Chapter 21

Its a sunk cost going forward.

My main purpose in growing the things though is so I can repel predators. So eventually flying predators won’t be a problem. It’ll just be an annoying process getting there.

Seeing as my spore mushroom idea worked, one day ill just release the compounds into the air and have them repel both the flying predators and the walking ones.

Though am I being dumb about this?

I could vastly speed up phase 1 by growing spore mushrooms instead of my chem mushrooms. That way I can get more willing ‘participants’ to test the compounds, thus saving me from the eternal slog of waiting for a predator to stroll by, find my mushroom and eat it.

But that would be dumb too because I wouldn’t know how much a dose the subject breathed in. A compound could be absolutely fine at a small doses, even damn right beneficial, but be completely poisonous at a higher one. Which means sticking to the chem mushrooms and sticking to a long, long wait.

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Ugh.

Stupid moral values.

But I mean technically it IS self defense, right?

Yeah my original purpose was to just have a laugh and grow a huge ass mushroom but truthfully? I’m also fighting to survive here. What if I genuinely come into contact with a dedicated asshole who specifically targets my species and more specifically me?

As a human when someone comes at you, don’t you have every right to come at them? Why would that be different as a mushroom?

Thats the thing though I wouldn’t be coming at some predator who intends me violence, in this instance. Using the spores during phase 1 would be grossly immoral because I wouldn’t be causing harm to one who intends me harm. I could be causing harm to some defenseless animal casually walking by in the vicinity of my sites never having the slightest intention of consuming me.

No.

I won’t grow the spore mushrooms. At least not right now.

But what I will do is up the dose on all of the compounds to an absurd degree within the chem mushrooms.

I was going to slowly increase the dose on my mushrooms but I was looking at this like this was an experiment and I was a human. And it really isn’t. And I’m really not human, not anymore.

I'm not somewhere at the top of the food chain comfortably looking down at a lab rat. I’m somewhere at the bottom looking up, waiting for some asshole to come by and experiment with their taste buds and consume a part of me.

This really is self defense. Even if its a little premeditated.

I'm just looking to survive.