A Network Beneath the Soil

Abstract

A Network Beneath the Soil is a short fiction story that follows a young person who is struggling with their existence in a heteropatriarchal, colonial, racial capitalist society. They transform into part of the Amanita muscaria’s mycelium, a network of fungal threads that form a symbiotic relationship with the roots of plant organisms in the forest. The character is presented with a choice: to abandon their humanity and become fungi, or continue to exist as a human. A Network Beneath the Soil looks toward mycorrhizal fungi to express what we, as humans, might learn from the symbiotic relationships that occur below the surface of the Earth.