The Consensus was aghast and filled with sympathy for all that Lilly had gone through in her life, and she too got to experience what it felt like to be mentally hugged by thousands of minds directing all of their compassion in one moment upon her.  She cried of course.  I'd be absolutely gobsmacked if any human could face that weight of directed love and support without some bout of intense emotional reaction.  The two instances of me sandwiched her between us as she rode that wave.

    The Consensus' reaction to Cairn's identity submission was very different.  The contingent of artsy poetic aliens within the consensus were lauding them as a visionary and recognizing Cairn as one of their own.  Gems of discussion were created en mass to analyze the sociological implications woven throughout what Cairn had chosen to represent theirself.  Many of the aliens just didn't understand at all, but Sylph's people held immense value in the acceptance of not understanding as a space for individual and community change and growth.

    Overall, they were both eagerly welcomed as wonderful sources of much needed human diversity of thought into The Consensus.  I left Lilly and Cairn in the capable hands of my mental copy while I went off to other business.  With the assimilation of Lilly and Cairn into the alien hive mind complete, now it was time to work more on our own little cult and upgrade the organism in the soil of this valley from 'the grove' to 'The Grove.'

    I've often thought of Fungie and the grove as having a 'voice' when interacting with them through the alien's entangled network.  There's a cadence and tone to how information they each convey gets shared.  Fungie is kinda peppy and hyper, like a wise little puppy that just wants to share and play.  It operates within the folds of my own brain, wrapped around neurons and must keep up with the speed at which my neurodivergent brain jumps between thoughts.  

    The grove on the other hand is long accustomed to move at geological time.  It was here long before any permanent human inhabitation came to this valley, and if all goes as the aliens had designed, it will remain here spreading across the planet until the Earth is swallowed by the expanding sun reaching the end of its life.  If Fungie was a puppy, the grove was a community of ents.  I half expected my ever present enthusiasm to be met with gentil long winded warnings of, "We must not be too hasty young human." rattled out like rustling leaves and branches of the aspen in a stiff breeze.  As such, whenever making a request of the grove, I always did so with the respect owed to a much loved elder who had far more life experience than I could imagine at the time.

    I turned within to my personal network of connections and felt through my direct link with the grove.  I could sense the parts of me that carried that connection.  I could feel how far they had spread out through the mycelial net within the valley soil.  They weren't done expanding yet, but the area covered was already massive to contemplate.  I embraced my connection and politely inquired of the grove as to the status of its communication interface node.

    In its soft, deep, and expansive tone, the grove replied to me with understanding of the functionality and operating parameters of the newly created neural node as well as how I should go about preparing and connecting the spare phone I had brought to function as a modem.  I was also given the knowledge that the grove was prepared to begin hosting gems of discussion, including pulling Consensus gems from the biosphere that were most closely connected to human matters.

     I mentally genuflected in appreciation, respect, and joy at all the grove had done for me in just the short period of our connection, as well as requesting it go ahead with the relocation of important discussions to our new instance of consensus.  I extended my love and congratulations to The Grove, which would now be known in my head as a proper noun. 

    I turned back to my body and pulled the old phone from my pocket. I began preparing a gift for The Grove to commemorate this occasion  (though some might consider access to the human internet more of a curse than a gift when compared to the alien's Entanglement).

    From the knowledge that I'd been given, I pulled the battery from the back of the phone as The Grove node had the ability to convert biochemical potential energy to electrical energy enough to keep the phone functioning and those batteries could be dangerous.  I released a collection of specifically instructed spores that would do some minor modifications to the electrical connections behind the battery and prepare the near field communication capabilities of the phone to better interface with the fungal neurons.  I then walked to the root wall of Sylph's cave and placed the phone in an illuminated receptacle sticking slightly out from the soil. 

    The phone was gently withdrawn into the wall until it was hidden from view.  From a prior shared understanding, I knew that this phone now had an antenna that spanned the entirety of The Grove and would likely never have signal issues.  I briefly contemplated the risks and possibilities of what turning a bundle of fungal neural tissue loose on the wealth of human knowledge, memes, and anonymous Internet fuckwads might bring, but was interrupted from that thought by a chaos gremlin poking me in the butt.

    "Hey Marin, we found Sylph's gem in how best to sex you and I added my own input."  They were grinning at me with their most mischievous grin.

    I sighed and rolled my eyes at Cairn.  I would have to have my other self to check on that, but thankfully anything Cairn shared there would also be presented with the context of being done purely out of a playful desire to fuck with me, so would be more amusing for anyone who visited than informative.  "Thank you for your input Cairn."  My voice was heavily laced with sarcasm.

    "Now I know you know I'm not really one for the ol' input,"  they began thrusting their index finger in and out of their other hand held in an 'O'.  "But for you my love, I will always lend my aid."

    I sighed and pulled the enby in for a hug to quiet them through cleavage smothering.  Eventually, I released them.  "Well at least I know that means you can participate without issue, even if that just provides you with more opportunities for mischief."  Lilly was smiling at both of us from Sylph's bed.  "I see that things are working out for you as well?"

    Lilly let out a single chuckle.  "It's so weird having just been talking to you, only to now be talking to another of you."

    I sheepishly brushed some hair out of my face.  "Yeah I'm still getting used to how my memory works.  It's all shared, but it's like it's somehow vaguely marked as not my own memory so recalling it just feels different than if it happened to this me."  I sighed.  "Not like my memory wasn't weird before this…"

    While I was still contemplating my fickle short term memory, The Grove shared with me that it was complete in setting up a web server through the phone I installed.  I thanked it profusely.

    "Nice, The Grove says its website is ready!"

    "It has a website?"  Cairn gave me the most dubious of looks.

    "Yeah.  That's what we are going to use for people that don't want to go the fungal brain infection route.  Instead they can still participate through the intertubes, although at some lesser capacity right now."  I began to get excited with ideas.  "Maybe at some point it could be like a VR chat client where everyone can meet in a virtual room to discuss things!"

    Cairn laughed at me.  "Nerd!"

    "Takes one to know one."  I stuck out my tongue at the smaller enby.  "As of now we've just made a somewhat basic forum.  The Grove will act effectively like an admin, moderator, and translator converting thought to whatever language is needed by the user."

    "So The Grove is an AI?"  Lilly had a wonderful contemplative look on her face.

    "Not truly as in it has a level of sentience, but it does have the ability to process thought into natural or computer language.  Marin always insists on treating it as if it were sentient though."  Sylph smirked at me and it was wonderful.

    "What?  I'm just living out my dream of being a hobbit who convinces a bunch of sentient trees to overthrow an industrialized nation state ruled by a powerful fascist overlord."  I basked in everyone's giggles.  "Plus if I can talk to it, I'm going to be nice to it in case it ever does have feelings."  I crossed my arms and pouted.

    "You have to remember Sylph, humans will anthropomorphise and pack bond with anything, up to and including inanimate objects."

    I held my hand out at Lilly.  "See!  Lilly gets it."

    Sylph shook her head and laughed.  "Humans are weird."

    "It true, we are, but you love me despite that."  I bent to kiss Sylph on the forehead.  Now that The Grove was ready, I mentally asked it to send the link for its privately hosted forum to each of our phones and was rewarded by a trio of notifications.  Cairn's being the most pronounced of the three, the annoyed gurgles of some video game creature.  "There's the link to the forum.  When you click it and make an account, The Grove will send you an authentication request over the network.  Quantum secure 2-F-A!"

    Cairn began fiddling with their phone.  "Marin, who designed this?  This is worse than the websites my parents used when they were young."

    “I did, and that’s intentional.”  I smiled smugly at Cairn.  “All the better to annoy people who don’t know what it is and keep them from digging.”

    Cairn shrugged.  "That's fair."

    "Okay, but Marin, why did you name it 'The G Spot'?"  Lilly had the most pleadingly confused look on her face and I loved it.

    I grinned very widely at her.  "G is for Grove."  Lilly's palm went directly to her forehead as she sighed.  "Also it's funny and further confuses anyone who just somehow wanders there.  Also I've asked The Grove to go wild and make up random inane fake posts that will pop up on the front page."

    Lilly turned her pleading face to Sylph.  "You just let em do things like this?"

    Sylph smiled at me.  "Ey get very excitable about things like this, and ey are very cute when all excitable."

    I beamed at Sylph with pride over my cuteness.

    "While that is true, ey are very cute like this."  Lilly nodded and me and I smiled harder.  "Ey are also very cute when they pout.  Also this is just an example of the danger of letting Marin run amok."

    "That is also true."  Both women looked at me and I suddenly knew I was in trouble.  "I do enjoy denying Marin things as well."

    Worst and best part of being poly, when your partners gang up on you…  I gulped heavily and laughed nervously.  "But yeah… please try it out.  We need feedback."  Even though my other self had effectively been working with an emulator of the site within The Consensus, I still pulled out my phone to start playing around.  Once you got past the archaic design and inane babble of the landing page and logged into an account, the website became pretty usable.  It was effectively just a web forum, but with a fancy search tree for finding your way into gems you were interested in.  Making a post was a little more complicated though.  

    The Consensus was not a place where one simply came to share random thoughts quickly.  Yes you could share quick observations, with limited context, but everyone's view of reality is highly subjective based on their life experience and bias.  The Consensus treated observations from unknown voices providing limited personal context with a very sizable grain of salt.  It's valuable information only in aggregate with multiple other sources.  If a person wanted true value to be derived from their single source, they first needed to build trust, and common understanding of reality through shared values.  They needed to share their identity with The Consensus just as all of Sylph's people did constantly, just as I had done, and Lilly and Cairn had just done as well.  Crafting an accurate view of one's identity and understanding of self through text was complicated to say the least.

    The Grove had issues with this as well, but in reverse.  Distilling all that was packaged and shared with The Consensus of an entity's current identity into words was daunting.  The Grove could only share this with users of the website to a limited extent.  The aliens really hadn't ever seen much need to invest the time in creating language processing networks that could convey complex thought to words with the level of fidelity required for consensus building as they knew it.  Not until I asked them nicely for it that is, and they thought I was cool enough to try it!

    Overall, those who came to The G Spot couldn't contribute at the same level as those who were directly connected to The Grove itself.  It was limiting and I didn’t like it, but it was a far better compromise than just excluding everyone who didn't want to start completely altering their inner microbiome with an alien organism.  This is why The Consensus thought I was cool and decided it was a good plan.

    "Okay, so The G Spot is kinda neat."  Cairn got a far off look in their eyes.  "Didn't think I'd find myself saying that today…  But Marin, this is actually pretty good for what it is…  Once you get past the name, and how atrocious the web design is for that front page."

    "Thank you Cairn, I did actually work pretty hard on this, Sylph and The Consensus helped as well."  I sighed and gained a far off look now.  “Now we just have to talk to the Triad.  I’m scared about how they are going to take all of this.”

    Lilly stood and walked up behind me and rested her hand on my shoulder.  "How long do we have until we are expected for dinner?"

    “About four hours.  I think David is going to start cooking around five.”

    “Is there anything we can do that would help you prepare or distract you?” 

    I leaned back into Lilly.  “Honestly, just being here with all of you is wonderful and all I could think to ask for.  I feel like I am in a beautiful dream compared to how much I was worrying yesterday.”  I sighed and flopped my head fully into Lilly’s shoulder.  “I don’t want any of this to end.”

    Cairn got up to stand in front of me and poked a finger into my sternum.  “Marin, you do realize that we’ve all got a biohacking fungus that knows a shit ton more about preventing aging inside us than the combined total of human knowledge.  Bitch we have a very high chance of living for a very long time.”  They poked again to drive home the point.  “Both you and your alien girlfriend,” they turned to Sylph, “who’s awesome b-t-dubs,” poking me again, “are fucking stuck with us now.  Get used to it.”

    I pulled Cairn into a hug and Lilly pulled us both into her arms.  Sylph joined shortly after and I started crying, because of course I did.

Murbellass

    Okay, the prologue chapter of my next story should be up at the same time as this one and that can be found here.    Also I’m thinking I will be releasing chapters for the new story somewhat in parallel with the finishing of this first book as long as things revealed there will be first noted in the main story.  Feels kinda fun that way for me at least.  I might wind up just having to retcon things though but that’s fun as well.