Author: Arwen Spicer and Haley Black

Entangled voice comm to NLS Convoy Ship 27
By Hasumi, Harmony Outpost, Planet Blue Jungle

Walkabout Log 34 – Update on the Untree Colonial Organism

I wish you could see them. The plumes of these towering Untrees are pulsing like fire-bright gills under the monsoon. Here, in the jungle’s heart, they’re like the roof of a cathedral. A deluge above, but barely a drop reaches their surface mats. It’s steam bath day. The tight, mycelial weave of these mats is springy against my bare feet. The blue fronds are browning. With the autumn, maybe. I’ve been walking a long time beneath the roar of the storm. It’s like being suspended in time in this rhizomatic temple. I’m breathing better now those spores have cleared. As my father predicted.

I can see one of the Untrees’ guardians peeking from a root mound, seeming to peer at me with their inky eye spots. The guardians are tiger-sized zooids with dagger fangs and mantis claws, a piece of the Untree organism built to protect the colony. Don’t worry, I’m quite safe. They have no instinct to hunt humans. It’s the leaf-eaters, trunk-borers, the old foes they’ve evolved to fight off, not us.

The spores are not matting in my lungs anymore. Beneath the rain, these deluded plumes are spewing the modified spores my father spliced, the ones that don’t weave those choking mats.

I’m near the center of his seeding now. Here, the surface mats are breaking. The muck of the unreplenished, rotting mycelium is sliming my feet. This sludge can’t hold the roots; an ancient Untree has already toppled. Maybe he didn’t see it coming. But I still call it murder, even if it’s to save your child’s life.

When you reply to this comm, please don’t tell my father I said that. I can’t wish this hate on him.