Chapter 11

I’d done it.

I made contact with the mycorrhizal root network.

Was it what I had expected? In a word? No.

The plants were exchanging nutrients all right, but they weren’t really communicating like humans did.

Not to detract from what I’m saying but I think Im growing increasingly comfortable referring to my previous species like they’re some sort of experiment I was carefully observing. Its freaking me out!

There was no intelligent language I could perceive. Just basic exchange of nutrients. This tree had a surplus of water so it released its excess into the root network. This other tree needed some basic sugars so it grabbed some excess that was going around the root system. No real direction, no real communication.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

It was more like a hub of merchants who were all pooling their resources into a bin and each taking what they needed from it. I mean yay for working together thats great but honestly I was looking forward to talk to someone. I mean not that I wished for another sentient creature to get reborn into this world as a plant or something, but I mean is finding a sentient tree species too much to ask for?

Not that I could tell the sentience of a plant offhand I mean I was just tapped into the mycorrhizal part of the system what if I tapped into the tree itself? Would something change? Would it attack me?

Lets find out. I dedicated some of my resources towards that end, speaking of my log is getting kind of low on the nutrient department…

hmmmm listen I don’t condone stealing but these mycorrhizal bastards aren’t sentient could I steal a bit of carbon from them? I mean they couldn’t be using all of it could they?

Would they retaliate in some way? I don’t see how they could. But would the plants around me object?

Eh lets find out.

While project first contact was a somewhat successful, my project bde was running into a bit of a snag. I ran into something that keeps destroying my mycelium. And I think its a river.

Could I maybe carry a bit of the water into the mycorrhizal network? I don’t want to be stealing. It would ease my conscious a bit.

Also spreading my mycelium into one long dedicated branch was kind of a nutrient sink. The ends were not justifying the means. I was doing all this for a laugh not for anything that really merited all the nutrients I was putting into it.

It would be funny though.