The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016 (18 page)

The Mushroom Queen has established a mycelial perimeter around the house extending from the Pacific Coast Highway to the very edge of the cliff above the Pacific Ocean. Through the septal pores of her naked hyphae tips, she is aware of her rival's imminent approach. The Mushroom Queen enters the kitchen in black galoshes. She puts on a pair of purple rubber gloves, steps into a couple of trash bags, making sure to tape the plastic securely at the wrists and ankles, and wraps several yards of cling wrap around her head and neck. Then she begins to whip up a batch of poison. The house, the man, the dogs: they all belong to her now. She's not willing to share them.

Giddy, triumphant, our woman breaks through the cracked terra-cotta patio and surges under the grass, following the lawn mower as the man, recklessly barefoot, paces out wide, even rows. The Mushroom Queen walks behind him in her battle gear, a bottle of viscous liquid attached to the garden hose, saturating the lawn in the path created by the mower.

Our woman can taste the individual ingredients: olive oil, baking soda, apple cider vinegar. Such wholesome things, how often had she used them herself, but now they are
dissolving
her. She sinks down through the sod, then the three inches of trucked-in dirt, the chicken-wire gopher barrier, and finally settles into the sand and clay that are the true soils of this land. A fleeting thought crosses her mind: without the artificial lawn, the fertilizer, the monumental water bills—all things that she and her husband fussed over together—the Mushroom Queen could never have gained a foothold in their lives, because nothing grows in clay and sand, not even fungus. Clinging to the underside of the mulch layer, the woman crawls all the way to the back and takes shelter in the shade of the disassembled trellis.

Our woman tries to will herself back into human shape, but it's no good. She lacks the skill, and furthermore, she could no longer remember what she looked like. The Mushroom Queen, as she can see despite the many layers of Saran Wrap and Hefty Cinch Saks, doesn't look very human anymore. Her forehead bulges in the middle from the pressure of the cap, her body has grown cylindrical, stem-like, but love is blind.

How can she fight the Mushroom Queen if she can't get by the poisoned lawn? Perhaps she could enlist the aid of some parasitic bacteria? But that might harm the dogs and the man and, really, she's never been the kind of person to up the ante out of stubbornness until everything around her lies in ruins.

And then she remembers something she heard as she was driven from the lawn, something whispered to her by the
Onychomycosis
fungus growing on the third toe of the man's left foot: the man knows there's been a switch.

He knows and he does not miss her at all.

The fight goes out of her completely. She shrinks a little bit further into herself, the sand and clay robbing her mycelium of precious fluids. If she stays here a moment longer, she'll have to wait until the spring rains to make her escape. Where will she go? Back to the meadow with the primrose and chamomile? Back to the garden behind the red-brick house with its ancient loamy soil? What had once been a prison now seems like Elysium.

And to be completely honest, she doesn't blame the man; he owes her nothing. Wishing to escape is the same as escaping. Her vanity is bruised, but maybe things are as they should be. What is a trellis after all but a perforated wooden barrier; a basket made of loose twigs through which the things you gather can fall out along the way.

She does not miss her human form. What a relief it is to escape that tired paradigm of head-torso-limbs, so much more trouble than it's worth. She likes her new spread-out state, her very own magic carpet; she can go anywhere.

She had longed to join the fast race, but now instead she's joined the eternal race: fungus will survive the destruction of the environment, the melting of the polar ice caps, the rising of the waters. Fungus will survive until the Earth falls into the sun, and maybe even after. She's gotten what she wanted. Well, almost.

She does not blame the white dog for betraying her with the Mushroom Queen. After all, he's just a dog, uncomplicated, happy-go-lucky, like the man, a love pig. But the small dog is different. She has always suspected that he isn't a dog at all, but a demoted human soul sent back to earth in a fur suit to atone for his sins. The small dog can be made to understand.

She has a plan, but it's risky, given her limited skills as a relatively new fungus. Her mycelium is plenipotent—it can create any type of mushroom—but she lacks control. Some of the beetles that came to her rescue in Colorado didn't make it to the other side of the mountain; they died writhing in the meadow. But what are her choices? The Mushroom Queen is distracted with the man, but eventually she'll turn the dogs into soil. At least if the woman can transform them, just as she had been transformed, digest their extracellular matrix, carefully separate their cells and braid them into her mycelium, they can be together.

The jade plant, a desert species, does not waste energy on growing an extensive root system. Its roots are shallow and wide and spread out from the stem horizontally mere inches below the surface in order to capture every drop of rain. These shallow roots act as a protective umbrella for the creatures that live below—an entire family of alligator lizards, a pair of carpenter bees. The male bee is black and shiny, about the size of a store-bought strawberry. When he takes to the air, his wings make the sound of a miniature chainsaw. The female looks even bigger than her mate because of the dusty saffron hairs covering her golden body. Wherever she flies, she leaves behind the scent of flowers—no wonder the male can't resist her. Under the jade plant where she first entered the soil, among the lizards and bees, our woman spins out fresh strands of mycelium and begins weaving a mat, a raft. A lure.

The small dog walks over to the nearest clump of jade plant. Shaky with hunger, he lifts his leg against the plump green leaves. That's when he sees them: three little mushrooms growing out of the lawn at the base of the plant. They're pink and tender with snug-fitting egg-shaped caps, arranged in an arc like the tips of a woman's fingers. Those familiar pink fingers that used to offer little bits of cheese, then reach for the tuft of hair that grows out of his head and scratch and scratch until he couldn't take it anymore. He can picture his mistress standing on tiptoe somewhere underground, reaching and reaching for the surface, only her fingertips breaking through to the mist-dampened air.

He starts digging frantically, trying to get her out before she suffocates, soil flying around him, clinging to his russet fur, but there are no fingers beneath the tips, no hand outstretched, no woman, just mushrooms. He sighs a deep, shuddering doggie sigh. She's never coming back, his beloved mistress; he'll never see her again. No one misses her but him. Despondent, he opens his small, sharp-fanged mouth and eats the mushrooms, one by one, until there's nothing left but a dug-out scar of earth at the base of the jade plant.

DEXTER PALMER

FROM
The Bestiary

D
EAR
G
ENEERTECH
E
MPLOYEE
#__________:

Hello! We're glad that you're considering serving as the host of a Geneertech Corporation Daydreamer by Proxy. We know that this is not an easy decision to make. This document will provide answers to some of the questions asked frequently by prospective hosts. Over one hundred twenty Geneertech employees have chosen to host Daydreamers in the past three years, and all of them have gone on to have remarkably productive careers within the company. Seventy-three percent of hosts have received one or more promotions within two years of hosting, compared with a four percent promotion rate for the same period across the company as a whole. So we think you'll find hosting a Daydreamer to be an experience that's rewarding as well as fun. Some hosts wonder how they ever got along without them!

Why host a Daydreamer by Proxy?

Geneertech is a company that lives and dies by its employees—it is your loyalty, hard work, and creativity that have made us the world leader in the field of designer non-sentient life forms. But every day is a hard-fought battle with our competitors in the marketplace, and the Daydreamer by Proxy is a way for you to help ensure your continued loyalty to us in these perpetually difficult financial times.

Think: don't you feel more loyalty to Geneertech, more fealty, more
love,
in the morning? You arrive at your desk at sunrise, and your first cup of coffee helps you focus on your task: determining the proper shape of a creature's wing, or the best source genome for the
medulla oblongata
of a specially commissioned servant animal. All problems seem solvable. But in the afternoon, after you have received your cafeteria rations and worked for a few more hours, your mind begins to drift. Even though you love Geneertech as you love yourself, you cannot focus on the mission-critical tasks at hand—you would rather ponder a dead romance beyond recovery, or a chess position you abandoned last night in midgame. You are daydreaming to run out the clock until your shift ends. In short, you are stealing processor cycles from the company! But you are only human, you say. Nonetheless—tasks are not being completed; problems are not being solved; MoreauCorp is landing lucrative contracts and eating our lunch.

Hosting a Daydreamer by Proxy will allow you to concentrate on work-related tasks through the afternoon period until quitting time; you may also find that it yields significant quality-of-life benefits outside the workplace. Throughout your day it will serve as the better angel of your nature.

What does the Daydreamer by Proxy look like?

The Daydreamer by Proxy is the result of the combination of several proprietary genomes held by Geneertech, including variants of the silverfish and the Komodo dragon (but it is
not
part human, despite rumors you may have heard). It is about a yard long, an albino, somewhat reptilian, semi-conscious being. An array of two rows of twelve slender, translucent legs runs down either side of its body. You'll notice that its face shows evidence of the whimsical nature of its designers—beneath its snout, its long drooping whiskers hang down on either side of its squelching sucker of a mouth, while its large pink liquid eyes—not human eyes!—display a constant childlike cheer. The Daydreamer by Proxy is always happy! But it's happiest when it has a home, just as you are happy because you know that you have a home at Geneertech.

What is the installation process for a Daydreamer by Proxy?

The installation process will be an enjoyable, memorable experience for you! Upon arriving at the Geneertech campus, you'll go to the Installation Hall instead of your usual workspace. You'll be escorted to a room where you'll be shown excerpts from films you loved as a child, while an administered anesthesia starts to take hold. After an hour—clunk! You're gone.

While you're sleeping, a team of surgeons will drill an unobtrusive series of twenty-four holes along your spinal column and a twenty-fifth into the back of your neck, just at the base of the brain. Once that's done, the rest takes care of itself—we simply place and align the Daydreamer by Proxy on your back, and all on its own, it inserts its legs into the holes along your spine (and this sounds worse than it really is, but the legs have sharp claw-like appendages, and they'll burrow their way through your vertebrae to make direct contact with your spinal column). Meanwhile, what we call the Daydreamer's “information tube” slides out of the back of its neck into the twenty-fifth hole—the tube will then extrude a series of thin filaments that will interface with several of your brain centers, but you won't even feel it. (And don't be afraid of any mind-control stuff: the Daydreamer can intercept and receive signals from neurons, but it can't transmit. It's perfectly safe!)

The installation process takes about three hours; we'll also give you eight work-hours off with pay to become acclimated to your new friend. Then, the next day, you'll be ready to reap the benefits!

What are the benefits of a Daydreamer by Proxy?

We're glad you asked! The first, and most significant, is clarity of
mind,
clarity of
purpose.
Remember how your mind is in the afternoon, drifting toward that delusional, distorted memory of a love that escaped you, its playback suffused with false colors and delirium. Such is the duplicitous nature of daydreams; such is their insidious siren's call, luring employees toward the perilous shoals of decreased performance ratings. But once you have chosen to host the Daydreamer by Proxy, you will no longer be cursed with such afflictions. Your once-lazy brain will seek its usual refuge during the late hours of the second shift to find that your childhood sweetheart's once-soft skin has returned to the sandpaper that it truly was, that her once-poetic professions of love have returned to the stutters and lies they truly were. For your Daydreamer will have taken the burden of your daydreams upon itself. It will wear the false smile that would have crept upon your face; in your place it will experience the delusional happiness that would have distracted you from your duties. And you will experience the truer, better, more
authentic
happiness that comes from the accomplishment of a challenging endeavor. Believe us when we say this. Studies show.

That sounds great! What else can I expect?

Additional benefits include double rations from the cafeteria (you're eating for two now!) and an entire made-to-measure wardrobe provided by Geneertech, suitable for work, play, and formal occasions. (Since installation of the Daydreamer by Proxy is permanent, you'll find it difficult to shop for clothing off the rack. But no time is too early to step up to the elegance of bespoke fashion!)