Surfing the Myconet - Original Sentient Fungus Fiction - Part 1 of 3
Dave Burke’s eighth grade students were practicing their keyboarding skills. The incessant, clickety-clacking noise threatened to drill holes in Dave’s neocortex.
He sat at his desk, head in hands, and tried in vain to ignore the mind-numbing assault to his eardrums and sanity. He picked up his extra large coffee mug. It had “I love you” printed on it and it was empty.
Dave rubbed his temples and sighed. If he could survive through thirty more minutes of typing instruction, he’d be able to move on to the infinitely more enjoyable task of coding the new school calendar app with his advanced class. Not for the first time, he stared at the institutional clock on the classroom wall. The second hand ticked away, marking the seconds at a reasonable pace, but the minute hand seemed to have a severe lag, as if in some sort of sadistic reluctance to release Dave from the agony of keyboarding class.
Absently, he lifted a sheaf of papers from his desk and shuffled them around. He was about to set them down again, when a large manila envelope caught his eye. The envelope had been hidden underneath the stack. Hidden intentionally, Dave now remembered with a nagging uneasiness, because the document it contained was something he would rather pretend did not exist.
For the three weeks since he’d been handed the envelope by a sweater-vested stranger in the school parking lot, he’d been tiptoeing the thin line between denial and defeat, and his toes were tired. But there was no shoving it out of his mind now. There it was, staring up at him with a clean, business-like brutality.
The clicking keys began to broadcast a rhythmic message to his brain:
Kathryn-wants-a-divorce-she’s-been-screwing-her-yoga-instructor-your-life-is-over-twenty-two-years-down-the-drain. Your. Life. Is. Over. (Repeat chorus.)
Dave returned the stack of papers to its place atop the manila envelope and glanced around the classroom. Jason Pulaski’s hands were under his desk, thumbs flying across the touch screen of his smart phone.
“Pulaski!” Dave reprimanded. “How many times do I have to tell you, there’s no texting in class?”
Jason looked up and smirked. “But I’m not texting, Mr. Burke. I’m playing Fish Farts.”
Dave approached Jason, his face flashing red to match his shabby, thrift store necktie. Struggling to keep his voice steady, he said, “I’ve already given you two warnings this week, Jason. This makes three strikes. I’ll have to confiscate your phone.” He held out his hand. “Right now.”
Jason Pulaski did not comply. “Hell no! You can't take my phone. My mom gave it to me for emergencies!” His face contorted into a practiced expression of pre-adolescent anger.
“I don’t think Fish Farts qualifies as an emergency, Mr. Pulaski,” Dave countered, his voice raised slightly. The clickety-clack concerto ceased as snickers erupted from the other pupils.
Jason bit his lower lip petulantly, but handed the smart phone over to Dave. “Thank you, Jason,” said Dave, the contrived calmness returning to his voice.
“Now please complete your assignment, and don’t let me catch you goofing off again.”
“Asshole.”
The word was uttered above a whisper. If it had been whispered, Dave might have ignored it, but this insult was spoken loud enough that the other students sitting nearby clearly heard it. Dave was forced to respond. He turned to face the boy.
“Excuse me?” It was a challenge; one he knew Jason would accept.
“I said, ASSHOLE,” Jason spat.
He was daring Dave to react. Dave knew he shouldn’t. Nineteen years of teaching middle school is more than enough to learn that it is counterproductive to allow a student to arouse your anger, but Dave felt a violent swell of emotion that he could not restrain. He wanted nothing more than to throttle this arrogant, spoiled little shit. His eyes swept the immediate area for a weapon and came to rest on a student’s baseball, sitting on a nearby table. He grasped for it.
Don’t do it, he told himself. But he wasn’t listening. He hurled the ball toward Jason, and it made impact just above the boy’s left eye with a muffled crack.
Silence blanketed the room like a snow drift. Every student sat stunned, looking at Dave, eyes wide and mouths agape. Then a wail broke from Jason’s mouth, sustaining itself for several long, frozen seconds and ending on an impossibly high note. Jason reached a tentative hand to his brow to explore the site of the new injury, where a bluish welt had begun to make itself apparent. He snatched his backpack from the floor and, making a great, visible effort to regain his dignity before his classmates, he said imperiously, “You’re going to be fired.”
“I’m sure you’re right, Mr. Pulaski,” Dave mumbled. “Class dismissed.”
What have I done? Dave thought frantically as he pulled into the driveway of his small suburban home.
The house had once been his sanctuary, but now it was just as repugnant to him as everything else in his life. For the love of God, what have I done? As if this whole divorce business wasn’t bad enough, I’ve just gotten myself fired and ensured that I’ll never get a good job reference. I’ve got bills to pay. What am I going to do now?
He parked his car and walked on rubbery legs to the front door, trying to ignore the unkempt lawn. He bent down wearily at the foot of the porch steps to pull up a lonely, purple crocus by its roots. Kathryn had planted them years ago in honor of their first anniversary, and since the arrival of spring, he’d been attempting to eradicate them. But it seemed every time he pulled one up, another one sprouted in its place the next day. I guess I should feel grateful that she’s leaving me the house, he told himself. Somehow, the thought did not console him.
Inside, he made himself a Jack and Coke and sat down at his cluttered desk in what had once been the dining room, but now housed a chaotic collection of hardware, cables and vacant computer shells. He powered up his laptop, opened a blank document in the word processor, and titled it “Dave Burke’s Resume: An Exercise in Futility”. At the top left of the document, he typed his name and contact information in standard resume format. He downed his cocktail in two gulps and stared at the computer screen. The sun outside the dining room window gradually made its descent.
When the room grew too dark to see, Dave got up to turn on the lights. On the floor beneath the light switch was a box of books belonging to Kathryn; some photo albums of the first few years of their marriage and a bunch of hippy-dippy, new- aged books with titles like “Finding Your Inner Psychic” and “On the Path of the Ascended Masters”. Dave had been saving them for her, stupidly convinced that this whole thing was just temporary—that sooner or later she’d come back to her senses, remember about her loving husband and her happy home and call off the divorce.
To hell with that, Dave thought, now. I ought to burn it all, along with any hope I have of Kathryn ever loving me again or of my life ever returning to normal. He eyed the box with disgust. Well, no time like the present. The resume writing’s not going anywhere, obviously. He lifted the box off the floor, grabbed a book of matches, some lighter fluid and another Jack and Coke from the kitchen and made his way out to the back yard.
The fire flickered conspiratorially at Dave as he held the last photo album ceremoniously aloft.
“Good riddance!” he said as he dropped the album into the fire pit. The plastic jacket shriveled, melting, bubbling and rolling up with a pleasing crackle, and Dave covered his mouth and nose to avoid breathing in the noxious fumes. A tear spilled down his cheek. Goddamn smoke. In a moment or two, the album was reduced to a sticky pile of ash and char.
Now he picked up one of the new age books, a thick tome on herbal lore. Grasping it by the spine, he held it above the flames. He was just about to release the book when something fluttered out from between the pages.
Reflexively, Dave chased after the object, trying to save it from blowing into the fire. He rescued it just in time, but it was only a brochure; nothing important. He started to throw it into the blaze, but the message printed on the front, dimly visible in the firelight, caught his eye. “The Encyclopedia Fungus”, it said, “Mother Nature’s Internet.” Folding the brochure roughly, he shoved it into his pocket, threw the rest of the books into the fire, and went back inside.
To be continued...
Hi! My name is Leslie Starr O'Hara, but I go by Starr. I live in the mountains of North Carolina and I write fiction, satire, humor, and the odd anarchist think piece here on Steemit. FOLLOW ME if you're interested in stuff about science fiction, writing, homeschooling, productivity, or just stuff that will make you laugh your britches off.
If you enjoyed Part 1 of "Surfing the Myconet", be sure to check back tomorrow for Part 2!
And if tomorrow is too far away, and you need to satiate your desire for more fiction RIGHT NOW, check out these posts:
The Alice Underneath - A Man Discovers His Wife Isn't the Kind of Alien He Thought
Feeding Anemone - Bittersweet Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy
Bound for the Shady Grove - Part 1 - More Sentient Fungus Fiction
Enable My Addiction to Earl Gray Tea!
Fantastic story. Loved the wording, feeling and tone. Really highlights the importance of restraint. Great job!
Thanks, @ezzy ! Glad you enjoyed it.
I thought readers might like to know a bit about the personal experiences that led me to write this story.
First, I had a math teacher in high school who was kind and funny and patient, until one day, he lost it when a student backtalked him several times in class. He picked up a baseball and threw it at the boy, HARD. The kid ended up having a black eye. I always wondered what would cause this normally-together person to react with such violence, and in this story I imagined that perhaps a character might do that because he was having marital troubles.
I live in a town called Marshall, in North Carolina. Next door to our town is another town called Mars Hill. (I have a theory that they used to be the same town, Marshall, and when they split apart, the residents couldn't decide which one ought to keep the name, so they drew straws and the community with the shorter straw had to change one letter in the name.) The second and third parts of this story take place in Mars Hill, at a made-up place called the Pleurotis Gnostica Reserve.
I wrote this story during a period of obsession with all things mycology. (I tend to obsess over subjects and read as much as I can about them for months, or until something else sparks my imagination. It is how I get a lot of my story ideas.) In reading some books by Paul Stamets and articles by Tradd Cotter, I learned that some types of mushroom mycelium actually do act almost as an internet, not only between patches of fungus, but also relaying messages and nutrients to trees and plants. This is fascinating stuff, and of course I was inspired to push the concept a little further and see what kind of new worlds I could create with it. I wrote three stories about the Pleurotis Gnostica fungus, and the first one is already published on Steemit. You can find it down near the very, very bottom of my blog page. It's called "Bound for the Shady Grove", and it is posted in three parts.