Chapter 37

I was expecting pain.

And pain I most certainly received. But surprisingly not from the fire. From the fire all I felt was my mycelium crumbling to pieces… which made sense.

I’ve read somewhere that mushrooms like plants have the complete absence of a nervous system. Thus no pain from the fire. Which really should have clicked for me after the number of predators who have eaten my mushrooms.

But no the pain I was feeling was coming from the bit of foreign mushroom mycelium I was integrated with.

This was entirely weird. Why was this mushroom having such a tough time with the fire, when I’m not? And how the fuck is it feeling pain?

… Wait does this mushroom have a nervous system?

But that’s fucking insane.

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Pain is what I’m feeling from the foreign bit, though. Holy shit the whole mushroom must be going through pure agony. Thank fuck I didn’t assimilate the whole thing into myself. Not that I could have in the first place.

But this fucking confirms I’m definitely not on earth. We sure as hell don’t have mushrooms with nervous systems. At least none that I’ve heard of and like I said I loved eating mushrooms I would have heard if some of the little fuckers I was eating felt pain.

Most likely because vegans would have thrown a hissy fit over it.

This… I don’t know how to feel about this.

I’m in another world.

I mean I’m a fucking mushroom, finding out I’m not in the same universe, or at the very least on a different planet, shouldn’t really phase me, but it really fucking does.

I have to put the existential crises aside for a second since you know I had a very real actual crises going on. Though the incessant pain I was feeling was really helping me bring me back to the moment, so I guess pain really does have its uses.

Speaking of how valuable pain is, I think integrating much more fully with this specific type of mushroom might be the move. I mean yeah obviously integrating with it right now would SO not be the move, but in the future maybe binding with it more completely might bring some as of yet unknown benefits. Something to keep in mind.

But the fire.

For the fire I think maybe growing some mycelium out on the surface and along the pathway to detect how far the fire is would be a smart thing to do so I did so. Spacing them apart would save on the nutrient expense as well.

I would grow a wind detecting mushroom as that would get a better reading of where the fire is more likely to go than the one I have near my main area, but the mushroom would just get burned to a crisp. I’d be basically throwing those nutrients into the garbage.

The mycelium I’d use to detect the fires approach would too be burned but at least I wouldn’t lose as many nutrients.

I settled into wait again, desperately focusing on my tasks instead of on the fact I wasn’t on earth anymore.