Just a Couple of Days Read Free

lot.” He walked me along the sidewalk, pointing out the peppering of small mushrooms that were scattered everywhere. “See, the mushrooms are just the fruiting bodies of a much larger organism that exists underground. Mushroom roots are called mycelium, and the mycelium is actually a huge network of fibers that are entwined and interconnected beneath our feet. It’s just like an aspen grove. It looks like a bunch of different trees, but they grow rhizomatically, and are actually only a single tree. Did you know that?”
    â€œSince when are you a botanist?”
    â€œMycologist,” he corrected. “And you should know the difference, a biologist like yourself. Mushrooms aren’t plants. They don’t have any chlorophyll.”
    â€œI’m a
molecular
biologist,” I began to explain, then waved him off. Blip already understood the distinction. He was only
hassling me for what he claimed was my excessive knowledge of the minutiae of life and my relative ignorance of the bigger picture. I amended my question. “Since when are you a
mycologist
?”
    â€œI overheard a student talking about a class she was taking. She said there’s probably a single mycelial network beneath the entire Green. One organism. Pretty cool, huh?” Before I could nod, he continued, quickening the tap of his foot. “And you know what else? There are more connections in this mycelial network than there are in a human’s neural network. That means it’s
aware
.
    â€œShe said she learned that in her class?”
    â€œWell not the last part. I added that on. But it makes sense, don’t you think?” He hopped in front of me. “You think for one minute this humongous fungus under our feet isn’t observing us right now? Think about it. There must be more than a hundred billion connections underground here. This thing is humming with awareness. You can even feel it if you pay attention.” He closed his eyes and made a show of feeling the ostensible hum of the mushroom. After a moment he popped them wide open in theatrical excitement. “Man,” he gushed. “People don’t even realize they’re being scanned by an extraterrestrial as they amble across the Green.” He nodded his head and looked around the ground. “Yeah, it’s got us all figured out.”
    This last embellishment marked a new direction for Blip’s eccentricities. Heretofore, his delusions had been confined to the surface of the planet. “What’s this now?” I asked.
    â€œThis giant mushroom is an extraterrestrial probe, man. It’s called a von Neumann probe, a self-replicating machine. That’s what the space cadets at NASA and SETI theorize would be the logical first step in space exploration. The way it works is you
send a few off into space in different directions, and whenever one of them detects a planet with favorable conditions, it lands and collects materials to build a duplicate of itself. The duplicate then takes off to another planet, and the original stays behind to search for life and collect and transmit data. For efficiency, the probes would have to be small, no bigger than a hockey puck, according to the astrophysicists. With a gizmo like that, they say the entire galaxy could be explored for signs of life in no time, relatively speaking of course.
    â€œBut here’s their mistake: They’re right on with the theory, but they’re wrong about the size. What they missed was right in front of their faces. The best example of a self-replicating machine is life. An advanced civilization, as a
molecular
biologist like yourself would no doubt agree, would have mastered the appropriate use of biotechnology by the time they engaged in interstellar exploration. So why would they build it out of metal or plastic? And guess what else? Mushroom spores are so small and light they can drift right off the planet. And their shells are so hard