Guardian of the Earth's Embrace
Perpetuators of the circle of life,
Pardon our trespass, pardon our strife.
Nurses of nature,
Bestow us your favor.
Funeral directors of life all,
Bury our brethren and give life to fall.
Generation 4 (2199 – 2240)
“700,000 people lived here. Shops, cafés, AI infrastructure, schools, hospitals, you name it. Giron, or Kiruna, as we used to call it, was a great industrial city. Everyone had a stable job, a good income, and a comfortable home,” the old man remembered. “I am 106 years old now. I have built my life here and I am not going to leave my home. I am too old for that, too weak,” he explained to the young representative.
“Aren’t you scared of the Iron-Eater? Everyone’s already left, you are among the last. What about the zealots around here? They’re the ones who caused this whole mess. Before them we had the whole thing under control, everyone knows that!” the representative exclaimed in his uniform.
The old man shrugged it off with a smile through his overgrown, wild beard. “Nothing new then! I was born here; I’ve dealt with these things my whole life. Now, will you excuse me, it’s time for my nap. Good afternoon.”
“Goodbye, Mr Morelius, if you ever change your mind, you know who to contact.” The representative turned around.
As he was leaving for his reindeer-drawn sleigh, he double-checked for a device on his belt the old man knew all too well, as he was the one who came up with the idea. Morelius “Morel” Svampskog was the old man’s full name. When the Mycelium started getting out of control in the darkness of the mine, the local tech industry tried to innovate and find solutions to counter the metal-devouring organism. One of these innovations was the Telefungus, a communication device that used The Great Mycelium Network as a medium for transmitting communication and data. The device was a glossy ceramic rod that resembled a long mushroom’s stipe but with a pointy end. It was originally used to communicate from the depths of the mine to the surface operational research center. All devices using ferrous materials started decaying overnight when exposed to the fungus, consequently, much of the 23rd-century tech was made with ceramics.
Morel knew something big was about to unfold and couldn’t bring himself to calm down, so he got up and started packing items into a reusable fabric bag. He got ready to leave the house, and over his coat, Morel pulled on a long purple and orange decorative woolen robe and went to his own reindeer-drawn sleigh, the best transportation method over the thick and slippery layer of mycelium covering the surface of the ground. He was on his way to a secret meeting spot, far away from any company representatives and other snake oil salesmen. The group’s mission was to make peace with the mushroom, as they believed that its spirit had been angered in the past because of mankind’s greed and carelessness for the environment. They sought after a lifestyle that collaborated with nature instead of exploiting it, so they became Fungarians.
Morel picked up two more passengers on his sleigh and they rode deep into the forest that had overgrown the northern edge of The Great Mush Pit of Giron, the collapsed crater of the former mine. The path was hilly and the reindeer had to be kept fit, so the three Fungarians rode slowly and talked about the upcoming event. “The corporate man came to my place today again, ironic, isn’t it? Exactly today of all the days,” Morel said.
“Chose his day well indeed!” the two passengers chuckled. They were both a bit younger than 30, devout Fungarians who were born in the region and only knew the world overgrown with mushrooms and remembered being young when the companies left Giron.
“See, Kantarell, I am more than convinced that the mushroom is not there to punish us, it’s there to protect the other inhabitants of this world from our past mistakes. It doesn’t seek revenge, it provides protection, and if we keep it on our side, we can only benefit from it. But for that, we must respect the boundaries it sets for us,” the old man explained. “And given how it’s been treated by us humans in the last two centuries if not more, it’s only normal that it takes time for it to react to our efforts.”
“But today will be different, right, Morel? The ceremony we’ve prepared will surely please the spirits!” Kantarell hoped.
You could hear Morel’s excitement in his old voice, “I sure hope so, Kantarell. Thanks to our Sámi collaborators who found the hidden song of the fungus in the layer of recently melted permafrost, our research has leaped forward. It all sounds more mystical than we originally thought but at least now we’ve got a solid lead to follow. We’ve been researching this topic for more than a century, and now I believe we have a chance of changing things. Today’s Hunter’s Moon, and at 2 o’clock great things will occur in the forest.”
“If we’re trying to decipher the mushroom, then why are we going to the old pine tree?” asked Isbjorn, sitting next to Kantarell.
“That’s because everything on this land is interconnected, it’s always been. See these trees over there? They can communicate with other trees far beyond our reach. As a matter of fact, my device works by using these exact same mycelium networks as the mushrooms, trees, and all life living on it.” Morel told the younger generation.
“Whaddya reckon they’re all communicating about?” the young adults said in a light tone.
“The terrible weather without a doubt!” the three giggled as the rain and wind started to pick up.
“When doing my research, I came across a weird phenomenon. There are strong interferences within the mycelium, these interferences happen around every living organism, with different intensities. For example, we humans vibrate at 200 ticks a second, while the trees are closer to 200 ticks a day. Our goal is to connect with all these organisms in order to understand them and their needs better. I firmly believe this synchronizing ritual will enable us to do so.”
The reindeer slowly pulled the group’s last meters up a hill on top of which an old, strong fir was growing. The area was really quiet, but they weren’t the first on-site. A few other Fungarians had already gathered around the tree, all in their orange-purple ceremonial attire. The group lit a fire of fallen branches and waited for the full moon to appear.
The ceremony kicked off with Morel dispersing the items in his bag around the old pine tree. Finally, all participants got their Telefungus out and stuck them all in the ground in a circle. Morel sat in the middle and started the ritual, tuning in with the Telefungi.
The static buzzing of the tree became louder, while still unintelligible. The fire’s smoke started melting into the bright light of the full moon, the soil started moving and Morel fell into a state of mycelial consciousness.
Time slowed down. The rushing of the wind in the trees faded to barely noticeable background noise. Morel tilted his head back and looked up; above him, the branches were swaying, weaving patterns into the sky. The old man chuckled although no sound escaped his mouth, and he closed his eyes. Listened. There was a rumbling in the ground, low and steady. The song of roots growing. A shiver trickled down Morel’s spine as he understood how deep, how far they reached. To the south, their song was joined by the joyful gurgling of a brook while to the east he felt a brittle ache seep into his bones, a longing for rain.
Morel inhaled deeply and let out his breath. He now picked up on the faint humming of the mosses, the quiet conversations of lichen and mosquitoes. We will soon die, the insects seemed to be saying. Soon winter comes but what means the end for us, promises new beginnings. Morel smiled saddened by the nostalgia of a season fading and at the same time in hopeful anticipation of the first cold winter in decades. He followed the calm static of the Great Messenger deeper down into the web of species. In symbiosis with nature, he listened.
All the pieces were falling into place like an elaborate, indescribable puzzle. The new state of consciousness Morel had reached made him the first-ever recorded Shrooman, a human capable of communicating with any collaborative species through the language of mycelium.
This speculative fiction was created in the context of the Biosocial Ethics course (2023) at Malmö University. Based on Donna Haraway's Camille Stories, it spans several generations into the future to explore issues of extractivism, the right to land, and ways of "staying with the trouble" in an effort to bring about a multispecies society.
Text and sound by Christophe Berbeć.
In collaboration with Merle Emrich, Alice Wästberg, and Anne Leupen.
Poetry by Anne Leupen.
Cover photo created by AI.
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