CHAP 1: Discovery

I was startled, suddenly feeling the cold. I tried getting up but hit my forehead on something. I passed my hands in front of me, finding nothing but air, so I put my hand on what I had hit, realizing it was a branch, which I found was attached to a fallen tree. I broke off the stick, got up, and sat down, taking in the sound of the breeze hitting leaves, and the cold. This time, I was clothed. I put my hand in my shirt pocket, taking out a pack of cigarettes and my lighter, I took out one with my mouth, sucked in the air, and lit it. Let the smoke enter your lungs slowly, inhale, exhale, and ash the cigarette when necessary. The ritual of a man at peace.

After my fourth cig, I was finally satisfied. So I got up, took the branch I had broken before, put it between my arm and body, pulled out my folding hunting knife with my other hand, and started cutting out thin pieces of wood. Feeling around for other branches and breaking them off, then holding them together with the first one, I started clearing the snow and setting up a campfire. I pulled out my lighter and lit up the tinder, generating a fire. I sat down, listening to the crackling, diminishing the cold that had been eating away at me.

I tried falling asleep, but I couldn't, so I settled for relaxing and clearing my brain, something I had picked up while in hell.

I stopped dozing off, seeing the crackling was no more, and the cold was back. The fire had died, and I decided that I should start moving. I had kept the longest branch I found, and while tapping the ground with it, I started walking in a general direction, hitting trees, and branches or stumbling on rocks. I fell over more times than I can count but continued. Hearing the howl of wolves, I started walking slower and closer to the ground, still trying to find a cave or some kind of civilization.

I'll be honest here, I have no idea how to survive this situation. I noticed that my body doesn't seem to be freezing, which is good news. As I walked, I hit my stick on something, which after some more hitting, I determined to be a wall, or the side of a mountain, so I started walking alongside it, trying to find a cave. I did find one, confirmed after I hit the roof of the said cave, so I continued walking alongside the wall, entering it.

I walked a hundred steps into the cave and then leaned onto the wall. I'm not sure what actions I should take now. I could try hunting, but my condition makes doing that hard. I'm not sure if I can starve or die of dehydration, but I prefer to be safe than sorry. I started going deeper into the cave, realizing this place was pretty deep until I felt that the walls were starting to become more and more humid.

I hit my shoulder on the other wall, so I started turning sideways, passing through the gap, the cave getting more and more humid. I heard a sound that reminded me of a beating heart, which made me hesitate, after some pondering, my curiosity got the better of me, so I continued. As the heartbeat got closer, the humidity increased, and the walls started feeling slimy. I'm entering an alien nest, aren't I?

I finally got out of the gap and started walking in the direction of the sound, until I hit my head on something slimy, which sent a shock through me. I put my hand onto it, feeling a stronger shock this time, which made me back up. I tapped whatever this thing is with my stick, and as I felt the stick gets stuck onto it, I tried pulling it, finding too much resistance, I let it go. The heartbeat got faster, and I heard what sounded like a bunch of sticks falling to the ground. I touched one of them.

It multiplied the stick. Why? How?

I put my left hand onto the thing, hoping to understand it. I once again felt a shock, but this time I didn't back up. This thing, whatever it is, started connecting with me. How did I know? Well, I just did, in the same way, I now knew exactly the geography of the area around me and a very accurate idea of the biology of a bunch of animals. So I stayed there, my hand on it, as it started crawling into my hand, enveloping part of my body, entering my heart. And then it receded, it became a part of me, and I became a part of it.

From what I understand, this thing must be some kind of fungus, and I just became connected to some kind of very complex mycelium system. This thing in front of me is the servers of nature's internet, and I just became part of those servers, an admin of sorts. The thing is, this internet is limited to the area that the mycelium spans, but I can feel every kind of vibration that happens in that area.

I took one of the sticks, which I understand is a recreation of the matter the fungus consumed made from its biomass, which is the same as saying that this is magic. Of course, it used energy to make such a recreation, but the nutrients it is constantly getting from being part of the recycling process of the dead matter is no joke. The implications of this organism being able to do this means that I now have a fully organic 3D printer, capable of creating complex systems, which is already a groundbreaking discovery. I asked for a recurve bow, the one I had used when training archery, heard the mass moving, then something slimy touched my left hand and the bow was delivered to me. Handy. I asked for arrows and a quiver, then the same process happened.

Putting the quiver on my back and strapping it, I started walking out of the cave, this time more aware of my surroundings. I can basically "hear" anything that isn't flying in a pretty big radius, which means that hunting isn't impossible now. And in fact, I'm very prone to go hunting right now, probably because the fungus has been uploading a bunch of animals into its database.

I felt the pressure of something quite heavy, then started heading in the direction of said pressure. The mycelium spanned through the snow, allowing me to traverse without using the stick to see what was in front of me, but I continued doing it just to accustom myself since I wouldn't always have the mycelium to guide me. Thankfully the quiver I had asked for could carry my bow as well. As I moved closer to the pressure, I pulled out my bow and got an arrow nocked. Whatever animal it was, probably a moose or a reindeer, it seemed to be sleeping.

I pulled the string back and fired. I hit my mark, but the animal woke up and started running, thankfully not in my direction. I could feel its footsteps, so I put my bow on my back and started slowly walking after him. I didn't have to worry about losing his track. Some minutes passed, and the animal, that I had discovered was a moose because of the mycelium recognizing the blood (the fact it can do that is quite interesting), finally started slowing down. And I started to get closer and closer until it finally stopped moving. As I approached, I heard its breathing, slowly diminishing, so I pulled out one of my arrows, felt around for its horns, found its head, then put it out of its misery.

I asked for a knife, then felt the hyphae move beneath me, the slimy "hand" delivering me the knife. So I can receive things even when not face to face with the heart, very useful. I asked for a rope, hung up the game, then started skinning the moose, it was very strange because I could feel the mycelium relish on the blood as if it was satisfied with the taste. With the hide out of the way, I started cutting into the meat. I'm not a butcher nor an experienced hunter, but I managed to at least get some good chunks of meat. I wrapped the meat with the hide, tying it up with the rope, then started going back to the cave.

When I got there, I unwrapped the meat, asked for some sticks, then made a campfire. I cut the meat into smaller pieces, then stabbed one of my arrows through it, putting it into the support. While I waited for the meat to cook, I felt pressure approaching the cave, it was not something heavy, but even then I pulled out my bow, waiting for it. As it entered the cave, I shot, missing it entirely, which means it is much smaller than I thought. It didn't even flinch or run away, strangely. It started walking in my direction, but then it stopped and hid. I took one of the little pieces of meat I had and threw it at the animal, hoping it would eat it and go away.

It did eat the meat, but go away it did not. It started approaching me. Does it want more? I threw another one, and once again it ate it. And continued approaching me. Then, I noticed that I could some hyphae on its leg, and faintly throughout its body, did it get infected by the mycelium? Interesting. That would explain why it is coming to me. I let it approach me, then patted it with my left hand, which made the mycelium inside light up slightly, the same happening with the mycelium in my arm. I felt a slight shock, and the mycelium inside the little animal expanded, forming a core, similar to the one I had.

And then her memories entered my mind. She is a deaf arctic fox that luckily managed to escape from a wolf, losing her leg, then she limped her way into this cave, finding the heart, she bit into it, and then her leg was reformed from the fungus.

Another thing to add to the list of things this fungus can do, reforming limbs, and possibly organs as well. I continued patting her, then gave her another piece of meat. She's living proof that most probably most conscious beings can connect with the fungus, which can prove to be interesting, however, it could be a problem as well, I'm not exactly fond of having other humans connect to it. Maybe I have some control over when connections are formed? I was responsible for fully connecting the little fox to the fungus, I think.

I should test this theory with other animals. But for now, I'm going to eat, then relax. I could smell that the meat was cooked, so I picked one out, and bit into it, it tasted gamey but nice. I ate 3 pieces, then laid on the ground, the little fox on my chest. Not exactly the most comfortable sleeping place I've ever had, but at least Arctic foxes are fluffy. I entered a state of absent-mindedness thinking about what I should do with the fungus.

I was thrown out of my thoughts when something slimy passed through my face, which I recognized as the licking of the little arctic fox. I got my bearings, then thought about what I should do. I definitely should name my companion, and I should test around with what the fungus can do. I started going inside the cave, wanting to be face-to-face with the heart once again. I passed through the gap, the little fox following behind me. I call her little because she seems to be 2 weeks young, and small. I arrived in front of the heart and touched it with my left hand. I felt a shock come through me, and now I could sense the mycelium much more accurately.

I tried moving mycelium to form spikes in random places, and it worked. I could feel my arm as if it was traversing through the earth, taking form as slimy "hands" that turned into spikes, as I had thought. This could prove to be very useful, and I felt that the knowledge of the shapes and the way they had been made had been stored in the heart, which proves that it can learn. What I find strange is that while it had consumed a bunch of predators, it had not tried hunting itself yet, maybe doing that goes against its nature as mostly a mixture of mycorrhiza and saprotrophs, or it is simply not old enough to "think" about such a concept.

I tried making traps, but the mycelium doesn't seem to be able to react to being stepped on, I hope I can change that. I made the heart take one of the sticks it had made before and started working on a mobile heart of sorts. After some failed attempts, I learned some limitations about the capabilities of creation from this fungus. First, since I'm working with only one material taking different forms, I'm bound by the properties of said material, which I have yet to test. Second, putting one of the cores inside something dead makes them need to be recharged, I circumvented this problem by making the whole thing a core, and as such it can get nutrients from anything it touches, if I will it so. Third, when running on low energy, the fungus enters a crystallized state, similar to a virus, and loses structural integrity. This state can be reversed if it enters into contact with enough energy.

I managed to make a functional prototype of a mobile heart, I will need more time to make something closer to what I want, but this will do. I camouflaged it as a cane, and just need to stab it into the ground to have a lesser effect of being connected to the heart directly since I can only control the fungus on a radius of 30 meters around me, and I have to keep my left hand on the cane at all times, as a secondary function, I had made an injector with some samples of the fungus. I disconnected from the heart, and headed out of the cave, this time, I used the cane to make the gap widen since the whole chamber was made of mycelium. I narrowed the gap, then started going in the direction of an animal, lighter than the moose. The little fox, which I had decided to name Bea, was on my shoulder, her tail wrapped around my neck like a scarf.

When I got close to the animal, I stabbed the cane into the ground and ensnared its legs. I approached while it tried to run, Bea hissing at the animal, then I put the tip of my cane on its body, infecting it with the fungus, then crouched, putting my left hand over the place I had infected. I felt a shock, this time controlling where the core would be, this time it replaced the whole spine, overriding the body of the animal, I tried controlling it, making the animal stand up stiffly, but that was the only thing I managed to do because I have no idea on how to control bodies other than those of a human.

I realized that the animal wasn't breathing and that I had to make it breathe manually. I pulled out my knife, then killed the animal. The corpse continued standing, completely still. In conclusion, this is completely unviable as a way of controlling living beings, at least for now. I stabbed the cane on the ground, making the corpse be pulled inside the earth, and started heading for another animal, the same weight as the moose.

I got close to the animal, and the same process happened, this time making the core replace the brain. The animal wasn't entirely still this time, and when I gave it directions to dig into the snow and dig into the snow it did, I then made it bite its leg, the lack of hesitation showed that the animal had fully lost its own will. This could be viable, but the lack of choice isn't really what I want, it lacks subtlety. Anyways, I made the wolf follow me and started going after another animal. When I found it, I snared it, infected it, then replaced the brain, making the deer follow as well, heading to the cave.

I arrived at the cave, widened the gap, then entered the chamber, animals in tow. I connected to the heart and started manipulating the mycelium inside the animals, replacing their organs one by one, seeing if there would be changes in their biological activities until I retracted the hyphae fully on one of them, and extended it to the limit on the other. The one who I had extended the mycelium on, became, like the heart, a fully white point on my senses, and the other one had ceased all signs of life, a fact I had to check by cutting it up.

I made the fungus consume both animals, then focused on Bea, expanding the mycelium through her body, hoping to assess her health and the cause of her deafness. She was healthy, but what I found strange was the lack of reason for her deafness, my knowledge about the anatomy of arctic foxes is lacking, but there doesn't seem to be any physical anomalies in her auditory system after comparing it with the understanding of the arctics foxes I gathered from the fungus, so I replaced it as a whole, considering it could be some kind of problem with her cells. I disconnected from the heart, crouched, and put my hand on her head, then snapped my fingers, to which I received no response. A mystery to be solved. Interesting.

I connected to the heart once again, then replaced my visual system. No change. The good news is that I did not feel a thing from the replacement, which could prove to be very useful. I had a temporary solution for both my and Bea's predicament, something I had realized when I replaced the organs from those animals is that I could hear what they heard, but could not hear with my ears. I tried changing my eyesight to Bea's, and could now see, even if it was dichromatic. Theory proven, I returned to my lack of vision, replacing and making some changes to a part of my auditory system, doing the same to Bea's visual system. Now she could hear like she was supposed to, through me, and I could see like I was supposed to, through her, both would suffer from incompleteness, sadly.

I changed my vision to one of her eyes and changed her hearing to one of my ears. I disconnected from the heart and looked down on Bea, which seemed strange from my point of view. I realized that I looked horrible, even more than before, if before I looked like a man in my 50s, now I was looking like someone in his 70s who had aged badly, even if it didn't feel like that. I put Bea on my shoulder, which made my viewpoint less strange. I and Bea would have to train our spacial perception because moving as two different beings with shared senses wouldn't be easy, even if it could prove to be beneficial in some cases, and a better option than having a complete lack of one sense. I widened the gap, then walked out of the chamber. I and Bea were going out hunting.

A month passed. During this time, I and Bea practiced having mixed senses while hunting. I wouldn't say I got the full hang of it, and if Bea was doing something while not in my shoulder, it could get pretty disorienting, but at least I wasn't getting motion sickness, and managing to navigate when we were moving separately, but it could still improve. That would come with time and practice, though. While I was having difficulty, my little fox was very happy, I had disconnected my vision from her but allowed her to hear through me, and she would happily hunt lemmings and other small animals.

Another thing I was becoming adept at, was changing the mycelium on the fly. I had become quite good at returning Bea's eyes to their original state and had managed to improve the range of the mobile heart, it now could control the mycelium for a good 50-meter radius. I had built some shelter in the cave, a mix of things I made with the fungus and created with the pelt of game and wood, I had even created a bed. Since I had managed to settle down, I was now scouting around the perimeter on the lookout for civilization.

I had realized that the fungus was slowly expanding evenly and that I could accelerate this expansion in a singular direction, so my current strategy was going in a specific direction, and expanding a part of the mycelium in the opposite direction, going further once I got to a place where the fungus had already expanded to. I had been doing this for one week and a half, and the fungus had already expanded quite a lot. While I could describe the tedious process of scouting, I believe doing so would yield no results.

I followed this routine for three more months, tripling the range of the fungus. I found no signs of civilization, which made me think that I was probably in the past, considering the area around me did not seem to be very inhospitable. Three more months, and I finally found not only signs but civilization itself. It seemed to be a small village, the people there were speaking a language similar to Finnish, so I would have to shake off the rust from my skills in that language. As I walked through the streets, the passersby whispered to each other, looking at me, afraid. I'll admit, I forgot that I looked like a walking corpse.

Well, since this bridge is burned, time to go with the good ol' reliable. I took out my walking stick, then stabbed it into the ground. I expanded the mycelium to encompass the village, then created a dome of fungus around the village, utilizing a new property I had discovered about the fungus, bioluminescence, to make a fake moon, I walked to the center of the village, the people around me cowering. I started speaking, my voice being very hoarse, something I did not know was the case since I had not spoken since I found myself in the frozen hell. This helped push my idea, so I had nothing to complain about.

"To think that people would see me and not kneel, what has become of this era? Impoliteness will only bring about doom."

A play starts, and this village is my stage. One of the villagers threw a stone at me, screaming.

"Go back to where you came from, demon!"

The stone hit my face, scratching me. This prompted the other villagers to pick up stones as well, but I used the fungus to snare them, forcing them into a kneeling position.

"Didn't I say that impoliteness would bring about doom? If at first, I came here to make you all an offer, now I come here to make a demand. I'm the lord of this forest, and you all have been disrespecting me for far too long. Three moons. Three moons are all I give for you to give me an offering, or your sun, your stars, and your freedom will never return to you."

"Outrageous! If you think we will wield from just that, you mock our faith, demon!"

"If you do not give me an offering, I will just take one anyway. I give you a chance to become servants, not slaves. Should you disrespect me once more, I shall stop being kind, and will become the tyrant you all seem to think me to be."

This made some of the villagers stop, and ponder.

"If you do make the smart decision to give me a worthy offering, simply leave it at the borders of your dark prison, and it shall be taken, and your freedom regained."

"And what would this offering entail?"

"Simple. A young human. Male or female, it does not matter."

"If we gave you this offering, would you never come back?"

"The will of the lord is not for men to know."

I started walking back to the cave, being careful to not give even a glimpse of the outside light to the people inside. It went a lot differently than I thought it would, but I guess this could be even better than just conversing with the people to acquire information. Getting test subjects and information in a two-for-one package is quite the deal. If they don't comply, which I doubt, I can simply take them all. The reason I don't do that is the uncertainty that I could get specific info from the corpses, and it would be a lot easier to work with just one person at a time than a whole village. The walk from the village to the cave took 16 hours, but I had discovered a way to glide through the earth, using the mycelium as support, which shortened the travel time to half an hour.

I opened the door to my little home, then sat down. During these 6 months, I had achieved quite a lot of things. I had acquired a better understanding of the fungus, which allowed me to upgrade my beacon, the name I had decided to give my walking stick, to its current maximum, I could control the mycelium quite nicely even if the beacon was not stabbed into the ground, and if I did stab it, it was very similar to the heart, the only thing I did not manage was to make it a "server", which meant it could not hold information, and I could not control all of the mycelia, even if the range was a radius of five kilometers. Another thing I discovered is that the fungus evolves as it consumes different beings, a theory I had when I saw that the fungus had seemingly learned from my experiments with it.

Another thing I had achieved was a better connection with Bea, in parts because the fungus had evolved ever so slightly, but mostly because having shared senses was making us have a better synchronization. We had made some achievements, and Bea could now fully profit from having partial hearing, she learned how to control the hyphae, and was even capable of using her hearing to pinpoint the position of other animals and entrap them with the fungus, something that is very impressive to see, and earned her a lot of pats and meat. While I still hadn't perfected having a third point of view, I did get better than I was before, I even managed to send Bea to scout places ahead, then take a perfect shot from afar. My archery skills did get a lot better, but they started to stagnate since I don't have a teacher to correct the errors I haven't seen.

My house was quite comfortable now, and I had changed the mountain's layout, which was now fully made of fungus, to make other rooms. I made the chamber where the heart is into a laboratory, this being where I did some experiments, I even managed to make an optical microscope after a lot of testing, which led me to discover how exactly the fungus interacted with cells. The fungus infected the cells, copied them, then made the cell commit apoptosis, consuming the proteins. This made the fungus quite a powerful treatment against cancer. The thing I was currently working on was on fusing cells with the fungus since I had realized that the copied cells had some mistakes because the fungus could not make some of the organelles functional, even if they made them structurally similar. What this prompted was accelerated aging, unless the organism was fully connected and made from the fungus.

In conclusion, you either became fully made from fungus, or you died. What I did to circumvent this in both me and Bea was to segregate the human from the hyphae, so currently my arm, my heart, and my auditory and visual systems were fully made from the fungus, Bea was the same, the only difference being that instead of an arm, it was one of her legs. What I wanted to achieve was so that I could fully connect to the fungus, but not become dependent on it, since beings that became fully made from the fungus would die when the heart was destructed, considering their conscience would now fully reside on the "server", so if the servers were destructed, you either needed a backup somewhere, or you were dead.

The current problem I was facing was why I needed human test subjects, being that while I had managed to fuse the neurons to the fungus, I did not manage to fully conserve the electrical currents, which meant that the brain activity was reduced, and the beings whom I had applied the procedure of making fused cells became nothing more than slaves. I could not use myself as a test subject, for obvious reasons, and I wouldn't use Bea as well. Why would I use Bea, you ask? Well, I had discovered that her nervous system as a whole was bizarre since it appeared to be a middle ground between the Arctic fox and the human, her brain was considerably bigger, and in fact, her whole body was bigger. This showed that this wasn't simply a question about a strange deformity of her nervous system as a whole, but her whole body was adapted to it, which made me think that it must be some kind of product of a complex adaptation made throughout some time, in other words, evolution. Interestingly, this isn't why she is deaf, I still have found no explanation for that.

Other than that whole ordeal, I have been doing some experiments on some of the microorganisms that exist around the tundra, the fungus, however, already had most of their properties, but I did manage to deepen both my and its understanding of said organisms, which could bring about some possibilities in the future. Controlling a swarm of mosquitos infected with all kinds of diseases is quite a power, and would help me lean more into my "lord of the forest" persona. What I've done to study viruses and viroids is to infect cells of the fungus, then replicate said infected cells, I cannot change the DNA itself, which I believe can be changed in the future, but this allows me to make some uncontrolled changes on not only the virus but other cells as well.

My current "laboratory", and supposedly era, judging from the village and the lack of civilization, are very antiquated for me to be able to conduct advanced experiments, even if I have been trying to simulate some things. Another part of my problem is that, simply putting it, I have no idea of most of what I am doing. I never was a full-blown biologist, too busy managing a criminal organization for that, but I did, however, study chemistry, physics, and biology profoundly, but not to the extent of being a master at any of said things, and, I have to say, this fungus is something that needs not only a master, but a team of masters to fully understand. What I have been doing is a simple application of the scientific method, going off from some of the things I learned, and I don't even have the structure to do an in-depth analysis of what exactly is going on.

I am betting my life on a hypothesis, simply because I believe that I should do something to change my predicament.

It is reckless and impulsive, something the past me would never do. This proves that something changed in that frozen hell because I know the past me would be incapable of acting this out. The past me would not have touched the fungus, the past me would have killed Bea at the moment he felt her, and the past me would not have simply walked into the village.

If I am not the me I was before, then what am I?

I hugged Bea, and for the first time in this life, I cried. Not out of sadness or happiness, I cried out of confusion, out of being lost.

The Spider was no more, his legend had died when he dismantled his web, his body had died when the bombs fell, and his soul died in the frozen hell.

What replaced him was a nameless being, an uninspired painter in front of a blank canvas.