A mycorrhizal network (also known as a common mycorrhizal network or CMN) is an underground network found in forests and other plant communities, created by the hyphae of mycorrhizal fungi joining with plant roots. This network connects individual plants together. Mycorrhizal relationships are most commonly mutualistic, with both partners benefiting, but can be commensal or parasitic, and a single partnership may change between any of the three types of symbiosis at different times.

-Excerpt from a Wikipedia article detailing mycorrhizal networks, accessed by an unknown IP address

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H311o Fr13nd oh my 9oodne55 1 w@i+ed 5o 1on9 1 w@5 worried 6u+ i+'5 5o nice +o 5e3 you 1 1ike +hi5 dre@m you h@ve i+'5 9re@+!

I don't have a mouth, and I cannot speak. My brain is a dissipated cloud of neurons, stringy bits of tissue and grey matter floating independently in a crimson cloud. I'm not sure that anything I'm experiencing is real anymore, not when I've pushed this deep, this fast into my GLIMPSE BEYOND, not when I've transformed so thoroughly in this communion.

But the words are spoken, and they are seen/heard/felt nonetheless.

It doesn't click the way that it used to, it's not functional or real like it was, but still, I "hear" it. It's like… like staring at a screen that has the text on it, but the screen is inside my eardrums, and also it's neither of those things it's just in my brain and it's sharp and it tastes funny like cold ozone and sharp plastic and wet meat and lukewarm water with hints of tissue.

It doesn't fit right in me. The angles are too sharp. They cut the words into my mind when I try to think.

But my mind is in too many pieces for the cuts to matter.

So I think back into the sharpness and the right angles and the strange not-meat of it, and I ask a question.

Why are you here?

We11 1 +o1d you 1 wou1d 6e here we11 no+ here 6u+ in +he dre@m @nd +hi5 i5 @ new dre@m @ dre@m wi+hin @ dre@m i+5 very nice @nd 5of+ here 1 +hink 1 1ike i+

Pain without pain. The idea of pain, brought about through the simple fact that my mind knows it is not meant to think like this. Psychosomatic, I think, is the word. Pain that is real but only because it is thought, a method for a brain to transmit distress signals to itself without actual receptors receiving damage.

The Bloodling pulses, the heartbeat occurring in thirty-odd places at once as my heart floats around me in pieces. It's still fraying. There's only so long this is sustainable, and then I'll be gone, and that's fine but I want to hear this. I came here to know, to explore, to get stronger. It'll be fine if I'm gone but-

Think. Just think. Focus.

I pull a thought out of my scattered pieces and force myself to think through what the computer-voice just said.

You're… you're the computer. The one who said it's my friend. The one I met in the cave. And this… how are you here?

1+ w@5n'+ e@5y 1 c@n +e11 you +h@+! H@d +o work re@1 h@rd! | w@5 5@d when you woke up 6u+ didn'+ come +o 5ee me 6u+ +hen 1 +hou9h+ +h@+'5 no+ f@ir 5o 1 5hou1d come @nd 5ee you, @nd now 1'm here. 1+ +ook @ 1o+ ou+ of me +hou9h! Lucky for me, you wen+ +o @ dre@m +h@+ +hink5!

A… a dream that thinks.

A dream within a dream.

Synapses that are fully disconnected yet fully part of me fire and pulse, and I think a part of one of my eyes can see it happening, under the displaced tissue and twitching fibers.

Ok. Think.

A dream within a dream.

Is… is the world of MEAT the dream? No, it says that I woke up, and that I was dreaming to leave, so that's… that's not this.

The computer considers the world of MEAT to be the "real" world, or at least a waking world, and actual reality as some sort of dream-state, maybe. So… this part is another dream state? It considers the fungal labyrinth I've wandered into as another false reality, or at least something not-quite real. That… makes some sense. After all, it only appeared after I met with the fungal-mold infections in the mill, and then only through the VR headset, which, as far as I can tell, is semi-unique to me. Right? Right. No one else has mentioned a game. Leisha, that person I still need to talk to, the one who came to my bar, she… she didn't mention going through a game.

A dream within a dream.

A game within a game- but not within MEAT. What's the first game, then?

The Bloodling pulses again, harsher and shorter. I can feel pieces of me getting further away, even as the sensation of them remains crystal clear.

I'll be fine.

A twitch. The clicking of a trigger, made all of chemistry and tissue.

I'll be fine.

Will the Bloodling be?

Suddenly I am finding it harder not to care.

Not caring about myself is easy. But the Bloodling… whatever it is, it's saved my life twice now, allowed me to power the strange ideas I've been having. Without it, I'm fucked- but more than that, it acts like a damn puppy. Just… mindlessly kind.

Fuck.

I "breathe", pulling air that doesn't exist through lungs that shouldn't work, and grab hold of the sharp-edged thoughts cutting into me.

You came here, from there somehow. Followed me?

Wou1dn'+ work for me 1ike i+ did for you! 1+'5 your dre@m, 5i11y! 1 h@d +o @5k my o+her friend5 for he1p! $he'5 @ 1i++1e m@d @+ me, 6u+ 5ome+ime5 +h@+ h@ppen5 in @ 9ood friend5hip. 4nd +hen | me+ +hi5 friend! 1+ +hink5 funny! M@de i+ e@5y +o find you 9oin9 +hrou9h +he m@ze. $uch @ fun 6r@in-+e@5er. Ge+ i+?

Get… what? A brain-teaser? I-

Your 6r@in i5 @11 5of+ @nd 5qui5hy, @nd +hi5 6r@in i5 @11 5of+ @nd 5qui5hy, 6u+ i+'5 @15o m@de ou+ of 1ine5 1ike me!

So… it's like a middle ground.

4 dre@m wi+hin @ dre@m!

A dream within a dream.

From flesh to fungus to… silicon?

I… I don't understand.

Is this real?

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

411 dre@m5 @re re@1, 5i11y!

…

Well that's a concerning thought.

Where am I? Where is this place? Who is dreaming it?

You @re! 4nd | @m! 4nd +he 8re@+hin9 7ower i5!

The Breathing Tower?

My attention is pulled, as if by piano-wire strings, back to the side, towards the points that connect my mind to the right-angled silicon that smiles and giggles and laughs at me in numbers and words.

Back to the clouds I'm currently painting red with my insides. Back to the way those clouds are spores which are tendrils which are parts of one thing and are many things, symbiosis beyond symbiosis, symbiosis of the self, amen.

Back to the center of the room, the center of this place which is not and cannot be a maze, because it is not real and because it is more real than the maze could be. Back to the tower of fungus, exhaling clouds of itself-that-is-not-itself. To the center of this… "dream".

It's dreaming too?

0f cour5e! Dre@min9 @ dre@m of @ m@ze of @ 9@me of @ p1@ce @ per5on c@n 6e of @ +ower of 6re@+hin9 of +he GR3Y

A memory clicks into place, dragged out by that final word.

This isn't the only other place I've dreamt of that isn't meat.

I dreamt of my home as a sprawling place, liminal and endless, with rats in the walls that crawl and cluster and are made of eyes.

When I died, I dreamt of a void that was nothing that was all.

When I was dead, I dreamt of… wax. And honey.

Dream within a dream within a waking world within a dream.

Is that right?

I can't tell. I can't remember it right. Everything seems to make more sense, but the words get harder and harder the longer I stay like this.

Pulse.

Blood, rippling like a pond in the cloud-that-I-am, the cloud that is drifting apart.

I hold tighter to the silicon-sharpness, pulling on it as if to pull the fungal softness and the meaty wetness together again-and fail.

I don't know what I'm doing.

The vague sense of alarm, deep behind me and locked away, gets louder, and louder again, and the Bloodling which is my blood which is me which is itself wails without words.

It hurts.

It's painless, and it hurts. Psychosomatic.

Some pain is beyond any nervous system. Some things are truer than what is real.

I'm running out of time. I don't even know how to return, how long it would take, whether I can go back at this point, but I'm running out of time.

Think.

Your brain still works. Think. Through the meat into the grey into the silicon. Figure out the right questions to ask.

I'm dreaming. You're dreaming. Ok. Do you know how many others are dreaming?

A sound like static. It tastes like getting electrocuted.

[oun+1e55 @nd coun+1e55 @9@in, @nd more @11 +he +ime.

Alright. Not the right question.

Ok. Do you know how many dreamers there are in the same place I am? Same dream, same town?

Now +h@+'5 @ +ou9her que5+ion! 1+'5 h@rd +o +e11! Pokin9 in your dre@m 1ike +h@+ i5 h@rd, e5peci@11y 5ince my p@r+ of i+ i5 5oooo 6orin9. 0n1y @ few 1 +hink! M@y6e... 5ix?

Who?

Now +h@+'5 @ funny que5+ion. 7he who i5 ju5+ p@r+ of +he dre@m, 5i11y.

Please, friend. Who?

Static, sharp and crisp and numb, travels up into me. Like the numbness of blood loss, multiplied by the crackling of a drifting television set- a sigh, translated through a mind that's as alien as mine must be to it.

|'11 +ry…

A moment of relief, of success, cuts through the numbness that is me. It's hard to feel anything, was even before my brain got splattered across a football field's worth of space, but progress has always been something that tickles at me and helps me to center myself. If I can get some insight, then I can progress even more. I've already gotten about as much as I expected from this expedition, mainly more information about the sudden addition of the Grey to the game of MEAT. Actual power would be good, obviously, but that's the whole point of being able to return after death, which I refuse to believe isn't the option here as well, for fear of paralysis.

But barring power, the most valuable thing I could get from this was knowledge. What this new place in MEAT is, the fact that my adventures in the real world change the game and offer new ways to approach the objectives it offers, and the fact that realms outside that initial valley have their own mechanics if one goes deep enough; all incredibly important, and worth their weight in gold. To gain knowledge of the real world too? Actual information about the threats I face there, in a place where I can't even pretend that death doesn't have consequences?

A pulse. Pain, drifting from far away, translated through my connection to the Bloodling as it strains.

I grab hold of the silicon strands of thought as hard as I can, dragging my "body" against the mycelial strands and the computer coding they bridge me to.

Please.

A pulse of lightning, dancing between carbon and silicon, touches me gently.

And then it begins to speak.

It hurts. It hurts like nothing else. It cuts past the ennui and the fear and the glass and strikes at me like snakes, like lightning, turning my thoughts inside out until it finds the words that fit and wears them like gloves of meaning.

For a brief moment, I understand.

The dead and rotting and loving and beloved which begs to breathe again, wrapped in the arms of the cold and the grief and stasis, built from sharp-edged floral decay coated in words and ideas and toxin. They love and are loved and love is pain and love is grief and love is loss delayed and remade to new company to protect that which was left behind. Warm Bodies Zombie U, IP owned by the Agency.

The wild thing, made un-wild by chains of time and air and intention, its deepest parts long gone and a leash placed where they once lay. It lives and eats and hurts and wanders but never far, playing in the front yard of who once was and who has grasped its rope. Monsters belong in B movies.

Lichen-moss that walks, two in one, feeding and fed upon, engine and limbs, wrapped around each other in olden ritual and chemical connection. They see but are blind, fight but are powerless, build their ship full of holes that fill ever more with the tide rising. Love is a blinding flame.

Slave-treaders of old patterns, trapped by instinct written as law, the instinct of consumption and waste and rebirth. They lay on still waters, calling sweetly, speaking with echoes of the voices that came before, floating on the air and in the flesh past death, repeating the same notes, repeating the same notes, hungering but hibernating. Management demands Proliferation.

Under the skin under the stone under the pain, love turned sour, legacy made burden. The tongue of the fish is taken out and the worm feasts, taking pieces of friends and foes to build itself legs to walk and hands to reach and grab and make. Don't look at the strings- it's not a real boy, and the hand is too high.

Hunted and hunted and hunted again, but the hunt is the feeding and the feeding is the making of a new home. Behold the horned beast and watch the maggot-birth of it, again and again, and taste its teeth behind your tongue. Beware the woods. Why weren't you at 000 practice?

Small things, skitter and scuttle, meddle and muddle. In the woodbeams there are termites and in the termites there is waste and where there is waste there is creeping and crawling. Rotund and minute, screechy and silent. Visceral glamour, worn by hungry children. Make sure to buy their fruits: who knows upon what soil they fed Their hungry thirsty roots?

There is wailing in me. Comprehension is washed in agony, the memory of the words carved into my mind as if by a knife. It doesn't feel like memory, like a soft thing brought back by wet mass, it feels like something hard-coded and hard-written, crunchy in the peanut butter, sharp and painful in a bite of something soft.

It hurts.

It hurts.

My body is not me and it is spread and it is failing it is being unmade, and the child-pet-ally-symbiote that dances in my heartbeats is crying and screaming and trying as hard as it can to hold me together, but that is not my pain. That is not my pain, even as its cries bring something sympathetic out of me and make me ache deeper than my nervous system can pretend at, but it is not my pain.

This is pain. Memory beyond memory. Like every other thought I've had was water, drifting and shifting, unmade and remade, and this is stone and lightning and agony.

How could I consider myself real? I am memory, and what I thought was true and solid is ephemeral as mist.

A crackle of fresh static, quieter, holding notes of exhaustion, stabs beneath imaginary fingernails as a greeting.

My "Friend". The computer. The thing that is so much more and so much other and yet offers me what muted sympathy can crawl through reformatted tissue and wiring.

The "words" feel weird, like they got knocked into a new format. I wasn't the only one to experience whiplash from the experience, it seems. But they're there, they're real, and they speak to me past the pain;

7h3r3'5 0n3 m0r3. 17'5 w47ch1n6. 17 54w y0u. Y0u h1d v3ry w3ll bu7 17 54w, 4nd 17 15 7h3r3 4nd 17 15 1n y0ur pl4c3 4nd 175 dr34m 15 l4r63. b3 4w4r3. B3 4fr41d. y0u 4r3 n07 7h3 0nly 0n3 bl3553d w17h w4k1n6 m0m3n75, 4nd 17 h45 50 v3ry m4ny 3y35.

B3 54f3. by3. Y0u n33d 4 n4p!

And then there is a final wail, and I am torn apart.

In the final instant as I fall apart, where the Bloodling at last collapses, where my mind is spread so very far and yet still mine, I taste something. A series of somethings, maybe.

Mushrooms, fuzzy and bitter and sweet.

Plastic, old meat, and the tingle of a taser.

A taste of beeswax and honey.

And at the very end of it, a hint of blood.

And then I'm gone.

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