Recently we came upon a very thin but interesting bit of internet lore — some scanned, hazy xeroxes of classified documents (of corporate and surprisingly not governmental origin). Source user HOPHORN_BLUEBOX93 summarized the scant, unblackened sections of copy as such: In the early 90s possibly as a preparation for nuclear fallout, financial collapse, worldwide pestilence, or some form of precocious digital migration the ⌷⌷⌷⌷⌷ Lumber Corp developed a massive project called “Fallback Forest”. Apparently ⌷⌷⌷⌷⌷ Lumber Corp was one of the oldest and largest foresting operations in the world — at one time occupying significant holdings on 6 continents — and providing nearly 75% of global construction timber. From the very beginning ⌷⌷⌷⌷⌷ Lumber Corp kept copious records and notes of every possible botanical significance: leaf patterns, weather cycles, seed structures, mold and mycelial maps — to maximize their productivity. With the transition from the arpanet to the late 80s secular ISPSs ⌷⌷⌷⌷⌷ Lumber Corp went wild for digital datafication. The combination of this new archival ease, guilt of past rapacity, and some unknown massive mystical rainforest exploit of the then CEO (name obscured: “⌷⌷⌷⌷⌷“) the entire limited liability company collapsed into a “Fallback Forest” obsession. The final papers, detailing the quixotic venture are filled with all sorts of particular weirdness; one typifying example was a proposition to stamp ones and zeros onto the xylem and phloem cells of Swamp Spanish oak trees — as a possible self perpetuating eastern seaboard communication/memory system. Ultimately, and the following is mostly HOPHORN_BLUEBOX93’s phrasing, the papers devolve into a sort of “pleasing yet unintelligible digital/pastoral musing — sounding not unlike a fusing of the voices of Alan Kay and Kenneth Grant.” The weirdest (but perhaps most standardly creepypasta-ish) part of the exposition was the description of ⌷⌷⌷⌷⌷ Lumber Corp’s massive distributed hard-drive program. Supposedly between 1993-1995 400,000 black boxed hard drives were buried in every significantly forested area of the planet, each as large as a dumpster — perpetually powered by heat pulled by wires reaching down just below the earth’s Asthenosphere. Every one of these “Fallback Forest” drives contains 1,000,000 X more “potential information” about the earth’s fungal, floral and climate systems than the actual systems themselves. The ultimate point of the endeavor is unknown. But if ever you are in some deep, back-country grove and you notice that a grouping of trees is forming an oddly particular circularity, you might just be standing on what could be one of the future nodes in the post terrestrial acreage of ⌷⌷⌷⌷⌷ Lumber Corp’s “Fallback Forest”. (Sincere thanks to HOPHORN_BLUEBOX93 and ASCII_QUESTIONS1xRTT for all their joyous compiling.)