Project World Tree: Of Mushrooms and Dead Men

[CALDARI PRIME. The sun rolls, burning, across a distant horizon. Its dying light stains bellies of massed clouds dull crimson. Enormous, ambiguously cybernetic hounds race across jagged tundra. The Crone, her cylindrical kameira, and the pot-bellied Ealurian shift on a wooden sled. Camera drones skitter above and beyond. The hounds skirt a rime-covered dolomite, and then descend a ramp cut by heavy machinery into the garish tundra.

Down, down, to the ancient filth of Great Tekojarvi they howl.

Deteis with flawless blond crew cuts extract sliced cubes of frozen muck from the walls of the pit; others manipulate samples of bone and decay carefully freed from the blocks. All bob their heads to ephemeral sounds of distant calisthenic chanting.

The Crone and her retinue step briskly across brittle slurry. Robed figures study microbes vibrating in holographic projection. Dr. Straz beams with pleasure.]

"The lithotrophs extracted from Ms. Ma'chello's shattered terrestrial world excel in this new application," he insists. "Freed from previously unattainable depths - by unimaginable forces - they once feasted upon the ruin of their home; here, they shall serve as the nerve sheaths of our great trees."

They isolate the radiodurans well, then?

"Yes, madam! With aplomb."

Deriving energy from emissions?

"Beyond all expectations."

And the piezotrophs?

"A fine, muscular flesh for our lumbering behemoths."

[The pot-bellied Ealurian raises his arms to the smoldering sky.]

Excellent, Doctor! You are a gentleman and a bloody scholar.

"Madam is too kind."

Our Brutor has delivered many permeable membrane samples from Araz. We will bring them to the surface as we are able, along with the hazmat sensors and robotics. I trust initial mycoremediation proceeds apace?

"Yes, madam," insists an enigmatically robed technician. "This way."

[The technician leads the Crone, her cylindrical kameira, and the pot-bellied Ealurian to an opening in the icewall. They enter a low corridor of frozen muck, dimly illuminated, and proceed some distance into the darkness. Eventually, they stop before a glass barrier. Beyond, fungal fibers twist and snake through dirt and grey ice.]

"Mutations of the Anoikis autotrophs," explains the technician. "They thrive in this more hospitable environment."

Hospitable!

"For some value, madam."

Grow little mushrooms! Grow! Gobble the nasty and build your great, living barrow! In a thousand years, our Gaia will bloom from the frozen depths of this poisoned hell. Maybe we'll even beat Tibby to the Utopian punch bowl. Look at the bones, Straz! Great herbivores and sacrificial muffins, the ancient Caldari here used treacherous terrain for spiritual and material profit. Somewhere in all of this we might yet find an Etee or Amsten.

Well-preserved, he might even produce an heir. From an ancient grave to the brilliant future!

"To the future, madam!"

Lij-Taisaan mydiku hakiit hnolkuiskki yn kienjazkaan!

[The Crone places a hand on cold glass; mushrooms spread through dark places.]