This Friday at the library was a very subdued day of re shelving books and pointing patrons I'm the right direction. It left plenty of time for "daydreaming" in The Consensus. It was time to revisit how I got Fungie.
Turning within myself, I focused on my connection through the grove to The Consensus. Following the same facet from before, [Xenobiology, engineered fungal colony; humanity: compatibility], I entered the gem of discussion. I was again presented with the context for the discussion along with current theories and a sense of presence for all those actively contributing, but I was also presented with a confusing sense of dissonance.
When I had first come to this gem, I came with wonder and curiosity as to how my connection to Sylph had worked as it had to drastically alter the course of my life. My identity, as given to The Consensus, reflecting that. Now though, I came to this with purpose. The will to understand so that I might allow others to alter the course of their own lives through similar adaptations. My identity had changed and there was now a disconnect between who I was before and had introduced myself as to The Consensus, and who I was at this moment. How often am I going to have to update this?
Sylph was humming to herself reading at a table nearby when I shared with her my question on identity. I wanted to know how she kept her presented sense of identity current as she interacted with The Consensus. She looked up at me from her book and gave me a very warm smile and shared with me a desire to have me sit next to her as she pulled out a chair.
“This was actually something I was going to talk to you about when you were ready. Have you ever given any thought to the idea of instanced sentience?”
“As in splitting off parts of myself to focus on things? I'm not at all good at multitasking so I doubt I'd be very good at that." I held up my hands in doubt.
Sylph giggled at me, "Somewhat like that, but also not really multitasking at all. No, this would be more making a limited copy of your conciseness with a completely separate sense of awareness, but that shares your memory and identity. This is how I interact physically in my body while also maintaining a presence within the consensus. I don't split my attention at all, that which is me exists in both places at the same time. Yet another more limited instance of me maintains my identity as presented to the network and The Consensus."
"Here I am being madly smitten with just the one, and you tell me there's more of you?!" I sarcastically stared wide eyed off in the distance which earned me another giggle. "How do you keep… uh… yourselves?" I looked questioningly at Sylph for guidance of my word choice, to which she nodded. "Yourselves… from drifting apart and becoming unique, forming their own personalities?"
"There's a parity that can be held between instances which I do, but that isn't the only model for sentience within my people. Some are completely singular within their physical form and choose to maintain singular attention and focus throughout their existence. Some are composed of a myriad instances of sentience, entirely without physical form and dispersed across the expansive entangled network, pondering vast mysteries within whatever node of neural tissue that is both capable and consents to host.
"Most are flexible somewhere in between. Some existing as a plurality within a single form, but choose to be viewed and addressed as the ensemble being the whole. Some entities give new form to parts of their consciousness that go on as new individuals. Sometimes a confluence of individuals choose to merge and become one. Identity is always shared on connection, so it’s easy to keep track of who you are communicating with."
Sylph giggled at me staring at her and I blushed. "As you can see we make a lot of room for each instance of sentience to assert its own parameters of existence and identity."
"Wow, that's amazing… umm… so are there more of you out there somewhere?" I gave her a sly smirk and an eyebrow waggle.
Sylph giggled and kissed my waggling brow. "Nope, just the three of me and they are all the same me… Though I suppose you could say I have a sibling of sorts." She giggled awkwardly with a far off look. I leaned in and placed my hand on hers. "We developed within the same mind and body. It took a while before we realized that we were individuals, but in doing so we decided to separate physically."
"Are you much alike?"
This shook her loose from her mournful look and earned a big cackle. "No, not at all right now… it's been several hundred years of subjective time for me. More for xer, what with time dilation. Add all the alterations I've gone through to relate with humans, but we stay in contact. Xie is nurturing the fungus in a very distant grove like the one here on another planet. Would you like to see it?"
I quickly nodded in response. "Yes please!"
Sylph giggled at my enthusiasm. "Okay, I'll be putting you in touch with my sibling through me. You've not connected directly with someone other than me yet so I'll tell xer to be gentle." She smirked at me in that delightful way she does.
This was followed by a request for connection, the identity of Sylph's sibling attached. There was a warm presence to xer, similar in many ways to the comforting sense of Sylph's identity I'd grown to know and love. I could feel xer connection to Sylph and the strong bond of trust and love between the two. My heart swelled with compersion to know Sylph had connections like that. I could feel xer joy and desire for connection with me. I could feel that desire was a result of my place within Sylph's life, that connection we already shared. I accepted and I was presented with a slowly building sense of place.
I felt a sense of weight grounding me – gravity here greater than that on earth – and subtle rumbling of the land. An awareness of flowing water. Vast underground networks of stream and aquifer directing nutrients to thirsty root systems.
Smells, but not smells; chemosensory perception, filled the parts of my brain that felt like my nose. I knew the composition of the atmosphere, much denser than on earth with twice as much oxygen. The air was filled with markers of life – pollen, spores, pheromones, and detritus – much thicker than any forest I'd ever been to.
Sounds came next. A rustling of wind, but higher pitch than what I’d expect to hear on earth, the denser atmosphere altering the acoustics. I heard buzzing, fluttering, and flapping noises shifting in tone and direction. Wings of many sizes and shapes moving towards and away, weaving through obstructions. The calls and vocalizations of many different animals echoed around me. A sense of the objects around me growing with this sense of place in my mind, sonography beyond my own capabilities generating the landscape.
Color began to bleed into that landscape as xer shared eyes opened. Light filtered down at conflicting angles through a blue-green jungle canopy, illuminating the acoustically generated landscape around me as moss covered trees. The before heard winged creatures, bloomed with colors as I saw them gracefully navigating their way to and fro.
The perspective shifted down as an understanding about the different forms of life in this ecosystem were presented to me. I came to know the various species of avian or arthropod looking flying creatures. Their life cycles, feeding habits, and reproductive practices. As my awareness shifted below the topsoil, I came to know the trees. They were once similar to palm trees many orbits ago when they were chosen by Sylph’s sibling for their root structures adapted to frequent waterlogging and ability to transport heavier elements such as tungsten or lead up into the canopy. They have been changed over time to have more expansive and stable leaves forming a sturdy canopy to the jungle, as well as altering those roots to support and maintain the near surface irrigated aquifer layer of the crust.
My awareness was guided further down, under the aquifer layer, to the main deposits of the alien fungal colony. Sylph’s sibling… Wait, this is becoming annoying to my inner monologue.
I directed a thought at xer, “Do you have a name I can use for you? Humans have a whole hangup around naming things.”
In reply was a sharing bristling with jovial amusement at my interruption, followed somewhat later by the image of a normal, non-alien, terrestrial hummingbird. I was made aware it was referred to as a Hermit. Sylph had chosen her name after a hummingbird so it appeared her sibling had as well. It was also fitting as xie had chosen to remain on the planet alone. I felt sad, but could one of Sylph’s people ever truly be alone given the nature of their entangled networks?
“Well it’s a pleasure to meet you, Hermit.” I shared this with xer along with an emotional imprint of how I felt during every one of David’s pancake smelling hugs. An offer of an actual hug in the event it were ever possible to physically do so conveyed as well. Doubtful, given the distance.
Hermit replied back with a sense or xer current form offering to wrap me in a hug. Xer form was a muscular torso supported by two very sturdy looking legs with a couple extra articulating joints as compared with humans. From xer shoulders and back sprouted two sets of well built arms ending in hand-like structures that reminded me of those of a gorilla. Xer skin was a mottled brown and tan that matched the bark of the trees. Xie was beautifully adapted to swinging, climbing, and blending in with xer dense palm jungle on this high gravity world.
Sylph giggled at me, and I realized I was blushing. “What?! Your sib looks like xie could give some pretty amazing hugs!”
Her giggling became a full cackle. “Actually, you are probably right though oddly I had never thought about that… I’m sharing the look on your face as you are saying that with xer… with your permission of course.” She smirked at me and the situation only served to make me blush further.
“Yes. It's your own life and you can share that with anyone, but now I'm going to be embarrassed.” Pouting at my loving extra-terrestrial partner, I thought back at Hermit. “Please continue. I’ve been very much enjoying you showing me where you live.”
I turned back towards my connection with Hermit, and sensed how extremely entertained by the situation xie was.
Deep underground, insulated under the mineral rich aquifer from higher energy radiation, were the advanced sensory nodes of the fungal colony. Hermit told me that these were setup to detect neutrino emissions passing through the planet that only weakly interact with matter. As a planet spanning array, they can also detect cosmic gravitational waves from distant disruptions to space-time, but xie didn’t have enough coverage yet to distinguish the small perturbations from normal planetary vibrations and shifts. This was just a small example of a single node, on a single planet, of the galaxy spanning telescope array Sylph had told me about. This was what Sylph’s people hoped to one day have on Earth, all starting from the aspen grove that I’ve known my whole life. I directed a question at Hermit, “How do you grow this across the planet?”
Xie mentally wiggled preparing to continue xer exposition. OMG, Hermit wiggles before infodumping too! How precious!! My awareness shifted back up, though the aquifer, following mycelial connections up through the topsoil to a mushroom. It was speckled red and white and bulb shape sprouting up from the ground. Hermit took me inside it and it was mostly empty except for some filaments that cross inside providing support. Xie showed me the cells on the surface of this mushroom and how they transported hydrogen into the bulb as products of oxidation reactions making the bulb lighter than the dense atmosphere. Moving back out of the mushroom, xie showed me a white grub like insect larva following chemical signals guiding it to the base of the mushroom where it found a nutritious meal. Directly after the grub started chewing, the bulb released any mooring to the jungle floor and shot up quickly into the canopy. Wow, nice. A grub elevator!
We followed the bulb up and I could make out many other bulbs on their own rapid accent, all of which became trapped on the underside of the massive curved fronds of the palms. Once it slowed down the surface of the bulb began to ooze and shift. Fungal cells of the mushroom bulb converted into that of a slime mold. Oozing up onto the underside of the leaf, fractally spreading out and meeting up with other ooze traces from other fronds. Back within the bulb, the grub had walled itself off and was undergoing a metamorphosis. Hermit sped up time and I watched it change, becoming very like a caterpillar. It emerged from the bulb, now striped teal and black and covered in spines. This was a very hungry caterpillar as it went right to work nomming on leaves. It didn’t like the slime mold though and never ate parts that the mold touched.
Hermit showed me how the mold used this to channel and herd the caterpillars. Our awareness pulled back and I watched several of them, chewing their way along streets of leaf lined with mold, all converging towards the center of the tree. It was then that Hermit moved us above the canopy.
I was awestruck by the sky. This world had two suns, orbiting a binary star system. One orange, one red, illuminating a deep blue sky. Deeper blue than on earth, the dense atmosphere scattering more short wavelength light. I watched red tinged clouds drift by taking in this sight when a large shadow passed overhead. A creature the size of a whale, large wings spanning far out to its sides blocking out the light of the two stars, let out a gentle call as it passed overhead.
“Hermit, there be flying whales here?!” I shared with Hermit all of my knowledge on the whales of earth I could quickly gather up along with the question.
Hermit sent back an emotion of pleased amusement and their knowledge of these creatures. No name, as of course the aliens don’t do so, but I decided Sky Whale was appropriate. I came to know that they were more similar to something more in between reptile and bird than a mammal. Hollow bone structures, but with internal variable pressure air ballasts making them perfectly buoyant. They spent their entire lives gliding along the trade wind currents of this planet, only in death ever touching the surface.
Hermit had other things to show me though. Xie brought our view to the central part of the tree where all the caterpillars had been guided to. There was another mushroom sprouting straight up from the crown of the tree where all the mold paths merged. It had a long stalk with another speckled red and white cap, but more traditional toadstool shape with gills underneath. Hermit sped up time again, and we watched all the caterpillars work their way up the stalk and form themselves cocoons until the entire stalk was filled with them. Several days passed by on this beautiful planet and the cocoons wiggled, life changing inside, hatching to produce multicolored pastel pink, white, and blue moths that emerged and began flexing their newly formed wings. Each wiggle of emergence triggering a puff of spores from the gills of the mushroom cap above, showering down upon them. I couldn't help but mentally salute the trans colors as each took to the sky joining hundreds of others in large billowing clouds swept along by otherworldly winds.
Turning my awareness to Hermit, “You may not realize, but these moths have excellent taste in colors.” I shared with xer the significance of those colors along with what they meant to me and many other people back on Earth.
Hermit shared back confused outrage at the implications of how humans treated each other which I could only acknowledge as true.
We turned back to the eclipse of moths just as another sky whale swept through, its huge mouth opened wide. Many of the moths were lost to the insides of this giant creature, special gills on its sides allowing air out, but trapping the moths in its stomach. Hermit then released a burst of sensory nodes, xer shared awareness followed their point of view as they flew up into the sky following the moths. One in particular that narrowly escaped the whale’s mouth became caught in some ferns growing on the sky whale’s back, shaking loose the collected spores dusting its wings which took root in the undergrowth, aiding the symbiotic relationship between whale and plant. Hermit shared with me the entire ecosystems which are present just on the backs of these creatures. Microbes, Plants, and animals all represented. Special feathers and pores on the whale forming the topsoil for its connection to other life.
We shifted to a view of the whale’s tummy where there were many barnacle-like growths attached. Several moths had made their way down to them and were laying their eggs within the growths. Hermit brought me closer and I came to know that these growths were made by the fungus, moth larva nurseries specially designed and fragranced to entice the moths to lay their brood here, the moth parent falling away afterwards, life’s goal accomplished.
We zipped through time again, the whale having traveled far from where it had picked up its latest passengers. The barnacles were not barnacles, but gravity powered missiles. Missiles all charged with a payload of fungal spores, a clutch of moth eggs, and weighted down by heavy metals harvested from this planet’s crust. When the fungus detected the whale flying over any part of the planet's surface not yet seeded with the alien's bioengineered organism, it would drop several of them targeted below. Pointed like arrows and weighed down by the collected metals, they would zip down and embed themselves deep into the surface releasing its payload of spores and larva. Once there the fungus would adapt itself and the larva to whatever environment it found itself in – oceans included – spreading itself further across and deeper within the planet.
I was awestruck at the elegance and interdependence of it all. So many relationships with other life on this planet, supportive of each, and with enough awareness to not become invasive and displace already existing species. “Hermit, this is amazing! This is what your people hope my grove turns into someday for Earth?”
Xie shared back the affirmative. Sylph’s goal was to study and help the fungus partner with the grove’s ecosystem. To find vectors in which it could travel and adapt to other environments on Earth without negative impacts on what was already there. To enter into supportive partnership with the planet and its inhabitants, bringing it into the alien’s galactic entangled network in whatever way was most generative and fulfilling for the greatest cross-section of life present.
Our shared awareness began to pull back, up into the skies of Hermit’s planet. Other sky whales far off in the distance flew gentle paths, dropping occasional missiles on ground untouched by the fungus. We continued up and saw vast flocks of migratory birds in the traditional V pattern that was most energetically efficient regardless of what world you were on. Further still up above the clouds and into space, orbiting this planet much larger than earth, a familiar blue and green of a lush living world, but different with its unfamiliar continents. Watching the two suns set, Hermit shifted xer shared vision to false color illumination of fungal deposits. Splotchy interconnected networks of white light began to glow brightly across the planet, both land and water. There was still a ways to go before full coverage was achieved but it was amazing what was here.
“How long has it taken to get to this point?”
Hermit shared a high level reverse timelapse of the work that had been ongoing here. It took only ten orbits of this planet around its two stars before I could see the illuminated network shrink down to only one patch. Hermit shared with me that with the decreased mass of the stars and the further distance of the planet it’s orbits took about ten times as long as a year on Earth.
Only one hundred years of active work and this is what could become of earth… “Are there other sapient species there with you?”
Xie presented me with the knowledge of several creatures that had become intelligent enough to begin shaping the ecosystems they lived within. None of them were much more advanced than basic tools or social structures, many had communication of concepts but none to the extent one could call a language.
“So you are alone.” I shared with Hermit my admiration and appreciation of this time with xer, and another sensation of hugs, opening my eyes as the sensation was returned.
I was greeted by Sylph’s smiling face, best thing to open my eyes to ever! “Yeah, your sibling is pretty cool! Do you miss xer?”
She sighed, “Yes and no. Of anyone, xie is the entity I share the most connection with, both literally and figuratively. We were once of the same body and the same mind, and existed that way for a very long time. Despite how somewhat finite the connection is within our network given the nature of how quantum entanglement breaks down as each pair is used, xie and I share the most pairs out of any individual connection I possess. We are in constant contact, but there is a dwindling down to an end there…” Sylph looked away from me off into the distance and somehow I knew that even over the vast distance separating them, she looked directly towards Hermit.
“Also, since I have altered myself to become more human, I can feel that human need for physical closeness to loved ones. This is something new within me that I can see in you as well. Your friends being distant, the loss of your mother…”
Some combination of the amazing sights I had just witnessed, the mention of my mother, and the quiet mournful look on Sylph's face hit me then. Tears began to streak down my face as I pulled Sylph to me. She buried her head in my chest and began to cry as well.
Jessie happened to be walking by as the crying started and gave me a questioning look. I motioned for her to have a seat. "Sylph was hit but by a sudden case of missing her sibling. And you know me, I cry when I feel someone else being sad." I giggled a bit in between sniffles and Jessie nodded knowingly.
"Yes, that is very in character for you. Sylph dear, would you like another hug?"
Sylph nodded into my chest and Jessie glommed on to the already in progress hug from the other side. Larry and David, somehow sensing something was amiss, both managed to wander their way over shortly thereafter and joined in as well which transmuted Sylph and I’s crying into laughter that quickly distracted other library patrons and we had to stop.
After finally containing the giggles, Sylph managed to speak. “Thank you. That came on a bit sudden, but all the hugs helped greatly.”
“Be warned, if you keep making Marin this happy, you’ll be stuck with suffering through our emotional support as well. Such a horrid thought I know.” Larry’s heartfelt sarcasm was thick. “Like it or not you are now a probationary part of the family.” He smiled and gave Sylph’s shoulder a gentle squeeze.
She snickered, “Thank you Larry, I’ll be sure to be on my best behavior.”
This story, this worldbuilding, is legitimately one of the coolest things I have the pleasure of reading and it's so exciting when I get to see more
I love the nerdy ramblings! Thanks for the chapter!
Yay thank you❣️
I am enjoying this concept so much, and your writing is so good. I just binged all the way up to the current release, and I’m just in love with all of the characters and everything, and I’m excited to see where it goes next!
Someone binging their way through and feeling the need to comment is high praise as far as I'm concerned, so thank you very much and I'm happy you like it❣️
aaaa, massive fan of speculative/alt biology stuff like this!!
I had a lot of fun making this all up and doing research into how different physics interactions would work on a super habitable planet with a different sun, higher gravity, and denser more Oxygen rich atmosphere