A tree fell in the forest. It may or may not have made a sound.
What it DID make was an opportunity. Bark-torn, xylem in shambles, phloem lost, roots demanding to know what made the pressure change, all of it wide-open for ground-level opportunism.
And oh, the opportunism there was to be had! Every arthropod with working limbs and a stout stock of haemoglobin fell upon it, or upon each other. Woodlice roiled in their armoured columns; beetles teamed atop the fallen limbs, knives clutched betwixt their mandibles; great fat grubs were hatched and gnawed and devoured alive in the endless sturdy halls of the banquet of the tree’s corpse. Caterpillars who had claimed leaves as their lofty private gardens desperately raced to outeat a horde of upstarts, monocles popping in outrage as they watched their green estates wither away at the hands of the dirtbound masses.
But at last the frenzy subsided, the crowd calmed, the victors stood atop the log. Though chance had played their part in the great struggle, at last destiny had declared a winner to rise alone in triumph in the center stage of this particular performance of history.
“Victory!” cried the largest of the beetles, hoisting their banner in its tattered limbs. “Through strength of carapace, situational flight, and indefatigable numbers, by virtue of our efforts we have CLAIMED this carcass for our people and our plump, wood-boring children! Pay us tribute!”
Upon saying so, there came a quick cold wind from above, and behind that a beak, and behind that a bird, and when the bird departed so too did the beetle.
Then came the woodpeckers.
***
After the Time of Knocking was through, the ragged survivors reassembled for a meeting near the tree’s heartwood.
“My friends and beetlefamily,” croaked the eldest of them, “we have endured much. We have seen loved ones and children plucked screaming from their nests by tongues so long and gross as to defy all description. But here at last we have gone too deep for even the mightiest pileated to penetrate. Though we have all suffered, this is but the dark before the dawn.”
There was a brief crunching sound as the bear began to sink its claws into the wood and brace itself.
“Well,” said the second-eldest beetle present. “To hell with speeches anyhow.”
***
When the Time of Claws was through, and the Second Time of Knocking had reaped what little remained on the newly-exposed wooden core, and a few particular peckish possums had stopped by late one night and picked off most of the survivors in what was not a Time Of but was generally regarded as being a Time, the tree was a different place. For one thing it had been torn asunder into several logs; for another, someone seemed to have eaten all the beetles.
“This was good luck,” said one woodlouse, who was now gnawing away quite happily on the humus and scum of the tree, its bark, and several dozen unlucky beetles. “That could’ve been us.”
“This was smart timing,” retorted another woodlouse. “We were letting the beetles think they had the run of the place on purpose, so they could get vertebrate’d, which any fool could see would happen. We had everything under control the whole time. Never let chance take credit for your own cleverness.”
“Nah, ‘twas Detrital Providence,” proclaimed a third woodlouse. “We were MEANT to have this tree, and the beetles were always meant to be purged by blessed beak and consoling claw. Lo, we are given that which we were always promised, and shall always be ours forever and ever, while our foes are assured eternal damnation and befoulment by horrid bone-bearing beasts in the hinterlands of the cramped corners of the furthest ends of the most despicable stretches of the earth. Here we shall flourish for all time, ensconced in these hallowed halls free of shrews, spiders, and – may they never curse us with their foul presence – centipedes.”
“That sounds MUCH better,” said the second woodlouse.
“Did you hear something?” asked the first.
“A whiny noncommittal jerk who won’t be a team player,” said the third woodlouse. “Throw it off the log.”
“But I heard something,” complained the first woodlouse as it was dragged to the edge of the log, tiny legs flailing in abject pitifulness. “It sounded like ‘drip drip-”
It plunged to the forest floor, where a shrew devoured it instantly. The woodlice cheered at this, and such was the tumult and the joy of their celebration that they didn’t hear the drip, the dribble, the splash, or the flood.
***
Some time later, the log was in the water.
“This is a test,” the third woodlouse reminded its brethren. “We are being purified and made wholesome so as to inhabit our new home. Behold! Already the water has washed away the centipedes and the doubters, and this strange ‘creek’ we float in is bereft of shrews!”
“And we shed the losers that didn’t get with the program,” said the second woodlouse. “Dead weight’s gone, our enemies are suffering – this is all gravy if you ask me.”
“It washed away half of us,” said a different first woodlouse. “That seems to be bad.”
“Cast the new whiny noncommittal jerk who won’t be a team player into the water,” commanded the third woodlouse. And so the different first woodlouse was dragged to the edge of the log – more slowly this time, because there were fewer woodlice – and shoved down at great effort and expense until the waves took it, along with a gigantic grasping pincher-claw.
“Rejoice!” called the third woodlouse. “For lo, the beasts of this new land obey our command!”
“What if they come up here?” panicked a new first woodlouse.
“It’s totally impossible for that to happeaaaaarghhhhhh,” said the second woodlouse, as a crayfish gently plucked it from the surface of the log and began to devour it. For lo, this was not the case.
***
The Time of the Smaller Claws was one of great strife, of perilous revolutions and the upheaval of societal order. For one thing, the woodlice were enserfed to the log, ordered to farm algae and so the crayfish might consume it consume it and also consume the woodlice. For another, the log would very slowly and perilously revolve as the algae on its underside overgrew and the algae on its surfed was withered by the sun and grazed away, upheaving the order of society as the woodlice were driven like cattle to their new and soggy pasture while the crayfish scuttled to their new domains.
“This is foreordained by the universe, probably,” the third woodlouse had admitted as he was devoured by a hungry crayfish. “But in a good way.” And this had caught the attention of the crayfish as an amusing thought.
“What nonsense,” it laughed at the next cocktail party it attended as the guests devoured plates of woodlice. “The bigger people eat the smaller people, that’s just how it is. Putting more words on it is just fancy-pants delusions.”
“Exactly. Any fool can construct a complex series of tautological arguments insisting that the universe is meant to end with themselves in charge of everything; REAL smart people know that might makes right and they’re the mightiest ones so ipso facto quod era demonstratum lorem ipsum they’re meant to be in charge of everything.“
“Quite so.”
“To be sure.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“On a totally different topic, has anyone found the water to taste saltier and fouler recently?”
“Your tastebuds are acting up. Must have not eaten enough woodlice, get some more in there.”
“No, no, it HAS been getting saltier the farther we drift. Maybe we should consider beaching the log, or even pushing it farther upstream.”
“Boring killjoy. We’d have to stop rotating it with woodlouse farming to do that; come up with a more conveniently solvable problem and we’ll listen to you.”
***
The time that followed the passing out of the estuary into the Big Big Blue Horizon had no title because it very rapidly ran short of enough inhabitants to form a quorum on matters of history, ending with a woodlouse sitting atop the brilliantly-shining salt-speckled hull of the log, wide eyed and terrified at everything.
“This seemed avoidable,” it mumbled. It gummed fruitlessly at some of the little sticky bits gluing themselves to the wood, ingested salt, and passed away.
A gull sampled it, in the optimistic way of gulls. The few clinging speckles of barnacles-to-be were less appetizing, and so it left them and the log and forgot about them.
***
There was a lot to consider. In order, and with care.
First, there was all the recent salt-scarring of the log. Recent. It hadn’t always been in its current environment. Intriguing. This was wildly interesting to initial studies and many barnacles had written fascinating papers on it.
Second, oddly widespread scarring from intense sludge-and-chew algal farming. Someone had been monoculturing its surface for nutrition. The precise circumstances surrounding this were controversial and mysterious and many barnacles had spent their careers gambling away their reputations with carefully-calculated libelous assaults over it.
Third, a dry core towards the interior, one that was becoming more waterlogged. The log was becoming more sodden and less seaworthy. One day, it would sink. This implied the end of near-surface barnacles, which divided the barnacles further into those that talked about this too much and those that didn’t.
There would be more of consequence to this, but at the last moment where the last barnacle watched as the last bit of light slid away overhead and it sank below its comfortably-habitable depth range headed for the deepest abysses the planet could offer, it couldn’t think of any.
But it considered what the last woodlouse and the last crayfish and the last beetles may have felt, or other, more speculative creatures, which made it feel less like the last and more like one in the company of others. So that was nice.
***
The log itself had no known opinions after falling. Nobody was there to listen.