Casual Terrorism in Ten Easy Steps

Deforestation

1. With artificial intelligence, creating novel, semi-coherent virus strains is easier than ever. For example, I invent a highly invasive cell shaped like a lumberjack’s axe over my morning coffee.  
2. I recommend space. Find a hirsute hillside, one that is a candidate for proactive chemotherapy, preferably near a former mining town that mistakes any sort of activity for progress. At the campground, release a vial of the virus inconspicuously.  Insert it into birthday piñata.  Place it behind an RV tire.  Hold it up to the tallest maple, and listen to the glass rattle.
3. Do not be surprised when the virus reveals the hillside’s face, which is primarily a mouth evidencing poor oral hygiene. Plenty of bulbous gray teeth mix with brown excavation sites.  Unlike constellations, the teeth periodically change positions: granite crosses topple, workers spread hay over bare patches, a random bouquet reveals a worn molar.  Like constellations, by the time you notice a new pattern, you are already lost.
4. The best way to observe progress is by blimp. Unless noted otherwise below, all subsequent steps should take place in the comfort of your blimp.  
5. Slow observation is necessary. On any random day, small congregations parade through the iron gates, ascend a meandering slope, and unload a polished wooden box.  A memorial to trees assembled from trees. A strange rite.  The virus leaves a scattering of lone trees, its countervailing memorial. I recommend treating these congregations as celebratory.  Foliage sprouts of foam fingers. There is always a suited man giving a motivational speech about how we all end up inside of trees.
6. Remember my reference to semi-coherence?  The virus worships the original stump, the first tree collectively felled from its tiny, persistent nibbles.  The virus refuses to spread beyond a certain radius from the original stump. When wood starved, the virus mutates, acts eccentrically.  It hallucinates its own handle as an inedible tree that looms, then slowly rises from the earth to dull its glistening edge.
7. (Never feel sympathy for a virus you create.)
8. Over a long enough period, mutations always end with cannibalistic traits appearing.  On my last midnight round, I swerve around a pothole, its depth unapparent overhead.  I step out in full moonsuit. I gather samples of gravel, water, rusted metal, and silk petals. Under a microscope, the axes float languidly, lilt as though their handles are soft putty. One axe, reduced to a dull blade, chases others, harmlessly nips at their handles.  My theory: this axe slowly splintered itself and, in a final lucid burst, attacked the looming tree before it could infect the others.
9. Over subsequent observations, I notice the axes gather around this dulled axe head, which is prostrate in a bed constructed from its own shattered body. A blanket hides its absence.  Other axes chip away at its remaining paint. They hold flecks aloft in an act resembling reverence. The axes unfurl a diagram from the curio drawer. It shows their entire blades painted red. A parable below describes their creator as a fount of red paint.     
10. Instructions for virus disposal: do not float over the untouched forest perimeter. You can still hear the glass rattling.