Plan-Verse Corp. Future Strategy Memo: Narrative Case Study

Plan-Verse Corp. Corporate Office

Altasia blew the dust off of the brown leather-bound volume entitled “Plan-Verse Manual: One-Thousand Greatest Upkeep Disasters, Vol. 3. (300-399)” (Plan-Verse Corp.: We Manage Your Planets!) and threw it open, all the way to the index. She ran her finger down the page furiously and felt a bead of sweat find the unfortunate path into her eye.

“Dammit!” She shouted with a tone that indicated an attempt to respect the whisper policy, but not the presence to actually keep quiet.

“Shhhh!” cut into her ear from across the room. The tone made her cringe.

Altasia forced a “sorry about that,” but her mind was saying “gimme a break, jerk” and an undertone of snark partially reflected it.

Then the rapid “click-snaps” of a power-walk stomping. It was obviously her. No one else moved like that and had the metallic ping of those eight-inch heels.

"How does she walk so damn fast in those things?" Altasia thought, knowing the ugliness to come was inevitable but wanting to have some understanding, any solution, even the most crack-pot nonsense to propose. She needed some answer to “how are you going to fix this insane disaster that you have just set in motion?”

The steps indicated that she was at least thirty feet away when her voice entered Altasia’s space. She was going to get the first word here.

“What the m***** have you done?! This alert. What the m**** does it mean, Allie?!”

A note here before we move forward, explaining the asterisks. This is translated from the home language of these, very much like people, from another world and another plane of existence a level above ours. Their language actually translates very fluidly to English, given our world is largely modeled after theirs and thus very similar, but one key difference is their profanity has no real basis in our language. For instance, the word that is asterisked best translates to the process of a mantis mating with and simultaneously consuming its counterpart, only if it were hypothetically done to the speaker. Now that that’s cleared up, back to it…

“Oh, Illaysiana. Where did you come from?” Altasia tried to be casual, but her voice literally cracked.

“Nope. Not playing around. What happened?”

“SHHHHH!!!” Again from across the room, more aggressive.

Illaysiana looked over. The man looked like a cartoon construct of a person who would be making these objections in this fashion. Like a breathing, blood-circulating being was created when a child drew a circle over an oval, some hair squiggles, and the most boring, least fashionable glasses one could ponder and somehow injected life into it.

“Oh, eat me! This will be over in like three minutes. Read the room and suck it up, Dialatisto.”

Illaysiana was generally a relaxed person, but jobs were potentially on the line, hers included.

“Ok. I’m so sorry. I’ll figure it out. I promise.” Altasia let a beat pass to breathe. She couldn’t believe she was going to have to say what she was about to say. How could this happen?

Illaysiana sighed with purposeful intensity, towering over her underling. Illaysiana, or Illsay to those allowed to be more formal with her, had been a runway model in her twenties, roughly half a lifetime ago and was six feet tall without the addition of her heels. Altasia felt like she was squaring off with an angry Goddess at Five-foot-three in her worn out tennis shoes.

After a sigh of her own, acceptance of the reckoning, Altasia continued. “I put a tree in a woman.”

“What? No. That can’t… Say it again?” Her generally stone, never breaking model confidence face went absolutely perplexed. Another first for this day.

“I put a tree in a woman.” Altasia somehow gasped as she said the words. “But, but I’m figuring it out. I’m going through the manuals. It must have happened to someone before.”

“Goddammit, were you drinking or something?” Illaysiana had only taken this tone one other time. That person had accidentally drained a lake during the rainy season and left many of Earth’s inhabitants incredibly confused. “Aliens Steal Minnesota Water” was searched half a million times that weekend.

“No! Of course… I mean, I was a little hung over. We went to Righteous Dropkicks at The Dirt Shack last night and I had a few… barely slept… but no. I would never come in here drunk! I promise.” Altasia was definitive and righteous on this despite the shaky moment.

Illaysiana was empathetic. When she was a kid in her mid-twenties she had her fun. A memory flashed to the night she drank a fifth of vodka and did the equivalent of cocaine off the naked rear-ends of a lined-up station of firemen.

“Ok.” Illaysiana took a breath to quiet her mind. “What exactly happened? And if I hear one goddamn peep out of you Dialatisto you’re going to feel my heel on the back of your teeth and be really upset about how it gets there.”

He had started to pop his head up, but immediately got as small as the chair he was sitting in would allow.

“So… I was placing the tree, you know? Simple. I do it like two hundred times a day and I was about to hit the button and this bee landed on my finger.”

“In the office? How the hell?”

“I know, right? I’m really allergic. I freaked out and this woman walked by and the pointer shifted… and…”

“What about the warning? There had to be a warning!” Illaysiana had shifted forward and her hands were on Altasia’s shoulders without realizing she had done it.

“I know. I… I was still shaking around. I mean, basically having a seizure, I was so scared…”

Illaysiana’s hands left her shoulder, and she used one to pinch her temples. “You m***** hit enter.”

the mantis cannibal sex one again.

“I hit enter.” Meek. Small. Buzzing with adrenaline, but also wanting nothing more than to get into bed and immediately fall asleep.

“So, what happens now? How can we fix this?”

“There’s one more thing… Oh God, Illsay.“

“Just tell me. God. How can it possibly be any worse? You have a tree inside a woman!”

“She’s… a virgin.” Altasia was unconsciously folding up. The top of her body was now at an approximately twenty-degree angle, and her knees were slowly and progressively buckling. She felt so nauseous. Only a couple sensation inches from running to a trash can.

“Huuuuuhhhh… How long do we have before it’s noticeable? Before this poor, random woman starts… I mean, is it showing or will she just be goddamn impaled by roots bursting out of her first? What the d****, Allie?”

Simply feces, but from a sky whale. If you take a moment to imagine, it’s not hard to guess the kind of problem it would represent, and that guess would more than likely be accurate.

“I understand. This is unprecedented bad.”

“It might be the worst…”

“I know, but I’m in the manuals. I’ll figure this out. There has to be a safeguard.”

“Look, Prumascas is setting up the Baraquiland office for the next four months, so we have a little time. We have to maintain control and get this fixed! If he gets wind of this, he’s not going to stop at you. That (mantis cannibal sex) is going to (mantis cannibal sex) do a little dance and probably fire us with his (mantis cannibal sex) finger guns.” Illaysiana’s true temper was beginning to show in the flood of anxiety.

She loved Altasia who was a really emotionally messy human, but uniquely creative, whip smart, and ambitious, but not in a way that you would worry about her screwing over her cubicle mate to get ahead. Altasia reminded Illsay of herself so many years ago, but this situation was too much.

“I swear, I’m all over it.”

“Goddamn right you are. Let me know the minute you figure this out. Literally nothing else matters.” Illaysiana turned and stomped out, somehow even faster in her pace than she arrived.

“Dammit!”

“SHHHHHHH.” Dialatisto felt empowered again with Illsay gone and the dragged syllable boomed with righteousness.

“Oh, eat me.” Altasia took the book and four others in the same series and headed back for her desk. Ironically, she had checked these books out several times. She loved reading them with a couple of glasses of wine and embracing the schadenfreude of it all. After this… She could end up headlining the new Vol. 1.

On Earth:

Millie O’Mally. Yes, for real. Was parented by people who didn’t take life seriously enough, as you might have guessed. She was considered “weird” by her peers growing up, and the cruelty of young people drove her into loving isolation. It wasn’t her fault, not her parents either. It was simply a poor mixture of cultures. Her parents were free spirits, but also drawn to a conservative, rural town with a population of approximately 350. If they had been equally drawn to a similar town twenty miles north, one that still had deep roots to a commune in the 1990s, she would have had a much fuller, happier life with a great deal of social acceptance.

Quiet and prone to dreaminess, Millie spent a great deal of time in the library with Tolkien, Thoreau, and Dillard, among many others. Her home was in the woods, and she always revered nature and felt an intense connection to the land that she couldn’t explain. Not, that is, until one day in 2026 while she was going for her morning trek out to her painting site. Millie was an artist who carved out enough to get by painting forest landscapes.

On that particular day’s walk she suddenly felt a jolt to her system. It was pleasurable, even produced a little giggle, but also something quite profound. While she had always felt “in tune” with the landscapes, Millie far preferred the peaceful dignity of trees to the clamorous chaos of people, she now felt something extra. Something extraordinary.

It was as if, even though she couldn’t quite hear it, there was a phantom knowledge of a language being spoken all around her. As if right on the other side of a veil there was a whole world of conversation. She literally put her ear to the ground, but while the feeling increased, she was still on the outside. As she knew what this was like with people, being just outside the ability to see and understand, and be seen and understood, she knew the feeling well and recognized its reality.

Millie raced home and called her priest for guidance.

Plan-Verse Corp. Corporate Office

“Goddammit Allie! I need answers, now!” Illaysiana shouted in her office, knowing that Altasia would hear her loud and clear next door.

Altasia rushed in, standing at her side in less than ten seconds.

“I’ve dug and dug through these books. I can’t find anything. I can’t see any way out of this.”

“We’re two weeks in and your pregnant virgin is inches from starting a cult. You’ve seen the movement in her aura, right? You’ve read the reports. She ‘hears the trees!’” Illaysiana reached into her desk and popped what was the equivalent of four aspirin. “You have to give me something.”

Altasia bowed her head. She had nothing. One Thousand of the company’s greatest disasters read in entirety. Twenty-two sub manuals on procedure, software instructions and troubleshooting guides, four calls to elite programmers “for a friend writing a paper on reacting to worst case scenarios,” of course. Nothing. This mistake was so improbable, so insane, that there was nothing. No plan. No failsafe. No one had ever, or was ever imagined to put a tree inside of a human being.

Illaysiana let her head drop into her hands. “It’s not just Prumascas. The clients check in periodically and the one thing they notice and are really fussy about is things being out of synchronicity. With this energy, this strange zealotry, she’s like a giant whitehead on the tip of the world’s nose. Get the bottle out of my credenza. Screw it.”

Altasia’s posture rapidly straightened and her eyes opened wide as a cartoon character. “Wait! Illsay, that’s it! We don’t need to make it disappear; we need to grow it. We need that cult!”

“I’m starting to see something. I kind of hate it and I’m feeling a little bit aroused. Say more things.” Illaysiana's eyes perked up, but her forehead was still tight.

Altasia blushed a little. The rush of adrenaline, and the fact that in spite of her sexual orientation that was almost always solely targeted towards the opposite sex, she had held an unarticulated, barely above subconscious attraction to her boss and the idea of having aroused her gave her a strange rush of her own.

After a quick breath to recenter, “it’s about synchronicity, right? It’s about predictability and ‘normalcy.’ As a zealot that contains a tree she sticks out, but if we surround her with zealots and all of that noise, the tree maybe isn’t noticed. Just another fervent new nature-based community. On that world, in these times. I mean, the planet is being torn apart by industry. The timing is perfect and if we can hide her…”

“We could get away with all of this unnoticed, couldn’t we.” Illaysiana leaned back in her chair, excited but thoughtful. This path of the future was winding forward in her mind. “We’d need Inception. You know how those guys can be.”

“Exactly. They love messing with things and seeing what they can get away with.” Altasia was basking in the glow of brilliance coming into shape. “Also, Merscillias owes me big. I pretended to be his fiancé at his sister’s wedding. His family is… intense. He’s the biggest pain in the ass in the department.”

“OK. I’m starting to see something here. This could work, couldn’t it?” Illaysiana had the appearance of being astral projected to a whiteboard, eyes bouncing all around like she was reviewing complex equations. “Wait. There’s still the actual pregnancy advancing. We may buy time, but it grows and we’re screwed.”

Altasia smiled like she was sucking on an orange slice with the skin in front of her teeth. “Oh, that. Yes. I have a plan for that.”

On Earth:

The Tree People, as the group had been come to be known, now numbered 216 and occupied a makeshift campground outside of Millie O’Mally’s home. At the beginning she enjoyed having the company, especially experiencing the reverence of a prophet or translator for nature. They were considered an incredible nuisance by the town, except for the librarian who loved seeing her books checked out and read.

People arrived in droves, all saying that a voice in a dream told them to seek the Forest Mother who would speak to the trees, and a notion of where to go. They lavished her with natural gifts. Jewelry made from stones and bound, softened reeds, flower wreaths and headdresses. They held her hands as she descended the steps from her porch and sat cross legged, granting full attention like kids at story time when she addressed them.

Millie preached that there was a language of the forest, and she felt closer to being able to truly hear it every day. They would exhale in serene awe. It was amazing…

For about a week.

Soon Millie felt herself start to grow in size and discomfort, and remembered why she had cultivated such a solitary existence. They were everywhere, all the time! God! They would even come into the house and pee in her bathroom while she was in the shower. What the hell?!

Longing for times when it was just her and the trees, every day she felt the sounds within the earth become more and more powerful, and her desire for life without human language grew proportionately. One day, she stepped off of her porch, released the hand of “Moss Brother” (Yes, legally named), and told her flock it was time for her solitary artistic wandering. They were never to follow her.

As she wandered, Millie stopped at a lovely sunny spot. The rays of warmth pierced her, more nourishing than ever before. The peace was overwhelming. She was in complete sync with everything around her. She simply stood as her legs hardened. Her arms spread towards the sky, locked in place requiring no effort to hold them there. Her eyes would not open, but she didn’t need them to. There was no panic. There wasn’t even fear.

Suddenly a beautiful music filled her, consumed her.

The language. She could hear it. She became it. Her bliss was explosive. She was finally a part of everything. Her journey was complete and also just beginning.

Plan-Verse Corp. Corporate Office

Prumascas stomped into the room and slapped his hat onto the hat rack, letting the floor and furniture know he was very important. “Illaysiana. I suppose that I need to give you credit. Not a word from the client about your sector. In fact, air efficiency is up and awareness is down. Well done.” His tone was begrudging.

“Welcome back, Prumascas.” Illsay forced a smile at her blowhard boss. Altasia sat in the chair in front of him, but it was unknown whether Prumascas didn’t notice her or didn’t care. Being in front of him, she had the luxury of rolling her eyes towards her supervisor and saw the corner of her mouth flinch upward, just a hair.

“One thing though, what happened with this strange group of weirdos that flocked to 52-T? Sounds like they’ve started worshipping a tree?”

“You know humans, Prumascas. They do the darndest things.” Illaysiana and Altasia shared a knowing smile and Illsay winked as Prumascas stomped out of the room to be very important elsewhere.

Dedication: For Kay and Dr. Bliss.