I don’t like this. This feels too different.

  I'm always going somewhere. There's always something new. I’m constantly expanding and retracting.

  I can't see anything. I can't taste anything. I can't feel anything. I can't hear anything.

  I catch fleeting zaps of something, or feeling, but it's not like a regular body. It's not like my old body. I hate this new body.

  I'm hungry too. So hungry.

  Things are happening to me in waves. Wave 1 hits me and I realize I've eaten something. Wave 2 hits me and I realize some part of me is going the wrong way. I feel like I'm stretched out underground over a great distance. It feels like the tips of my fingers are peeking out of the ground. I’m aware of the wind hitting against them.

  I think my fingers are crying. No wait, they're peeing.

  No, it's my spores. I can feel them now, releasing from me and floating off into the void. I feel the mushrooms connected to the underground network that is me.

  I exist as something much different though. Mushrooms simply spread their spores - or their seeds. They're like the flower on a plant.

  I don't have any roots or branches though. I can sense what I have through instinct instead. I am a dancing electrical storm that moves underground. I’m a network that sends signals and messages back and forth. I grew underground with only my flowers occasionally peeking out of the darkness.

  I'm a mycelial network. I am an underground brain made out of long threads which connect under the dirt. These threads form like roots but are much, much finer. These strands are made of billions of microscopic connections.

  My thoughts are automatic, yet some of them scream louder into nothingness: grow, eat, survive.

  My strings – like synapses – fly from my underground brain to search for nutrients. They breach every angle of the ground in their search.

  Sometimes I feel a sting. It means I've been attacked. It's not from something above ground though, this is attacking me directly under the dirt. My mycelial network responds appropriately and sends anti-bacterial compounds to kill it.

  I can feel the burning as it swings into me like a pendulum. It burns, then relief, then more burning, then relief. This repeats for a while. Actually, this is repeating in so many places at once. I’m under attack almost everywhere, all the time.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  I need to scream. I can't really do that now, so instead I'm pretty sure I just ramp up the release of some more spores on the topsoil.

  There's a tingle in my brain as I feel my tendrils adjust in the soil. They send a message.

  I connect to something.

  Whatever I'm touching is kind of delicious. Really good, actually. The food comes to me in waves. Each wave builds something. I grow stronger with each wave.

  I've extended myself now. I feel the distance of my brain exceed its old distance. I keep eating until I have no more sustenance left there.

  It takes a second, but I'm quite hungry again.

  The furthest reaches of my brain die. These strands of mycelium wither and disappear into the earth.

  Without any thought, I respond. Grow this way. Eat. Die. Grow that way. Eat. Die.

  I repeat these steps and wonder just how large the dying strands are. I feel new ones spontaneously connecting all the time, but are the new ones the same size? Are they larger?

  I'm still being attacked by billions. I'm still dying, yet somehow giving birth.

  I notice one of my strands has come up against a wall. This seems to delight me somehow as I feel the mycelium network electrify in response.

  I seem to have found dead wood. I'm looking for the strong parts, the ones that are resistant to decay.

  Millions of years ago, plants and trees died and I didn't have the intelligence to understand how to eat them.

  During this time, the dead things accumulated on the ground. Since I couldn’t eat them, they had nowhere to go. It was much hotter then too, but it eventually cooled down.

  Things were spongey and humid back then. I find it easier to grow now. This climate is much more welcoming and forgiving.

  Nowadays it seems like the ground is always shifting in one direction or another, so those old dead things have started to bury themselves. Soon the topsoil will be completely different, and I can expand.

  I've been able to eat the harder trees since the cooldown. Or maybe I figured it out a little before. Time is not something that I can measure anymore.

  Thanks to me, these dead things don't accumulate on the top anymore. Thanks to me, these dead things become food.

  The mycelial network commands movement. I focus growth near the newly found food source. This wood-food is actually quite large.

  I make sure the new growths release the right mixture to break this thing down. I'm talking oxidizers, and cellular wall-breakers.

  The reason they were so hard to eat before was their lignin. It's the part of the tree that makes it so strong and resistant to the elements. It's also why they excel at growing above ground, or over the horizon, so to speak.

  My mycelium network struggled for years (I think), but one day we accidently found the right mix and started breaking down the sweet, chemical bonds of this plentiful new food.

  I can feel it now, my network, growing in another direction.

  I've found more lignin. My strands expand and grow that way.

  I'm still being attacked. I respond by releasing toxins or anti-bacterial agents.

  My network is constantly lighting up as it processes the vastness around me.

  There's so much action going on. I don't feel stressed about it, though. There's a certain stillness to the action that beckons me to effortless react. If X happens, do Y. If Y happens, do X. It happens like clockwork.

  My network is proactive too, but only pursuit of new growth.

  It's amazing what comes together through my fungal nervous system. Every microscopic strand of hyphae making up the entirety of my mycelium network works in harmony to achieve my goals.

  Together, these pieces have created something that responds and acts accordingly. These pieces have built great temples out of themselves and have conquered the world.

  Only together have these pieces achieved these feats.