“How can you…”
Perceive the residue of a man? How can a mushroom see a ghost? The one eye that’s still a headlight grows brighter as the rust-rotten ancient husk of Machinenmensch rises to lean back on the rotten log it died beside a long time ago.
Tendrils-mycorrhizal, arms-identical to the ones piloting the machine-husk, drag up a rock for the ghost to sit. The ghost-archivist (my multiversal cousin) accepts–proof the archivist did not read his safety brief en route to assignment.
The fruiting bodies off the fungus are disarming. The single tall mushroom on the machine’s head like a hat-antenna, adorable. It’s fungal clone cousins around the wilt-withering forest clearing appear innocent (the dead clearing that seems safe to the ghost of a man who lived his life in cities). In reality-and-its-opposite the mushrooms visible on a peninsula that used to be called Michigan are a thing much bigger. The being made of mycorrhizal meat reaches / reached / will reach across the ex, why, and zed axes of time and space and spaces.
Fungus is the omega-alpha, last first life, reaper of all secrets. The archivist eats that shit up, because all beings that seek sentience love secrets. The ghost is so engrossed, translucent head bobbing and chain smoking the re-run of his last pack, he doesn’t notice the mushroom (ethereal for now) growing out the top of his head.
“Tell me about Thaddeus MacGuffin.” Let me show you
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MORE TO COME