Perfectly Symbiotic

Thank you all for being here tonight. I am honoured to be introducing our keynote speaker, a man some call an ambassador of our species, a man we now all know as this century’s ultimate pioneer, responsible for taking the human race into a better future.

- Stephanie Dogfoot

The one man responsible for building the first bridge between humanity and the intelligence all around us.

Consider how different life was one year ago.

Consider how none of us noticed when they first emerged.

That’s the story we tell ourselves, anyway, isn’t it?

Obviously, we always noticed them when they arrived after the rain, on grass patches, on the sides of pavements, on nature walks, at the feet of old trees. One moment nothing, then a few hours of rainfall, soft pillowy whitebrown fungal bodies suddenly standing tall in the grass. Appearing as if out of nowhere.

Small everyday miracles.

Most of us never paid much attention. We couldn’t eat most of them. They weren’t harming anyone. We had all been conditioned to ignore them. They were just... there. Part of the background. Like pigeons. Or weeds.

Most of us here can barely remember when they first started speaking to us. No, communicating. Just over a year ago. Doesn’t seem that long ago, does it? Remember how we thought we were going crazy? A pandemic of chemical imbalances in the brain, some thought. Aliens! Ghosts! People all over the world reporting hearing voices in their heads, after the rain.

Where were the voices coming from? For months, no one could explain it.

So we did what humans do best. We connected. We formed chat groups, forums, think tanks. We tried to rationalise it among ourselves even as the internet exploded with rumours and conspiracy theories. Media hysteria. Rumours of government control exercises. People were paranoid, understandably so. Some rejoiced. We tried mapping them, tried to find the source of the voices.

It’s easy to look back on this now and laugh at our ignorance, how no one hit on obvious.

Mushrooms.