I scream again, begging for help I know will never come, and pull with all my strength, but my leg remains wedged under the beam. With my lips curled back in a primal snarl of fear, and rage against my coming end, I watch the three bean trees gain momentum as they crash toward me. Two of them cross, bouncing and sliding off each other, sending the massive trunks in two different directions. But the third is listing directly toward me.

I want to meet my fate directly, with strength or at the very least with anger, but to my shame I cover my head at the last second. The booming crash deafens me, the sound alone so painful I almost think I’ve been crushed. Instead the weight miraculously lifts from my leg and I instinctively squirm free of the tangle. Only when I’ve crawled breathlessly away do I see that the bean tree fell at just the right angle to seesaw the crushing beam off of my leg.

But it isn’t over yet. Not by a long shot. Trees are falling all around me. I drag myself to my feet and try to run, but the ground buckles under me, falling away from my feet, and I have to crawl.

The Earth is spitting the artificial trees out, tearing the fake things from her breast and casting them on the ground. Under the ground there are cables and wires, all useless now in the face of the Earth’s own awesome force. Spellbound, on my knees like a supplicant, I watch them fall.

All around me they crash, closer and closer as I desperately try to find my balance on the shifting ground. I try to tuck my feet under me and jump away, but the Earth seems to have turned liquid, as bad as the nanosand in the desert. I flop and flail helplessly, trying to get away as the huge twisted trunk crashes toward me, but I can’t maneuver. I curl my body, and throw my arms over my head. I expected to die tonight, but not like this.

I feel the whoosh of air, hear a crash so loud I can’t hear anything else for a few minutes, as the tree snags on another tree’s vine and lands just a few feet to my side. Another miss! I use the monstrous leaves to pull myself out of the heaving, devouring Earth and on top of the stalk. The shaking has lessened, but the ground around me is like a sea and the trees keep falling. I run, slipping and sliding on the broad gnarled trunks, dodging other beanstalks as they fall.

When the heat of the desert smacks me in the face, I turn behind me, and find a ruin. At least half of the synthetic beanstalks are down. I don’t even want to think what this will mean for Eden. The algae spires and the photosynthetic material impregnated in all the buildings make oxygen, too, but is it enough? Without these beanstalks will Eden suffocate?

I see movement on the far side of the massive deadfall of collapsed bean trees. Two of the Greenshirts made it through the wall and are picking their way over the tangle of trunks and vines. I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. I think of the man crying out for his mother, and want to run to the survivors, to see if they’re okay, if I can help rescue their comrades.

But I don’t. Because the world doesn’t work like that, and people don’t think like that. We’re not altruistic. Humans fight and kill and follow orders, and the only way to survive is to be like everyone else, only worse. They don’t ask for help, or see if I’m okay. We don’t find common ground in the face of this catastrophic earthquake. We just keep fighting, running, hurting, killing.

They open fire at me, and I run into the desert. There’s nowhere else to go.

It’s as awful as I remember. The heat smacks me like an explosion. Each breath scorches my lungs, but I keep going because the Greenshirts keep shooting. Why do they care about duty at a moment like this, with the ground trembling beneath our feet? Or are they so persistent because they blame me for their comrades’ deaths? But they don’t have to chase me, shoot at me. It’s not me making them do it. Don’t they realize they could just stop?

But I can’t. I have to keep running out into this brutal oven while they do their best to kill me for reasons none of us fully understand.

And the nanosand is coming.

Now that I know what to look for I can see it. It shimmers just a little, setting it apart from the matte dun color of the rest of the sand. There’s a patch behind me, and one to my left. Maybe another ahead of me, I can’t quite tell. They’re moving at the pace of a brisk walk, swimming through the sea of sand directly toward me. The quaking has stopped for the moment, and I can move faster than the nanosand pools for now. But there are more now, two coming from the right, and I know however fast I’m traveling now the heat will make me slow down soon. They’ll surround me, swallow me down.

My skin is scorched pink, so hot I don’t even sweat. I stumble to one knee but scramble up again right away. For a moment I look at the two Greenshirts standing on the edge of the desert. They don’t dare follow me. Smart men.

What if I just walk toward them? Will they shoot me the moment I’m in range? Will they talk to me about how ridiculous it is that we three of the few surviving humans on the planet want to kill each other? The nanosand slithers inexorably closer.

Uncertain, I raise my hand to the tiny distant figures standing on the edge of the ruined beanstalk forest. I see one of them start to raise a hand, too. To wave, to beckon me in? Or to shoot at me again?

Before I can decide, the Earth decides for me. I hear a terrible grinding, cracking, exploding sound, and in the most powerful tremor of all the ground rises at least ten feet, throwing me down on my belly. From my new high vantage point I think I see the Earth begin to smile, a fierce grin of jagged, rocky teeth. Another vision from my lenses? No, the Earth really is splitting, opening up in a fissure fifty feet wide. As I watch, it stretches from the desert toward Eden, traveling like an arrow toward the Center. I see a brilliant green flash at the heart of Eden, so bright it burns an afterimage on my retinas.

And then, from one blink to another, the world changes.

As if by magic all the heat is sucked out of the air. The glaring white light dims to pinkish morning sunshine, rosy and comforting. As the ground shivers and grows still again, I see the merciless desert change to a mere strip of sand. It’s cool beneath my hands. I look down at my palms, scorched and blistered from touching the sand just a moment ago. A soft wind begins to blow from out beyond the desert, cooling my skin.

I look around me. The shimmering nanosand is gone.

I smell something, sharp and strange and compelling, carried on the fresh breeze. It reminds me a little bit of the camphor tree, wild and peaceful all at once. I turn toward the scent, eager. In this sudden calm, the terror of the earthquake, of my escape and pursuit, are forgotten.