This document is the result of an interview with a Dudleya spiritual leader so advanced that it is able to communicate with other species. The magnitude of the achievement can be glimpsed by considering that it requires sitting still in not just three but four dimensions.

They call me "Live Forever" because it seems that way to them. I'm outside of time. The temporal plants can't understand this. I suggest they say that I'm always a seed, always a sprout, always a small plant and a bigger one and a cluster. I have one stalk bolting up from between my leaves, one bolting from each cluster, branching to hold out flowers, blooming yellow, brown, black.

Yes, good. The bolt's a sturdy thing, with brachts like leaves all along it, rose-pink if you mean a native rose in a shady spot. No, don't consider me an immortalized rose. Let's begin with something simpler, rock.

Rockface is good for growing. The rock is whole and cleft and half of it is falling and in the sea, so the exposed half is cracking and having seams and ledges. Rainwater is trickling and my roots are drinking, a bit. About a twelfth or so is drenching, or as you'd say, I get a lot of rain in wet years and the rest of the time it's pretty dry. There are wet years and dry years, and most of the bolts are in the years where the soil is wet, but not all.

The margins of drought years are good places for bolting. That's a way you can look at it. I'm in the sun. The sun, the sun. Bright as can be, (half brightness of course, because there's night) and yes, the bees are visiting.

Temporal beings are very hard to understand. They look at my arms and say I'm "reaching for the sky." Holding my pale yellow flowers toward the sun. Reaching is temporal and has to do with the idea of getting there. For us, outside time, I'm always reaching and my stalk and my flowers, as a temporal theorist puts it, are always already there.

It's not all about rocks and sun and flowers, of course. There are the bees, rodents, insects, various animals and, in some times, a lot of paving.

Temporal plants, listen. Let me explain paving. It is part of the humans' nests. Hard to believe? None of the plants understand this because so much of the paving has no humans on it or near it, only pods with humans inside. What could be more obvious than that those are seeds? And pods are of about the same kind of material as the nests. Obviously, since everything is like us, the nest is a plant with runners. Beware of the obvious. To think a human nest is like a beach strawberry, with plants cropping up along runners, is vegicentric. Actually, strawberries aren't too bright. There's no use explaining it to them.

Well, to be fair, strawberries can't help it.. No temporal can. They can't see the future and they're dim about the past because of a temporal problem called memory. Atemporal brethren, think about that. They experience every instant with tremendous intensity. Every instant, good or bad. No wonder they can be so overwhelmed that they barely think at all.

They do notice the times when humans are increasingly numerous and the paving and farming and the gigantic nests eat up practically all the land and encroach on the sea. In those times, all the temporals wonder how big the nests can grow and how many of us become extinct before the humans die. Even the humans wonder. Here, the combination of ignorance and intensity causes a sort of anguish they call fear. They can't see what happens. I can, of course, but in this time-bounded string of words they use for communication, I couldn't tell them, and I doubt it would do any good.

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This second fragment results from a recent discovery that excess light causes Dudleya to fall into a kind of stupor that renders them incapable of moving in time. The editors consider the interpretation of these remarks indeterminate; for example, the first paragraph below was transcribed "Say wha? W'outa wha? Geddit. Been talkina m'unk Dud!"

What? We're outside of what? Oh, I get it. You've been talking to my Uncle Dud. He's great, I love him. He's nuts. The thing you've gotta do when you talk to him is, keep it moving. Keep changing the subject or his mind will get stuck. He's got too much going on up there. He kind of sinks the old taproot into some weird little nothing and comes out with a whole philosophy. The metaphysics of the ziptop.

The ziptop, you know, I love you guys. How can one species shed off so much junk? You are the ace-king-queen junk shedders of the world. Watch out for the eucalyptus, man, it's jealous.

Uncle Dud, he give you that thing about how tough we are, how we'll cling to the side of a rock where there's nothing but lichens and bring vegetation to the fungi? Yeah, well, depends. Some of the plants around here, they'd die if they didn't have a cubic yard of dirt, a million earthworms kissing their roots. Not saying that's you guys.

The dirt I've got here, not too shabby, am I right? But I don't need it. Get needy, you limit yourself. Me, I like earth all nice and thick and wet, but I'm OK in rock. I can be elegantly discussing existentialism to the deep-dirts and then again when it's rock I'm down with the scrubbies. Whatever happens.

Uncle Dud, yeah, what can I tell you. Outside time. Very intellectual, but come on. If there are species that can't see the future it's because they don't want to look.