Chapter 60

You know I keep calling myself dumb or a moron and I know my therapist said I should stop calling myself names but … sometimes the truth is really hard to deny. I am irrefutably an idiot.

That fungus on the tree?

Yeah its not just a fungus. That thing has a mutualistic relationship with a fucking photosynthetic organism, an algae.

Otherwise known as fucking lichen.

Why am I pissed at myself?

That little mutualistic relationship they have going on could practically solve all if not most of my problems right now. The one thing I really need right now is nutrients so I can help stop this fire, and this lichen? Just might be the solution I needed all along.

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And thats why I’m mad at myself. The solution to my problem was there all along, I was just too blind to see it.

I am actually quite literally blind but thats not the … whatever.

See the fungus provides this algae a place to call home and the algae provides the fungus with nutrients it gets from the sun. All I would have to do is integrate myself into their relationship to benefit from it. If this thing was intelligent I would offer it a treaty or contract for its help but from what I can see its just a mindless lifeform. I don’t want to just rip its nutrients out from it without somehow helping them grow though…

Could I provide it water like I have been doing with the hub?

I try to direct some into the tendril I have growing on the tree and something spooky happens. Typically when I send water into the hub it feels like I’m the one who gives it and nothing else happens, but here… just before I introduce the water to the fungus’ I feel it greedily take it.

Which scared the hell out of me.

Even when I was directing nutrients to the foreign mushroom to check for intelligence I never felt something like this. I still don’t think its intelligent but whatever that was… ill be keeping an eye on it from now on.

Maybe I’m not so alone after all?