The thought made me sit up straight, suddenly alert. It wasn’t uncommon for an evolutionary step that initially helped a species to ultimately lead to its extinction. Specialization to a specific kind of food, for instance, might lead to mass starvation when that food became unavailable. Modifications that increase offspring survival rates might lead to overpopulation and the extinction of a prey species on which the population depends. Survival of the fittest was greedy and shortsighted.
This expansion into human symbiosis might be just such a step for the fungus—initially advantageous but ultimately catastrophic. We might help it to spread around the world, but we might also create a rival that would ultimately eradicate it. If so, then having the fungus in my mind was actually detrimental to the organism as a whole. Extricating it from my mind—and from all other human minds—would be in the fungus’s best interest. Humans were toxic to its survival. Most people just didn’t know it yet.
I found that as long as I thought in that way, using my intelligence to consider what would benefit the fungus, it didn’t fight me. I felt no overwhelming emotional response that buried my thought processes. We were working together, using my mind to determine a strategy to improve the fungus’s chances of survival.
Could we actually get it to extract itself from our minds for its own future good? I wasn’t sure. But one thing was certain: if it meant destroying McCarrick’s spores, then the fungus and I were on the same team, at least for a little while.
I rattled the door of my cell until my guard—a big blond with senior airman’s stripes—opened a slim window slat. His flat stare made me think he’d been on correctional guard duty for a long time.
“I need to see Melody Muniz,” I said. “Please, tell her I have information on the Ligados attack that I’m willing to share.”
“No visitors allowed,” the senior airman said. “Orders from General Barron.” He slammed the window shut.
“I can help us win!” I shouted. “I just want to tell someone what I know!”
He slid the window open again.
“Please, can you just tell Melody Muniz I was asking for her? Just that. Tell her I have information.”
“Let’s get this clear,” he said. “I’m not your messenger, and I’m not your maid. I can, however, make your life a living hell if you don’t shut your hole right now. Are we clear?”
“It could mean the war,” I said, trying to sound reasonable. “She can ignore me if she wants. The general can forbid her to see me. Just, please, don’t let thousands of people die for lack of information.”
He stared at me, his facial expression not changing remotely, and then shut the window again. It was the best I could do. I lay down on the bed and wondered how long it would be before they dosed me with McCarrick’s spores, and how many of the people I loved would survive the week.
When the door finally opened, it was Shaunessy, not Melody, who came into my cell. I pulled myself up to a sitting position. She brought a small stool with her and sat. One of her sleeves had been cut away to make room for a thick bandage around her arm.
“No guard?” I said. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll hurt you?”
She pulled a small pistol out of her pocket and held it casually in her hands. “You shot me,” she said. “I’d be happy to return the favor.” The way she said it, I thought she might be looking forward to the chance.
I pulled my legs up under me and leaned back against the wall. “Why did you follow me? If you knew I was infected, why didn’t you all just grab me right away?”
“Melody wanted to. I convinced her to play you a little, see what you would do. The truth is, I didn’t believe it. I didn’t think you could really switch sides, not after all you’d seen. Even when you walked into that hangar, I told them I could talk you down. They let me try. No one knew you were armed. Where did you get a gun?”
“Another Ligados left it for me.”
“Another one? There are more on the base?”
I nodded. I tried to say, “a lot more,” but the fungus wouldn’t let me. Our fragile peace didn’t extend that far.
Which was crazy. The fungus wasn’t thinking anything. It was my own brain deciding what was or was not in the fungus’s best interests. All the fungus did was dose me with strong emotional chemicals to prevent me from acting against it.
“I’m sorry,” I said instead.
She narrowed her eyes. “How can you be sorry? Isn’t the fungus controlling your mind?”
“That’s why I wanted you to come,” I said. I explained my theory that the fungus was reacting to my own evaluations of what would benefit it, and my further reasoning that infecting humanity would ultimately lead to the fungus’s own destruction.
“There’s no grand plan here,” I said. “It’s just humans, or connected groups of humans, acting on what they believe will help the fungus survive. That’s why so many people in South America started caring about environmentalism and protecting the rainforest. It’s why they started assassinating leaders who had policies allowing logging rights or who were in other ways threatening the Amazon. It doesn’t mean killing those people actually would benefit the fungus. Just that the infected people thought it would.”
“So it’s not actually controlling anyone’s mind?”
“It is. But it’s not some super-intelligent organism working thousands of people like puppets, like what General Barron wants to create. The fungus is pretty sophisticated, sure, but what it’s doing isn’t all that different from what its ancestors have been doing in forests for millions of years. It branches out into host organisms and then uses its precise control of nutrient flow to augment the functions that benefit it and diminish those that don’t. In this case, that means intelligence. It means heightening brain function and manipulating brain chemistry to reward thoughts and actions in its favor. The fungus is using our intelligence, but that doesn’t mean it’s intelligent on its own.” I thought about it. “Though it must have co-evolved with mammal brains in its environment to some extent, otherwise it wouldn’t be able to distinguish between favorable intentions and unfavorable ones.”
Shaunessy nodded, but her body language still communicated distrust, and she kept the pistol pointed in my direction. I wondered how good a shot she was.
“Let’s say I believe you,” she said. “What does it matter? The effect is the same.”
“The difference is that we can manipulate it. If we can convince a substantial number of the Ligados that a particular action is beneficial to the fungus, then they’ll do it. If we could go far enough to convince them that infecting humanity at all is actually detrimental to the fungus, then we might even get them to take antifungal medication. The fungus itself would compel them to.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Convince the fungus to kill itself? Sounds like a long shot.”
“That’s the beauty of it. The fungus doesn’t need to be convinced of anything. The people do. And they’re not rewarded for protecting the little mycelium in their heads. They’re rewarded for protecting the survival of the organism as a whole. If they think extricating it from humans is the best way to improve its survival chances, they’ll go ahead and do it.”
“It’s a nice theory…”
“When ordinary South American citizens got infected, they started caring about the Amazon enough to kill for it. But when drug lords got infected, what did they do? They didn’t worry about environmental policies. They made a drug out of the spores and smuggled it into the United States through cocaine routes. Everybody does what they think would best help the fungus to survive. When it infected me, I attacked what I thought was the biggest threat to fungal survivaclass="underline" that B-2 and its payload of rival spores. This whole war is just a result of ordinary people thinking the best way to ensure the survival of the fungus is to spread it around the world.”