What happened?

They figured out how to pump cool air up from the tombs. They planted a tree that could only grow in cool weather near the top of the pipe and let it grow into a symbol and they began to worship it. Maybe it was a symbol of the spirit hope resilience etc. The generations started relying on the tree to explain what they couldn't didn't want to. In turn their own growth was stunted. And then the pump stopped working. As the tree died there was social upheaval drunkenness stupidity. Religious factions grew more cruel and warlike. Then somebody planted a native tree in the same place and it thrived without the still frigid air of the tombs so it became a fascist rallying point. It had to be only geological fascism because of the diversity of the community. Then the boundaries of the master plot came into question and many suffered and died lidderly on the boundary line itself so it was hard to tell what side they had been on. 

Trees started popping up everywhere with the accompaniment of fervid claims that it was the original tree or grown from a cutting or whatever of the original replacement tree. Groups described as terrorists started planting even more trees clandestinely until they were basically living in a forest of hearty native trees probably more what it looked like before they had come in and cut them down to grow food. The economy started getting worse because eating of the sacred trees was not allowed and there was no room for other food to roam or grow. Many were imprisoned for trying to lick the trees or strip and boil the bark of the trees even though they had never been grown or developed as food before. Why can't we eat the trees was the echoing question even though everyone knew that the answer was that we can't eat the trees because they taste bad and lidderly cannot sustain life other than their own. 

Then The Crack spilled open like an ugly seed pod and there were actual foreigners everywhere buying up the trees and the land and the tombs. The natives started to lash themselves to the trees live in the trees give them names as if they had always lived together in harmony with these trees and were as one with their heartiness and value. They made a rule that any time a purchase of a tree or a piece of land was made trans-Crack the resident of the property from which the tree grew or the resident living in the tree itself must also be purchased and promised lifegiving sponsorship for life and also for their generations. In this way the natives who had invented the pump and planted the cool weather tree and worshiped the tree until first the pump and then the tree was dead and progressed to fascism and then despair became more highly sought after as living resources than any tree or archeological find anywhere in the Known Crack even though they only degraded all of the lives they came in contact with and lived as idle parasites in many of the worlds for millennia.