I think we—humans collectively, I mean—have just about understood that we have a responsibility towards the Earth. I also think there’s a subset of people who believe the problem could be solved if we just shifted our exploitation of our environment outwards—to the moon, to Mars, to the asteroid belt. They’re wrong.

Fungi are wonderful. There’s something so unsettling and yet beautiful about them. There’s an allure in the spores, the feeding off dead matter, the variety of forms. In a past life, before I became a writer, I was a biologist. I loved the breadth and scope of life on this planet. I think fungi have an appeal to people because they’re so alien to our human experience.

This story was vaguely fictional when I wrote it in February 2023, but reality quickly lapped me. I’m a literature professor and I am watching universities force professors to use AI to create course materials (usually because “it’s cheaper”). The potential for fascist censorship is horrifying.

The current iteration of AI that everyone is talking about right now isn’t actually “artificial intelligence;” it’s rebranded machine learning, which is very much not new. “AI” is, to me, a marketing scheme, not a technological breakthrough.

Back then, communing with the divine was couched in images or metaphors of violence: you have these accounts of wounds, being pierced or attacked. But such is the nature of divine violence that it’s transformative, illuminating. In the context of this story, though, it’s also shoved up against a more earthly, clinical violence.