran over the fallen tree's bark, what should have been hardened oak, but crumbled into sand with the slightest pressure. Touching the trunk of the tree, the wood was pliable as if was made from balsa wood. By feel alone it would have been easy to mistake this tree for paper bark or some kind of soft, false wood. To check her sanity, Caroline picked a small piece from the trunk and placed it the small compartment of her bioscanner, the DNA doesn't lie, this is Red Oak with no genetic abnormalities. Good. If it was modified by the Martian environment, then number of variables would be too long for proper evaluation. Caroline didn't need to check the soil or the air, but did so in the off chance there was a fault in the system. Her tablet showed all controlled variables appeared within typical ranges and where labelled "optimal for habitation". Lot of good you are. Her hands moved over the sight of the break; it was a surprisingly clean but the large spikes from the stump showed it was not made by human tools. She traced the perfect rings of the trunk gingerly, avoiding the soft spikes sharp press that would have caused splinters. Perfect? Caroline shot up and loomed over the trunk and confirmed her absent minded thought. Twenty perfectly symmetrical circular rings, an abnormality that should not be present. Caroline walked from one fallen tree to another, and then another. All of them showed perfectly circular rings; even across different species of tall tree.

They have to be related, the perfect circles and the structural weakness. But how? She checked the environmental but used her own sensation rather than the digital tools. The air was still and maintaining a comfortable temperature of about 21 degrees Celsius. Gravity simulated earth within the biosphere, a fact that was good for habitation but disappointed Caroline who loved the weightless sensation of space. Sunlight simulated earth standard days with ideal UV radiation, enough to give energy to plants and nourish skin but never enough to burn. This was as close to an environmental paradise as could be made, and this was its intention. Caroline knew that people where to find and pick their food for nourishment and exercise, an everyday task that was to keep the colonists engaged and fulfilled but was a little bit too much like work for her. Looking out towards the fields of fallen trees and bruised plants within the enormous biosphere, Caroline couldn't see the past-time becoming popular until she fixed this problem. The vision in front of her reminded her of an old memory, a teenage memory, where trees and houses mixed like timbre in a burn pile.