From what Malcolm could remember, the nearest road was about four miles away, and the nearest city about twenty. If he started early, he figured that he could reach the city by nightfall, find some ruins to sleep in, spend a few days scavenging, and return before the end of the week. Before setting out, he gave his daughter a long and loving hug.
“Will you be back soon?” Young Lori asked.
“Within a week.” The grizzled man smiled. “Do you know how long a week is?”
“Six days?”
“Seven.”
Lori frowned. “I want you back sooner.”
Malcolm’s eyes grew slightly moist. “I’ll do my best.” He promised. “And I’ll be back with food.”
He made the same promise to his wife.
“You know I’ve been speaking with Jericho. He says he can bring the food to us.” To prove this point, she showed him a can of preserved potatoes. “He says he can even test the food inside to make sure it’s still edible.”
Malcolm felt oddly betrayed. “If we’re going to rely on him to feed us, why not just eat the red weed?”
“Well why not?” His wife snapped. “There’s nothing bad about it. Loads of people eat it!”
“Loads of…There aren’t loads of people! Nearly everyone’s gone! Loads…What loads? How do you know loads are eating it?”
“Jericho said-”
“Jericho said, Jericho said!” Malcolm spat. “And how can you be sure he’s telling the truth?”
“Because he’s never lied to us before? Because he’s honest to a fault? Because he’s helping us?”
“Listen, if we start eating the red weed, then why wouldn’t we let the Mycelloids build us a better house as well?”
“Why not?”
“Why not? Why not? If they’ve given us a house, why not let them just inject us with all the nutrients we need? No eating required! And at that point, why not just jump in a pit and give ourselves over to them?”
Becky said nothing.
Malcolm gave her a terse kiss on the cheek…The affection was barely reciprocated.
“I’ll be back in a week.” He told her. “We can discuss this more when I return.”
“Just be safe.” She huffed.
He smiled. “At the very least, I think the Mycelloids will guarantee that much.”
He left the cabin as the Sun’s first rays scattered across the landscape. Dramatic shadows stretched down from the canopy as the night’s frost began receding.
Birdcalls filled the air. The grizzled man grimaced because he knew the songs were fake…The cheerful avians were nothing more than a fungus masquerading as animals…In fact, the fungus was masquerading as entire ecosystems. Fungal foxes eating fungal mice, fungal squirrels eating fungal weeds…A singular fungal colony pretending to be at war with itself.
“Jericho?” Malcolm asked.
His friend’s clone manifested from a large clump of red weeds wrapped around a dead tree. “Yes?” He asked.
“Those birds…How long is their lifespan? A few years?”
“We managed to keep many of them alive for almost a decade.” Jericho bragged.
“So the originals would all be dead by now.”
Jericho nodded. “They lived an amazing life and have since been consumed by the colony.”
“Then what’s the point of it all? If you’ve already taken over most of the planet, why do you feel the need to mimic animal life? Why go through all that effort?” He pointed up. “Why the birds?”
“Well that’s what we know…That is, it’s what the colony knows.” Jericho explained. “Once it copied the birds, it learned bird-behavior. It fashioned wings and beaks, learned flight and birdsong, and continued having a portion of itself act as the birds always had.”
“But that burns through an enormous amount of energy. Why continue?”
“Ah.” Jericho’s mouth went flat. “Well in all honesty, that’s for your sake. Birds are what you know, and the colony doesn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
A sudden memory jumped to Malcolm’s mind…A zoo, filled with fake trees and fake terrain, all to keep the animals calm. He said nothing, however, and simply kept walking.
Two miles into the trek his left knee began to hurt. Three miles in and his walk became a hobbling struggle.
Jericho, who’d been walking along side him the whole time, frowned. “I suppose you’d refuse my help if I offered it.”
Through the pain, the grizzled man managed a snarl.
He continued limping forward, pushing himself with every step.
He thought about the food the city would hold.
He thought about his wife…He’d impress her.
He thought about his sweet little daughter…He’d feed her.
He didn’t need the Mycelloids. He’d show them.
He reached the road, looked up and down, and started in the direction of the city. Jericho followed.
A truck approached and stopped right beside the grizzled man. The window went down and a friendly old man nodded to him.
“Going to town?” The stranger asked.
“I am.” Malcolm answered.
The old man reached over and opened his door. “Long way to walk. Get in. I’ll take you there.”
Malcolm was about to oblige when paranoid thoughts began to pierce through his desperate and pain-laden mind.
“You’re not one of them, are you?”
“One of them?” The man asked.
“Them…A Mycelloid!”
The man frowned. “And if I am?”
“Then I don’t want your help!” Malcolm said, slamming the door.
“But you’d accept it if I were human?”
“I don’t want to rely on…On you.” He panted. His knee was on fire, sending bolts of pain up and down his leg with every movement.
The old man shook his head slowly. “You don’t look in any shape to keep walking.”
“I’ve got it!” Malcolm bit into each syllable in pain. “I’m fine!”
The old man opened the door once again. “Look, why don’t you get in? I’ll take you where you need to go, and you can pretend I’m a mammal, same as you.”
Malcolm desperately wanted to argue, but Jericho’s voice cut in.
“You’ve been reliant on people your whole life.” He said. “You used tools you didn’t create to build your cabin and till your garden. You got the seeds for your vegetables from a store stocked by others. It’s okay to accept help from time to time.”
“But if I start accepting now, where will it end?”
“I suppose wherever you want it to.” The old man said. “Come on…Get in.”
The grizzled man wanted to say that any help was too much, and wanted to tell the Mycelloids to stop offering assistance…
…But his knee was in so much pain, and the city was still sooo far…
He struggled into the truck’s cab.
“One trip.” He snapped. “And after that I’ll handle everything else on my own.”
“Fair enough.” The man said. He slowly began driving. “Name’s Clyde.”
“No it’s not.” Malcolm spat. “Your original was named Clyde.”
“If you insist.” The man shrugged. He turned on the radio and began listening to a right-wing talk show.
“And these liberals who’d destroy America…Why do our institutes still listen to them? Haven’t they proven themselves to be bad actors who-”
Malcolm sighed. He’d been divorced from politics so long he nearly forgot it existed, but he knew he wasn’t listening to politics…Not real politics at any rate. No. It was the same as the birds, and the foxes, and the food chain. He was listening to the fungus pretending to fight itself, because that’s what humans had done before. That’s what it knew. It’s what he knew. It’s what he remembered.
Just like the forest creatures hunting one another.
All an act.
He rubbed his knee and winced.
“Bad leg?” Clyde asked.
“I’ll be fine.”
“If you open the glove compartment there, you’ll find some aspirin.”
“I’m fine.”
Clyde frowned. “If it makes you feel better, that aspirin’s old…100% made by human hands.”
Malcolm opened the glove compartment, found the first aid kit, opened it, and withdrew several tiny white pills. He gulped them down.
Clyde offered him an unopened bottle of water.
Malcolm eyed him suspiciously before accepting…He was thirsty.
“You know, there are others out there like you…People who actively resist our help, I mean.”
Malcolm remained silent, opting instead to draw small sips from the bottle.
“And I don’t understand it. You rely on your wife, right?”
“Of course.”
“Well then what if she gets replaced while you’re gone? You’d unknowingly be relying on us.”
“I’d know.” Malcolm answered automatically, but as soon as the words escaped his lips, both he and his driver knew that wasn’t true.
“You’d still rely on her, Mycelloid or not, and you’d be none the wiser. That aspirin you just took? What if it wasn’t old? What if I’d lied? What if we only recently created it?”
“You don’t lie.” Malcolm said flatly.
“We don’t, no, but supposing we did? Maybe we’re learnin’.”
“You don’t need drugs.” Malcolm answered. “There’s no reason for you to create pain relievers.”
“We don’t, no, but you do. You and every other hold-out. Maybe that’s why we’ve dedicated time, power, and resources toward maintaining the pharmaceutical companies. Maybe we’re tryin’ to help.”
“Then I won’t accept anything further.”
“You’re still riding with me.”
Malcolm sighed. “That’s true.”
“And you’re actively confiding in me for emotional strength, same as you do with Jericho from time to time…You feel more comfortable talking to us than you do your wife, at least for some topics.”
“I’d rather not discuss this.”
“Why? Too uncomfortable for you? You’re getting a free ride. I thought you hated comfort without struggle.”
“I do, but this isn’t struggle…This is a grilling.”
The Clyde-clone shrugged. “I suppose no one wants to be confronted with holes in their philosophy, especially if they built their identity off of it. You know, that’s one of the benefits of being replaced you never hear of. Once you’re down in those tunnels, everything becomes clear. There are no more mental inconsistencies, no more petty bickering, no more hesitancy. Everything just makes sense, you know?” He shrugged. “Well no, I suppose you wouldn’t know.”
“No. I wouldn’t.” The grizzled man answered. He was already beginning to feel a bit too comfortable with the clone.
As they drove, the trees gave way to fields…Perfectly tended fields…Fields that bore crops, just as they had when humans oversaw them.
“We still need to eat too, you know.” The stranger said upon seeing Malcolm’s puzzled face. “It doesn’t have to be vegetables, of course. We’re happy to eat anything that’s died, but since the fields were already there, we decided to continue maintaining them the way they’ve always been.”
“So you just harvest the crops and let them rot?”
The stranger nodded.
“Your species thrives on death.” Malcolm said, shaking his head. Truthfully, he didn’t feel much disgust, but he did need a reason to feel morally superior to the clones.
“My species thrives on organisms that have already died. Yours is the species that actively kills in order to live.”
“Not always. Vegetarians don’t.”
“And are you a vegetarian?”
“…Not exactly.”
“It doesn’t matter. Vegetarians still kill just as much as any other human, but they reserve their murder for plants. When all’s said and done, all animal life requires the sacrifice of other lifeforms in order to survive.”
“Yet you fully admit that you’re still harvesting fields to do the same.”
Clyde-clone gave another passive shrug. “We’re not human, but for the time being, some of us are still maintaining human patterns. Eventually that’ll change. Things are already beginning to change.”
And as the clone spoke, Malcolm saw a field filled with glistening white pearls bunched together on waist-high spires of shimmering red meat.
“Teeth.” Clyde said, sensing the confusion. “It’s more efficient for us to grow them together than harvest them from mouths. They’re a very rich source of calcium.”
Malcolm shuddered.
The conversation fell once more.
The grizzled man stared out the window at a world that was once familiar to him. Houses dotted the landscape, but many of them were covered in thick red vines. Large holes pockmarked the landscape, and out of these grew thick brambles of multi-story mushrooms. Bundles of redweed had been piled in odd mounds in some fields; half cocooning cows and pigs that had once been free to roam.
In the distance, just beyond his sight, Malcolm could’ve sworn he saw mobile creatures the size of mountains lumbering across the land, slowly casting the faintest shadow across the sky’s horizon…But no, such horrors weren’t possible.
He stared ahead, trying his best to shake his mounting trepidation. He’d always felt more powerful than the Mycelloids, likely because the clones were so friendly and helpful, but being so deep in their world he suddenly realized that, at any moment, the new owners of Earth could attack him and kill him, and there’d be very little he could do.
The new owners of Earth…They didn’t take over with guns and swords, but had instead offered the previous owners everything they’d ever wanted. Peace? Comfort? Convenience?
Anything. Everything.
He’d wanted a ride into town and was being given one.
“I can sense your fear.” Clyde said. “But you don’t need to worry. Even if some of us have changed shape, we’re just as peaceful as we’ve always been.”
A loud screeching noise, oddly similar to a whale’s call, rang across the land. The grizzled man’s senses heightened as his heart began to beat.
“I’m not afraid.”
It was obvious the Mycelloid didn’t believe him. “It’s been a long time since you’ve seen the rest of the world, and I understand things are a bit different.”
“Are they? I hadn’t noticed.”
The Mycelloid laughed. Was it because he was mimicking what a human would do, or had the creature experienced real mirth?
“I will give you a bit of warning,” Clone-Clyde started. “Some of the people in town might look a little different than you’re used to seeing, but remember that they’re just as peaceful as they’ve always been.”
Malcolm didn’t respond.
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