When scientists talk up learning about transportation networks from nature, it's often ants that get the praise for being so much more organized and efficient than we humans with our silly gridlock. But a team of Japanese researchers found, for a new studyin Science, that you don't even need a brain to be to a traffic genius. Single-celled slime molds, they found, can build networks as complex as the Tokyo subway system.

The yellow slime mold Physarum polycephalum grows as a single cell that is big enough to be seen with the naked eye. When it encounters numerous food sources separated in space, the slime mold cell surrounds the food and creates tunnels to distribute the nutrients

Story posted in Discover Magazine about the experimental possibilities of urban planning with natural resources

It doesn't come as much of a surprise when I hit the first fork in the path.

I've carved little notches into the bricks as I go, expecting exactly this situation. As unreliable as it is to go off of pure vibes, the vibes of this place intrinsically remind me of a maze, built out of not-quite-right angles and harsh brickwork. As I reach a branching point where one path becomes two, I stare down both tunnels, looking to see if I can identify literally anything.

Left tunnel: slopes slightly downward, has a very minor curve that seems to straighten out juuuust past where line of sight ends, and is otherwise identical to the tunnel I've been traveling in.

Right tunnel: has a curve on the opposite wall as the left tunnel, and doesn't seem to go down.

I take the right tunnel.

Going downhill would be easier, sure, but coming back uphill, especially if I'm being chased, is a bitch and a half that I don't want to deal with. I'm already moving deeper, well and truly against the spirit of the promise I made to Jay, I don't have to add an extra layer of deepness to the whole waking metaphor.

The tunnel continues on, and for the second time since I've arrived, coughing out my fucking lungs, I'm left to my own devices, walking down a seemingly indefinite hallway.

It reminds me of the older games. Like, the really old ones. Not the originals, it's no Pong, but the resemblance is uncanny when I zone out, thinking back to backdrops on youtube essays.

Way back when videogames were just starting to be built for PCs (beyond the basic arcade stuff), there came a time right before three-dimensional graphics were a thing, but the view of them was on the horizon. People started theorizing and experimenting with all the ways to reach it, and one of the stops along the way to stuff like the Unity engine and original 3D games were ones like Wolfenstine and Doomed, where two-dimensional objects were manipulated such as to appear 3D.

Confusing, right? Technically, even now, it's still a 2D panel of lights, right? Well, back then, rather than having fully realized models that could move and interact with each other, they'd have basic hitboxes, all on the same plane, which would get bigger as they approached, rather than moving closer in the environment. The camera would turn as the player did, but it would be a trick of the light, carefully rendered set designs and perspective tricks giving off the illusion of 3D space and allowing it to be mapped to 2D graphics. In a lot of those games, not least because of how new the tech was, the design was simplistic.

They'd mostly be moving through long tunnels of indeterminate material.

No maps, no backdrops, few landmarks- just the vague impression of where to go, some weapon in hand, and a bunch of pixelated enemies ready to gush crimson at the push of a button.

Like I said, never played them myself- but the resemblance is uncanny. And it has me thinking.

The simplified stats, the way that the bioluminescent mushrooms move around in clumps within their grouping, the way that the environment is all just one thing, even the way that it reminds me of those old games… it's all pointing me in some kind of way.

Fungi is old. Like, old. I don't know if I've ever studied up on it properly, especially not when it comes to what came first, but if I had to bet, I'd say that things got beating hearts and complex musculature way after the first molds appeared in the world. If all of this is for me, manifested through the idea of a VR videogame, is this a reference to that? Older gaming conventions and callbacks for an older medium of life?

It's weird to think about. If I wasn't viewing this through the lens of a game, then what would I be seeing? Would I be trying to figure out how the myth of the minotaur fits into this mess? Would I think I was trapped in some choose-your-own-adventure novel? If I liked different kinds of games, would this be a point and click adventure instead of some kind of dungeon explorer?

I don't know. Maybe it's impossible to know. What is real, and what is real only to us? What is real empirically versus reality defined, enabled and transformed by bias into something unrecognizable from witness to witness? If someone else, someone who didn't have my context, had wandered in here, would they be seeing something completely different?

I don't know. But apparently, it's a good idea to chew on while I walk through this place. It's been maybe ten minutes, but when everything looks exactly the same, time starts to blur a bit. Good to have some stuff to ruminate on.

Ruminate. That's a fun word.

Man this place is fucking cold.

My feet hurt. My arms hurt. Hell, my tits hurt. I am not wearing enough clothing to be walking around in this sort of weather.

Eventually, another fork.

This one's a more complex choice. The path splits into eight, and through three of those eight I can see further splits. Besides stuff like their directions, I can't see anything different about each, except maybe the torches. There… might be a bit more dimness in some than others. I'm not sure.

I'm getting nowhere like this. The novelty's just about worn off, and the terror of being in an unknown tunnel system full of cold and dark has most assuredly not.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

I take in a deep breath, close my eyes, and focus.

Slowly, I push my mind back to the skill I've been so carefully cultivating, the one that's saved my bacon more than once already.

Glimpse Beyond scratches at the back of my eyelids, and I open them to let it out.

This is a dead place. It is a quiet place.

It is dead because it was alive. And it still is, kind of. It's like I can see the lines of it, the ways that it grew out, like stretch marks in time, pushing out the way I came. I'm moving in, towards something, something that once expanded outwards and built these tunnels for a purpose, even if I'm not entirely sure what…

No. Don't get too caught up in it. I might not know exactly what's going on with these tunnels, but I can pull back, think something simpler. A tunnel is made for things to travel through.

And now it is dark, and quiet, and dead in a way that is not death, dead in a way that cannot be dead as I understand it because, in part, it was never alive as I understand it.

And if I stare too long, I stop seeing the bricks. I start seeing how small I am, and how large this place is, like an optical illusion, pulling back and away. Except if I turn my head, if I focus on the shadow-impression behind my eyes, this place is so small, and I am so vast that I am trapped in it and drowning and if I move too fast it'll wake up and sense me and the tunnels will do what they are made for.

It hurts my head. It hurts my eyes worse.

I close them, and realize I haven't been breathing.

I gasp, feeling a trickle of red drifting down from my nostrils, dripping down onto the floor. The blood wriggles, as if trying to return to me, but the brick does not allow. The blood is drawn into the porousness of the world around me, like a thirsting sponge that briefly comes alive while being utterly inanimate.

That hurt. Badly. I've never…

It felt like I pushed. Deeper and through, like I did at the mill, but more, and here, in this place, it hurt.

Fuck.

Focus.

These tunnels are for moving through. These tunnels are empty, as if they've dried themselves out and mummified, turned into something not-quite-dead.

And some of these tunnels are more not-quite-dead than others.

I'm not going to give myself another fucking nosebleed so soon after the last one, with my head still ringing. I can still taste the after-effects of what I saw, like an echo in the back of my eyelids, and it points me forward. I find the tunnel with the lights that feel the most active (low bar, really) and start moving forward.

Don't bleed, and follow the light. That's doable, right?

I keep walking.

How long have I been here? How long have I been moving? Time feels slow, sluggish.

It's worse now. I can still smell blood in my nose. Am I still bleeding?

Why am I still bleeding? Shouldn't the Bloodling have just sucked it back in?

It tastes like copper and ozone in the back of my throat. Sometimes the sensation reminds me of my body, pulls me deeper into the shell that I am and the machinery of how I exist, and other times it seems to pull me further away from it, drowning out the cold and the sandstone bricks on the soles of my feet.

The lights keep flickering. They grow a little brighter. The air grows a little dustier, a little less bare from what it was before. For some reason, I think that means I'm going in the right direction.

I could push to figure out why, but… I don't think I need to. Not yet. I'll figure it out, or I'll keep following my instincts, and either way, I'll get somewhere.

How long have I been walking?

It's dark, and cold… but it's getting warmer.

A sound.

Distant. Far off down the tunnel, but real nonetheless. It breaks through the dead silence of this place, where my breathing and my heartbeat are the only things I can hear. Did I imagine it? Is it possible to have imagined it in this place?

It sounds like wind. Like a mix of fluttering and gas, like feathers and an exhale in one, far off down the way.

I keep marking the walls as I take turns, as I follow patterns that branch more and more until they're more of a network of roots than proper tunnels. As they begin to criss-cross and become denser, more cluttered, until I'm no longer traveling through the dark but through a living network of cluttered veins and messy, strangely optimized patterns. I keep the torch high as I mark arrows back the way I came, the taste of ozone in my throat and the sound of breathing that isn't from lungs comes from further ahead.

I have the Bloodling, churning quietly (so quietly, so much quieter, and how did I not notice how quiet?) and the Glove and this torch and my skills. I'm not powerless.

It's fine if I die. It's fine if I die. In all these games, there are multiple lives, right? Even if it's not my original roguelite sort of thing with MEAT, it's still fine.

It's fine if I die here. I have to remember that. Anything else would leave me an animal thing, broken and ruined and worthless. My life only has as much value as my ability to go forward, and losing it does not cost me that ability.

I think. I hope.

I know. Because if I don't know, then it's not fine, and it's fine.

Go towards the sound. Go deeper into this place. It's fine if I die.

The sound gets a little louder, echoing off of the branching paths- right around the next corner.

Go. Go.

Glove raised high, I turn the corner.

It's like a dust bunny.

Not literally, not, like, a rabbit made of dust. Feels like I should clarify that, even if it's only in my own head. The words are limited, and the concepts are broader, and so all I have is the words to help me package them, even if they're not real, not really real, just made up things that echo and ape at meaning. So it's like a dust bunny, but it's not a bunny made of dust.

Felt like I should clarify.

It's like a dust bunny, in the sense of being a collection of dust that vaguely moves around in the air. Except it's not dust, is it? It's more like pollen, maybe, or like the puffy part of a dandelion, or smoke. It's all of those and none of those, all at once, wrapped up around a denser part in the middle that seems not-quite-solid, but closer.

The little ball flutters and floats around, guided by unseen drafts and currents that I don't feel on my skin. It hovers in the space, seeming to orbit or maybe gravitate in towards something on the wall.

Instead of bare brick, there's a chunk of the wall that looks out of place compared to the rest of the space, like it came out of a whole different medium. It glows, brighter than the mushroom-torches along the wall, and pokes out through the brickwork like a geode. It looks like a crystal of some kind, and the first thought that comes to mind, addled as said mind is, is that it looks like a mining node in some old-timey game. The off-white glow illuminates the space and cast strange shadows as the bobbing bit of dust floats around it, occasionally bumping into it.

Where the dust-ball bounces against the crystal, the glow dims slightly, little shards or sparks sticking to the ball and pulling back. It reminds me of a bee, pollinating, but… kind of in reverse? The little dustball-

Spores. It's like a spore. Like a big clump of spores all together, kind of. Spores in the Grey, that makes sense, right?

The big spore-thing covers itself in the little shard-dust from the crystal, glowing that same dull white color, until it's glowing three-dimensionally. Only then does it stop bouncing against the outcropping of crystal and start to float away, once again carried by nonexistent winds.

Down the tunnel. Deeper into the ever-brightening glow.

And beyond it, heading back this way, another mold-spore, floating gently in the breeze and ducking past the glowing one to head towards the crystal.

Alright. Damn good sign that I'm going the right way, I guess.

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