✴

You& know just the thing--a mycelial network. You& can feel it now, the soil on your& fingertips as you& reach around you&, the tiny stimmy fibers lining the tunnel. You& feel the airflow through the corridor, telling you the story of a vast underground labyrinth, leaving you just enough space to walk through, never losing touch with it--the ideal space.

Mapping the fibrous hyphæ passageways to Aydan’s semantic concept network, you& find this much more navigable. Maybe you& could even grow a mushroom on her head if you& keep this up. The thought excites the mycelium--your& fingers can feel the cytoplasmic flow within them reaching toward the conceptual sector defining Aydan’s understanding of fungi. You& can’t help but want to follow it down its branching paths. But just before reaching the cluster on mycology, an intersection beside you& feels all too familiar. It’s the concept of Akiko--closely mapped to fungi, slime molds, cybernetics, connection hardware, and network architecture. Your internal emotional feedback loop flares bright with autistic curiosity.

We’re on a mission, you& think. You& can’t just go exploring. You& fall back against the flow. What you& need is much deeper down than semantic concepts. From the root of this vast fibrous tree inside the soil’s embrace, you& stare down into the subconscious mind. Your& mycelial headspace extends there as well. It connects to many sectors, but the one you& need is the memory supercluster. You& feel out its shape--sensory memory, working memory, long term memory, and what you&‘re looking for most of all, emotional memory. You& dive down into the depths.

From this root fiber, you& feel every sector of the emotional mind--fear, joy, anger, sadness, love--from there a fiber reaches back up to a place in the semantic concept network--a shortcut you& could have taken. The structure of it is fascinating, but you& must remain focused. Just ahead is what you& seek--grief.

You& hesitate, feeling down that cold tunnel. It’s ok. I’m with you. You& calm your& emotions--they’re much easier to manipulate then usual, and you& can do much more than merely suppress them. But something unsettles you& again, a vibration in the æther, an unnerving breeze through the tunnel behind you. You& feel a worm crawling its way through this headspace. It’s just behind you&!

“No! Not now!” you& call out in a sense of tactile signs.

And someone answers. “Why not? Afraid I might lead you astray?”

“Go away!” You raise your mental shield, sealing all ports, blocking all external communication.

“You’re so full of rage, aren’t you?” The interloper answers anyway, from a place behind you&, passing by the tunnel leading down into anger. “What are you so afraid of?” it says, passing in front of the tunnel of fear. “I just want to help.” It briefly stops by the entrance to loneliness. “But you never appreciated me, did you?” It stops, its hands touching the sides of a tunnel--you can feel its touch through the mycelium. It stands at the darkest passageway of all, nestled at the center of all the worst emotions--dysphoria.

You& can feel his avatar’s shape--almost like a reflection of Akiko in the æther, but taller, and shaped all wrong--too linear, too square, too flat. The surface of his skin is like rough concrete, and his face like broken glass. His hair is far too short, and his scent is like decaying plant matter in this underground domain.

“Weren’t you ever going to introduce me to your boyfriend?” His tactile signs make your& skin crawl.

“Certainly not to her subconscious mind, you creeper!” You& answer in visual signs, not wanting to touch him--he’ll understand anyway.

“But he’s so interesting!” The creeper reshapes his avatar--his hair grows longer, shoulder-length, and much softer.

“No! You stay out of Aydan’s features!” you& sign forcefully.

“Why? You don’t want him to remind you of me?” he signs. “But don’t you find him attractive, even as a boy?”

“A femboy!” you sign. “You could never be like him. You hate everything good and you tried to keep me away from my real self!” You raise your mental shield. “Leave me& alone!”

“You need me down there. I’ve seen what’s in there. You’re not strong enough,” he signs.

“Fuck off!” You& manifest an electrified cable in your hand.

“Not this time, ‘Akiko,’” he signs, spelling out the name in a mocking fashion. “I’m coming with you. Unless...you want me to tell him my name.”

An intense anxiety wells in you&. How will you& answer?