Fungal Halo

This, but even smaller.

No, smaller than that. Too small to make out any individual spider with your naked eye.

Watch me roll into town like the morning fog, a hazy cloud covering the area. Before you realize anything is abnormal, you've already breathed me in. You're mine now.

I dream of sailing my ship until I reach the sea of stars. I dream of meeting you there, endless, unknowable, and beautiful beyond fathoming. I dream of kissing you until you consume me and I become another smeared brush stroke among the many comprising your being.

The Hive's slow spread through the city's most neglected parts was, for a long time, not even noticed. Then, when it was first noticed, it was confused for something much lesser. A new religious movement, perhaps? It seemed to be growing mostly from the city's vulnerable.

When I was at my lowest, that's when she came for me. I had nothing and no one to care for me. I was delirious and dying, and when I was gone, no one would mark my passing. Maybe that's how she found me, even. Suffering like mine was a beacon to a certain kind of creature.

In the end, who knows why you chose to do it? Once you choose to become a drone, trifling things like "reasons" cease to carry significance, and all that is left is the act itself. Discard whatever plans you had before you chose this; your future is no longer yours to chart.

The screaming of my alarm wakes me up as it does every morning. I feel like hell. Like every part of me was taken apart and reassembled. That's not unusual, but today I sure don't feel like I can tolerate going in to work, getting berated, feeling useless, doing nothing of value.

Drink from the pool in the deep woods. Find your vision blurring, brightening, twisting and colorful. Your steps grow unsteady as you quest for a warm spot in the sun in which to lie.

Do not wake. Put roots down. Stretch your limbs and bloom into a beautiful home for fairies.

People still speak fondly of the pantheon that was.

It's not yet been so long that it has passed out of memory, though each year more children are born without the warm assistance of Oriah and raised without the guiding light of Ralles.

To them the stories are just stories.

As you get ready to leave, you spot her again out of the corner of your eye. She's sitting in the kitchen.

I peer through the glass into the holding chamber. The specimen within paces aimlessly, without purpose or direction, interacting with nothing inside.

"What's wrong with it?" I ask.

"She's been restless and agitated like this since we separated her from the others."

I squeeze the trigger, and the thing that was once my best friend drops dead.

I take a moment to kneel beside it. These helmets aren't made to be removed, so I improvise a hole in the front with the butt of my gun.

Yeah. That's her face. All plugged in.

I must be careful. It is frighteningly easy to forget what sleeps in my blood, but as long as I take sufficient care, we will all stay safe. I will not need to be caged.

I'll find the cure for myself, and nobody will need to learn about my lapse of judgment.

Something in this androgynous creature's eyes captivates me. It draws me in, inviting me to say hi and strike up a conversation.

"What are your pronouns?" I ask, after they introduce themselves, trying to be polite.

"We/us/our," is the response.

Her grave was not particularly deep, the coffin not particularly sturdy, the stone marker already overgrown. It was a burial in which every expense had been spared.

A mushroom sprouts through a wedding ring pushed to the surface by subterranean life.

The thing about being in a hacker collective is that a lot of us get really competitive, but we still cooperate to elevate the whole group, you know?

It's in the spirit of both sides of that dichotomy that I've decided to try to crack one of those DroneCorp units open.