The grizzled man remembered the nearby city being one of close-knit town buildings. An old courthouse, a few cafes and stores, several banks, a smattering of churches, and suburban houses filling in the rest… Most of them had been built of old brick, with small streets crisscrossing them this way and that.
“Stop here.” The grizzled man said to the driver.
“Here? This far out of town?”
Despite having poor vision, the aging man could see the town’s center in the distance.
“Yes.”
The clone slowed the truck.
The grizzled man looked toward a nearby building. At one time it had possibly been a mansion, but had since been reduced to a mangled, knotty mess of redweed. He took a few steps toward the building, then stopped.
He turned around and saw the Clyde-clone watching him.
“You can leave.” The grizzled man hissed.
“You sure?” Clone-Clyde asked. “How’re you gonna get back home?”
“I’ll salvage a vehicle or something.”
“Fair enough.” The clone said. He reached across the seat, closed the door, and slowly drove down the road.
The grizzled man was left alone…Alone in an alien world. The surreal landscape left him on edge, yet he knew the Mycelloids were no threat. He would need to rely on his wits to recover enough food, and he’d need the full range of his physical prowess to get back home, but otherwise the trek would be a safe one.
Regardless, he didn’t want to interact with Earth’s new masters. Taking care to avoid being sensed by any of the strange fungal beasts, he hobbled closer to the structure. He found a small corner that, at one time, had been the vertex between the fireplace and an exterior wall.
He placed his back to it, scanning his surroundings for movement.
“There’s food in there.” He promised himself in a grunting voice. He removed his pack and withdrew a long knife. “They wouldn’t have eaten the food. They’d have no need for it. It’s still in there.”
He closed his pack, shouldered it, and crept toward the backyard.
There were old bushes growing wild along the house’s exterior. He hid behind one.
He poked his head over the foliage and studied the building.
The whole thing looked like a glistening ball of red knotted twine. It was so covered with the strange growths that the original structure’s features had been nearly completely obscured…
The grizzled man studied the structure for some time. There were places, here and there, where the redweed grew in a slightly concave shape relative to the rest of the wall.
“Windows.” He said to himself.
He crept up to one and began hacking away at one such indention. Thankfully, the vines were easily sliced. In less than a minute he’d cut away enough of the spongey substance that he could tell that the spot had indeed been a window. A dark void appeared beyond, and a strong damp odor wafted out into the daylight.
He thought he heard a small voice. His blood ran cold.
He stopped cutting.
“Hello?” He asked in a tone barely above a whisper.
“I said, would you like me to bring the food to you?” The voice asked. It was a young child’s voice.
The grizzled man peered inside the small opening, but light only permeated a few feet inside. Beyond that, everything was awash in a dark, dark red… Dark red, and glistening. He thought he saw something moving inside, a shadow amongst shadows, but it was difficult to tell.
He pulled back as a shiver ran up his spine.
“Who are you?” He asked. His instincts screamed at him to flee, but he knew that the Mycelloids were friendly… Right?
“I’m a little girl.” The voice answered.
“Do you have parents?” The question was asked before he had time to think on it.
“No. I was born in the tunnels.”
“So you’re a clone?”
“I’m not human yet. My flesh hasn’t grown in.”
A dark feeling overtook the man. Suddenly he didn’t care how friendly the Mycelloids were…The situation felt too uncanny…Too surreal.
He took a step away from the opening.
“I can bring you food.” She said in a cheery voice.
But the voice no longer sounded hospitable. It sounded threatening, as if it were attempting to lure the man into the darkness.
“That’s okay!” He called back, hobbling away. “I’m…I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? I’m friendly!”
But the man was no longer willing to listen. Horrific images of fleshless children floated in his mind’s eye. He imagined them drawing him closer and closer to the tunnels… Down into the Earth’s bowels. The colony would swallow him, dissolve his body, mind, and soul, and spit out some horrible facsimile of what he’d once been.
He stumbled across the lawn, running toward the road. The red weeds were everywhere… Strangling the world… Strangling him! He was trapped! The fungus! Everywhere! He felt them pulling at him… Sucking him down, down, down…
“You alright?”
The grizzled man blinked. In his panicked desperation he’d fallen to the ground and was gripping the crimson vines with white-knuckled fists. They weren’t gripping at him, nor were they pulling him downward. He’d imagined the whole thing.
“Malcolm? You alright?”
The grizzled man turned and saw Clyde standing beside his truck, staring down at him.
“Here, lemme help you up!”
The fungal clone extended a hand, and momentarily forgetting himself, the grizzled man accepted. He felt himself being lifted with an inhuman strength before settling back onto his feet.
“I figured I’d better keep an eye on you.” Clyde explained.
“There’s a kid…I think a kid-”
“We’ve learned that growing people on the surface allows them to develop stronger flesh. The Sun’s rays and drier air help make it a bit more hardy, y’see. Of course when they’re still developing they need some shielding, and the old houses you lot left behind make perfect cocoons.”
Malcolm tried parsing what he’d been told, but the horrors flashing through his imagination still crowded his mind.
A cold wind blew across the lands. A strong smell of moist rot entered his nostrils. He felt the redweed squishing beneath his feet. Dark ruby stains coated his clothes.
Nothing felt right. The planet that had given birth to him had become alien.
“Here, let me help you.”
Before he regained his cognitive faculties, the grizzled man found himself being ushered into the passenger seat of the man’s truck.
Trucks were comfortable. They were familiar. Old worn fabric beneath his butt. The smell of a UV-decayed plastic dashboard. The faint scent of oil and smoke mixing with the air.
Even Clyde-the-Clone felt familiar.
Familiar form.
Familiar face.
Flesh.
Maybe not human, but human enough.
“I figured it might get a little too weird for you out there.” He said, starting the engine. “I wasn’t sure how you’d handle it.”
The grizzled man said nothing. He reached out a hand and touched the dashboard.
Cold. Hard. Synthetic.
Clyde the Clone smiled. “You know as weird as it is out there for you, that’s how the first Mycelloids felt when they breeched the surface and started integrating into your world. They didn’t show it, but stress hormones were over eight times higher back then. Even this truck-” He lovingly patted the steering wheel “-well, let’s just say it took me a while to get used to it.”
“That kid…She said she had no flesh.” The grizzled man said, ignoring what his host had said.
“Sounds a bit like a horror movie, huh?” Clyde asked with a coy smile.
Malcolm nodded.
Clyde laughed. “And yet despite everything, you’re safer now than you’ve ever been in your entire life. There aren’t any humans around to randomly attack you, nor are there any dangerous animals that haven’t already been absorbed into the tunnels.”
“Doesn’t mean I won’t have a heart attack first.”
Clyde laughed once more. “Even if you had a heart attack, the mycelium network weaving through the soil would know about it instantly and there’d be someone to help you in seconds. We’d be able to flush out your veins and cure you in the time it would have taken an ambulance to reach you in your old world.”
The grizzled man couldn’t help but notice they were driving further away from the forest…His forest…The forest he felt safest.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Heart of the city. Things might be a little more familiar for you there.”
Malcolm severely doubted this claim. With every passing mile the landscape only grew more bizarre. The tangled mounds of redweed had been replaced with towering spires of white, tumor-like bulbs. A purple crust coated most surfaces. Pale orange jelly filled most shady alcoves, and it throbbed as if it were a beating heart.
Here and there remnants of the old world peppered the land: A rusted vehicle, a twisted road sign, a mangled shopping cart…But these were the exception. This was no longer his world. This was now a world of fungus.
“All of us wanted an easier life, and we never knew what it would cost.” Malcolm said to himself.
“If it makes you feel better, all of this was inevitable.” Clyde said. “Did we use convenience as a way of getting our foot in the door? Yes. But if that hadn’t worked, we might’ve used our life-saving fungal chambers to entice humanity with medical marvels, or our versatility to help you get to space. Eventually we would have offered something too good to pass up, and we would have won. It wasn’t your greed that lost you your world, but rather it was our patience. We only ever needed to find one way to infiltrate your society.” He considered his words. “But then again, saying we won implies humanity lost, and can it be said that humanity lost if most people have been given everything they’ve ever wanted?”
The grizzled man said nothing. By this point the oddities they passed began thinning out. Buildings reappeared with well-tended lawns, and most driveways contained at least one vehicle. The fields of odd growths were replaced with newly painted fences, and normal-looking people moved slowly down well-kept sidewalks. If Malcolm didn’t know any better, he would have thought he was back amongst humanity.
He pressed his fingers delicately against the window. His eyes watered.
“They’re Mycelloids, you know.” Clyde reminded him.
“I know.” Malcolm sighed. “But I can pretend. I-I’ve missed them so much-”
“-And you feel a bit homesick.” Clyde nodded. “You know there’s nothing stopping you from living here with us. You and your family could have a normal life. You could get a desk job like people had in the past, and your wife could go grocery shopping, and your girl can go to school. And you know, she’d be the only human in class, so the teacher would curve the lesson plan to match her learning speed. Every one of you would live objectively better lives than you do now.”
And seeing the pseudo-people walk along the sidewalks, Malcolm actually felt tempted.
He closed his eyes and thought about the fungal tunnels…
“You only needed one way to infiltrate us.” Malcolm repeated back to the driver. He pointed to a nearby parking lot beside a church. “There. Park up there.”
Clyde-the-clone obeyed, pulling into a spot beside the towering steeple.
Malcolm opened the door and hobbled out.
“Shall I wait here?”
Malcolm grumbled before closing the door.
“Right! I’ll wait here!” Clyde shouted through the cab.
Malcolm wasn’t listening.
He approached the church. He looked up at the steeple as its shade fell over his face. A cross adorned the top.
He frowned. At one point in history that cross had represented so much…So much spiritual hope, so much philosophy, so much worry, so many tears and so much joy. How many saints had died defending that cross? How many had killed for it? Western civilization itself had been built upon that symbol…
…And now it meant nothing.
He’d never felt particularly religious, but knowing the symbol had lost all its old relevance gave him a stabbing sadness in the pit of his stomach.
He approached the door and pushed it open, and was surprised to find it unlocked.
“Of course it’s unlocked… What would be the point in locking it?” Malcolm grumbled. He felt irrationally annoyed at the low crime society…How was it fake-humans were better at being human than the originals?
“Welcome, my child.” A voice exclaimed. “Welcome.”
It took Malcolm a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darker interior… Dim lights hung from the ceiling and a priest approached him from the front of the long room.
“Welcome, welcome! I am Father Castro. Come in, come in! Please, have a seat.”
“No thank you.” Malcolm answered. The politeness in his response was automatic; a relic from a more social past.
“What brings you to the Lord’s House on this blessed day?”
Lord. Blessed.
“You’re not really religious, are you?” Malcolm asked, though it sounded far more like an accusation than a question.
“Of course I am.” The priest boomed. “Why shouldn’t I be?”
“Yeah, but you don’t really worship Jesus and God and stuff, do you? If anything, you probably worship some sort of giant mushroom, right?”
The priest laughed. “Come now, you know that we mimic the people we’ve replaced. My original, God rest him, was in failing health, and so he passed the torch on to me. He wanted me to carry the Word for all my days, so I now oversee his flock and help guide them to the Light.”
“But you don’t really feel any sort of spiritual drive.” The grizzled man insisted.
The priest considered this. “That’s not true. Religious convictions can be heightened or lowered through chemical interventions, so in my case, an excess of spiritual hormones have been programmed to flood my body.”
“But you’re just mimicking the guy you took over for!”
“And he was mimicking the priests and bishops who showed him God’s Word, and the professors who taught him the depths of a Biblical lifestyle.”
“But you’re not even human!”
The priest shrugged. “Why should I be? Is God’s Message not intended for all His creation? In Mark, Jesus tells us to go whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.” He nodded. “God’s Word, and His promise of eternal life, is for everyone.”
Malcolm sighed. “I thought you were some sort of weird collectivist organism…That Mycelloids were a kind of hivemind.”
“And one day that mind will die. It may take centuries, millennia, or perhaps a million years or more, but eventually all will perish. When that happens, I hope that we are favorably judged by God.”
Malcolm glanced toward the front of the church. An effigy of Jesus hung in painful sorrow on a cross…
…Perhaps the cross still had some meaning in this post-human world. It made the grizzled man feel odd… Like meeting the family who’d moved into his old childhood home.
“Look, I’m not here to debate theology with a fungus.” He said. “I thought this place would have been abandoned and-”
“-and you hoped to find some left over food? Yes, yes! Please! Follow me!” Father Castro said, beckoning him deeper into the church.
“No, that’s okay.” Malcolm called after him.
“Please my child, this food is collected for the needy. You’re needy, yes?”
“I’ll be fine.”
But the priest wasn’t listening.
With a sigh, Malcolm followed. He gave a brief nod to the figure of Christ, then walked deeper into the building.
“How will this suit you?” The priest asked.
Malcolm’s mouth fell open. Cans were piled high on a table; so much so that he was surprised its legs weren’t buckling from the bounty it held.
“Easily enough to get you and yours through the harsh months ahead.” The priest smiled warmly.
Malcolm reached for the cans, but stopped himself.
“N-no…” He stammered. “Sorry.”
Convenience had led to humanity’s downfall…He needed to remember that.
The priest seemed to know what he was thinking. He sighed. “My child, this food was collected to help the needy. You are needy. If you don’t take it, it’ll sit here and go to waste. Think about it, no one else is here to eat it.”
“I…can’t…”
“You refuse to accept help from Mycelloids, but won’t you at least accept help from God?”
“God didn’t bring these cans here.”
“But the same spiritual chemicals that compelled mankind to act charitable are alive in us and allow us to do the same.” The priest explained. “We may be different in many ways, but both groups share a reverence for life. Please, my child…Please.” His words were nearly a whisper.
An internal battle raged inside the grizzled man.
Why fight it? Why not give in? He could have an easy life if he just accepted the offer…
…But he could also have an easy life surrendering his autonomy by going into the fungal tunnels and merging with the walls.
“No…I need to earn it.” Malcolm said. He took a step back, then turned and began hobbling out of the church.
“But our charity-”
“-No charity!” Malcolm called back. “Sorry!”
He rushed out of the church, doing his best to try and forget the pile of food he was leaving behind.
He rushed out the front doors.
Across the parking lot.
To a small brick house on the other side of the street.
It stood beside an endless field of neck-high grass. The warm Sun made the orange stalks glow just a bit brighter than normal, and the chilly northern breezes made waves dance across the field.
The grizzled man panted. For just a moment he felt as if the world were silent, and at peace.
Then he turned and saw the priestly Mycelloid standing in the door of the church.
Watching him.
Smiling.
The priest waved.
Malcolm turned and headed toward the house.
It was clearly an older house, with weathered sides and chipped paint peeling from the front porch, but it didn’t look decrepit. Someone had been tending the front garden, and all the windows were still intact, and the roof seemed as if it had been freshly shingled, and there wasn’t an ounce of algae on any of the shutters.
He tried the doorknob, but found it locked.
He looked in the front window, but it was too dark to see.
Feeling as if the home might’ve been abandoned after all, he grabbed a stone from one of the flower beds. He felt its weight and hefted it a few times.
The door suddenly opened.
“You weren’t about to smash my window, were you young man?”
He turned to find a little old lady smiling up at him from the doorway. She looked sweet…Too sweet.
Perfectly sweet. As if she’d been crafted to look as harmless and adorable as possible.
“I, uhhh…”
“You were gonna come search my house for food, weren’t you?” She moved to the side and beckoned him to enter. “Well come on in.”
Malcolm frowned. “I thought this house was empty.”
“Oh no, just me by my lonesome.”
Not knowing what to do, he dropped the stone and walked past the aged woman into her house. As he passed, he saw the fine details of her face.
Wrinkles.
Liverspots.
Thinning hair.
But he knew it was all an illusion. The woman wasn’t old because she wasn’t an actual woman. She…-It-…Chose to be human, just like it chose to appear geriatric. Like the priest’s faith, like the squabbling partisans on the radio, like the animals in the forest…All of it was simply an illusion.
An illusion for his sake, and for the sake of the remaining human. Humanity, to the Mycelloids, seemed to be nothing more than a habit.
“Kitchen’s on the right.” The woman said.
As he walked down a dark hallway he noticed old family photos hanging from the walls. It was clear that many of them were quite old…But how old? Were they photos of actual humans, or photos of fungal clones? Why would a clone hang photos?
…Because that’s what a human would do.
The thought bubbled up in his mind before he was conscious of it.
Everything the clones did was simply a mimicry of the life that had been there before. Humanity had pressed itself into clay and a mold had formed, and the fungus moved in to fill that mold.
A smell entered Malcolm’s nose, and when he got to the kitchen he saw a full feast laid out on the table.
“I don’t suppose you’ll join me, will you young man?”
Fried chicken.
Mashed potatoes.
A steaming pie.
A cold jug of milk.
Luxuries he hadn’t seen in years.
There were even two plates resting on either side of the table.
“I think you already know the answer.” Malcolm answered, because he didn’t think he had the resolution to say ‘no’.
“But you’re surely growing hungry and will need to eat sooner or later.” She pulled out a chair and sat down. “Besides, you’re not eating for free. You’re keeping me company.”
“As if being in your presence is that much of an obligation.”
“For us old folk, it must be. Very few come to visit us.”
Malcolm’s frown was nearly as pronounced as his host’s.
“But you’re not old, are you? I mean Mycelloids have only been around for a couple decades or so, right?”
She sighed. “And yet even we get lonely.”
Malcolm was about to join the woman…The clone…He pulled back the chair and stopped, then pushed it back in.
“No…No you’re not lonely. You’re connected to the mycelium network, which makes you connected to all other fungal lifeforms. You’re not alone!”
The woman shrugged. “From your point of view it’s the same, isn’t it? You simply see a little old lady in a little old house, happy to feed you and hoping you’ll keep her company. Is there any harm in giving sympathy to someone who doesn’t entirely need it?”
“All of you are the same. You’re like those lure-fish. You know that? You say and do what you need to tempt people, then when they accept the bait you chomp down on them and never let go.”
“We don’t eat people.” The old woman stated.
“Your tunnels do!”
The woman’s frown grew more pronounced. “Within the colony we ensure you’re very much alive, kept happy, and given the healthiest concoction of nutrients available…You know there are some within our walls over 120 years old? You want a long, healthy, happy life too, right?”
“Not if it costs me my freedom.”
“You’d be free to leave at any time.”
“Yeah yeah yeah, I’ve heard that one before.” Malcolm growled. “Free to leave, assuming I can resist you. Free to leave, assuming I have any willpower left.”
“You doubt yourself that much?” The old woman cracked a small grin. “Don’t you think you’d be strong enough to escape if you truly wanted it?”
Malcolm stared down at the table ladened with steaming, delicious food.
“No.” He stated flatly before hobbling out the front door.
The cold winds whipped at his ragged clothes as he stumbled off the front porch and back into the church’s parking lot.
“My child, it’s getting dark. Surely you’d like a place to stay for the night.”
“I’m fine!” Malcolm called.
“You’d rather stay in an abandoned building, I expect.” The priest said. “But what difference does the building you sleep in make? If you want, I can turn down the heat and remove your mattress so you’re just as uncomfortable here as you’d be elsewhere. Would you prefer that?”
Malcolm frowned.
“I…” But the pain throbbing up from his pained leg answered for him. “Yes, sure, fine.” He answered quickly.
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