One pure fractal made in Apophysis 2.09, overlaid upon itself in reversal patterns, with golden eyes added to bring out the faces!
Now, maybe it is just me, but I wouldn't look at a tree that was looking at me and think: “I wonder if it will let me do dumb stuff to its home planet.”
The above figure is actually not a tree in the Earth sense: it is more like a sentient great moss, growing in the deserts of Ghstis 3. Wherever you find it, there is a huge pool of water not far under the rock below the sand, but there is no reason to dig. It brings so much water up you can gently squeeze out a cup or two at need. Because it is sentient, and can sense the needs of those around it, it will keep “refilling” depending on how many need water.
The issue is, the great moss – as large as some of the forest trees of the earth – knows your intent, and also can access the water table.
Someone had the not-great idea of terraforming the deserts of Ghstis 3 to make a world of golf courses. Because the Ghstis System is out on the Ventanan frontier, there is sometimes lag time between private interests doing dumb stuff and the consortium enforcing whatever agreements there are to stop the dumb stuff.
The web of life in Ghstis 3 depends on its underground desert pools staying right there. Change the access of sand to sky and pump the pools out, and vast tracts of the planet would die because the sand and the great moss perform important purification purposes. Ghstis 3's rain is slightly acid, and so picks up a lot of mineral deposits that would make many beings sick if the groundwater were not filtered.
But of course, the company that had the idea about the golf courses neither knew nor cared until they experienced what that water was like for themselves – the planners were just casually out talking about what they were going to do and squeezing the local great moss growths for water for their beverages. The great mosses served them unfiltered groundwater. That delayed the project start time long enough for the consortium to catch up with and shut down the plan.
“I still don't know if the lead designer is out of the hospital,” my husband said to me, “but it didn't really matter on the business side because Kirk and Dixon Shipping doesn't even take jobs like that. We don't do dumb stuff – you can't play golf on Ghstis 3 all that well anyway because the air is too thick!”
“And all the water is a hazard if you offend the great moss,” I said.
“Yes, Khadijah, that's right. Don't mess with moss.”