I am old, older than thought in your species, which is itself fifty times older than your
history. Though I have been on earth for ages I am from the stars. My home is no one planet,
for many worlds scattered through the shining disc of the galaxy have conditions which allow
my spores an opportunity for life. The mushroom which you see is the part of my body given
to sex thrills and sun bathing, my true body is a fine network of fibers growing through
the soil. These networks may cover acres and may have far more connections than the number
in a human brain. My mycelial network is nearly immortal, only the sudden toxification of
a planet or the explosion of its parent star can wipe me out. By means impossible to explain
because of certain misconceptions in your model of reality all my mycelial networks
in the galaxy are in hyper-light communication across space and time. The mycelial body is
as fragile as a spider's web but the collective hyper-mind and memory is a vast historical
archive of the career of evolving intelligence on many worlds in our spiral star swarm. Space,
you see, is a vast ocean to those hardy life forms that have the ability to reproduce from
spores, for spores are covered with the hardest organic substance known. Across the aeons
of time and space drift many spore-bearing life-forms in suspended animation for millions
of years until contact is made with a suitable environment. Few such species are minded,
only myself and my recently evolved near relatives have achieved the hyper-communication mode
and memory capacity that makes us leading members in the community of galactic intelligence.
How the hyper-communication mode operates is a secret which will not be lightly given
to humanity. But the means should be obvious: it is the occurrence of psilocybin and psilocin
in the biosynthetic pathways of my living body that opens for me and my symbiots the
vision screens to many worlds. You as an individual and man as a species are on the brink of the
formation of a symbiotic relationship with my genetic material that will eventually carry
humanity and earth into the galactic mainstream of the higher civilisations. Since it is not
easy for you to recognise other varieties of intelligence around you, your most advanced
theories of politics and society have advanced only as far as the notion of collectivism.
But beyond the cohesion of the members of a species into a single social organism there
lie richer and even more baroque evolutionary possibilities. Symbiosis is one of these.
Symbiosis is a relation of mutual dependence and positive benefits for both of the species
involved. Symbiotic relationships between myself and civilized forms of higher animals
have been established many times and in many places throughout the long ages of my development.
These relationships have been mutually useful; within my memory is the knowledge of hyper-light
drive ships and how to build them. I will trade this knowledge for a free ticket to
new worlds around suns less forsaken and nearer galaxy center. To secure an eternal existence
down the long river of cosmic time I again, and again, offer this agreement to higher beings
and thereby have spread throughout the galaxy over the long millennia. A mycelial network
has no organs to move the world, no hands; but higher animals with manipulative abilities
can become partners with the star knowledge within me and if they act in good faith, return
both themselves and their humble mushroom teacher to the million worlds all citizens
of our star swarm are heir to.