I wrote this 10 years ago. I was driving somewhere at an odd time of day, and caught an NPR program I had never heard before. The man being interviewed used the phrase “empathy gap” and it lodged in my mind. After writing the story, I submitted it to a bunch of science fiction magazines. They all rejected it.
There are things I like about the story. We were only a few years into voice-command digital assistants like Siri at the time, but I did a decent job extrapolating from those to how current AI works. However, there’s an embarrassing error buried in the text. When I describe the boys torturing the fungus, I describe it as if they were destroying a mushroom. Those were the main parts of fungi I had experience with, after all. I now understand that when people talk about giant, acre-sized fungi, they’re saying that there’s a sprawling, dense network of underground mycelia (basically, roots), not some massive layer of solid tissue down in the dirt.
I left the story the way it is for two reasons:
- This is a science fiction fungus, so who knows what the kids were poking
- Posterity
The middle-schoolers burst from the doors as a screaming, shoving mass. After a few hundred feet, the hoard dissipated, breaking into smaller groups and loners.
Teddy walked through the outskirts of Hogan, Texas by himself. It was the third time that month school had been let out early. He knew from experience that the door to the trailer would be locked until his parents got home. The sun was still high overhead, and he muttered a curse as he unstuck a strand of hair from his sweaty forehead. On the edge of one of the neighborhoods he walked through, Teddy came to a large area of the desert that was sectioned off with chain-link fence. He had noticed it on his last several walks to school, but it now appeared to be abandoned. All but one of the canopies were gone, and none of the men in olive jumpsuits were standing around or poking at the dirt.
He produced his Handi from his pocket and spared a moment to sneer at it. His parents had saved up and gotten him the best model they could afford for his birthday. That was two weeks ago. The thing already looked dull and dusty.
“Handi. What’s going on here?”
The small device chimed to indicate understanding. After a moment, it spoke.
“An investigation, by researchers from orbital university Hodgkin-Dane.”
“Investigation? Like a murder?” Teddy scanned the lot, walked several steps closer.
Chime. “TexasToday.com. An underground fungus, the second largest ever discovered. Covering four and a half square miles, the unknown species shows an incredible capacity to respond-”
“Four and a half miles? That’s stupid.”
A chime, then a very long pause. Then the Handi repeated “Four and a half square miles.” Teddy shoved the thing back into his pocket.
He walked alongside the fence, stepping around the crushed styrofoam cups and empty TV dinner boxes that had collected there. When he came to a gap between two posts he squeezed inside. The fine, brown earth had footprints and tire tracks in it that puffed away as Teddy stepped on them. Near the center of the site were several boreholes, apparently very deep. Teddy got down on all fours and tried to inspect one of them but it was too narrow (he could barely fit his middle finger inside) and too dark. He pushed in a little dirt with his thumb, which was immediately swallowed by the blackness.
Teddy rose to his knees and pulled the Handi out of his pocket once more.
“Handi. So there’s a big mushroom, so what?”
A pause, and then a different chime than usual. Teddy clenched the device tighter.
“Handi. Mushroom. More info.”
Chime. “FastScience.com. The unknown species shows an incredible capacity to respond to threats and other information from its environment. It appears to adapt so quickly that some scientist have described it as a ‘thinking fungus.’ Dr. Oliver-”
Teddy snorted. “That’s retarded.” As he stood up, he looked back along the way he had walked. Four and a half miles probably stretched all the way from his school to his parents’ trailer, maybe a little farther. He tried to imagine a giant web of white fungus spread out underneath it all. He looked down, imagining some oozing thing hidden beneath the soles of his feet at that exact moment. He squinted, swallowed, and then repeated the word “retarded” to himself. The rest of the way home, he stomped.
…
The next day, Teddy stopped at the abandoned research site before school. He had spent a good portion of the previous evening brooding about the mushroom, and now he paused outside the chain-link fence. Taking a deep breath through his nose, he slipped through the gap in the fence once more. The boreholes were still there, and after several seconds of searching, Teddy found an ant. Dropping to his hands and knees he worked to coax it onto his finger, then pivoted to the borehole and pushed the ant in using his thumbnail. The ant disappeared but otherwise nothing happened. Teddy waited a minute, and frowned.
Standing, he looked around. He went back outside the fence, to the edge of the road, and returned with several crumbled bits of asphalt. He tried to push them into the hole, but they were too large, or shaped wrong. They dug into his fingers as he strained to push them down. Teddy swore violently at the rocks. From his pocket, Handi chimed and suggested that they didn’t want to be late for school.
The first part of the day was spent in liberal arts class. The class watched the second half of a movie that Teddy didn’t remember starting. One of the girls raised her hand and said she thought the video was for another class. The volunteer teacher told her to shut up. When it was time for lunch Teddy scanned the cafeteria for Dylan, with whom he sometimes ate. Dylan was a little kid with black hair and bags under his eyes, even though he didn’t do drugs. Teddy spied him sitting in the corner of the cafeteria. As Teddy walked towards him, he saw that Dylan had already finished the dried out pizza the school was serving that day. On the table next to him was a thin, hardcover book without a dust jacket.
“Dylan.” Teddy sat down across from him. “Can you get me some of those long tent poles from your dad?” Dylan’s father was a scout leader. Teddy had stayed with the troop long enough to go on one camping trip with them.
“Oh, hi, Teddy. I’m not really supposed to play with them. Why?”
Teddy stared at him.
“They’re expensive! My dad doesn’t let me mess with his scouting stuff, you know?”
“Jesus.” Teddy sat back in his chair and bit off the end of his pizza. “What do you have that for, anyway?” He pointed to Dylan’s book with his chin.
“I dunno. It’s pretty good.”
“You don’t have to read it. That’s why we got out early yesterday. They told those teachers they weren’t going to pay them so they left.”
“Did Ms. Snow quit too?”
“All of them.”
Dylan frowned at his cafeteria tray. As Teddy swallowed his last bite of crust, Dylan asked, “What do you want the tent poles for anyway?”
“Nothing. Just something after school, but it won’t work.”
Dylan paused, then “Maybe I can set them aside before he comes home tonight.” Teddy looked up at him. “Yeah, he never checks my backpack or anything. I can fold them up in there.”
“Hey, that’s better,” Teddy said with a grin. And then he told Dylan what he wanted to do.
…
They went to the site Wednesday after school. Teddy walked ahead while Dylan took out the slender, folded up tent poles. When they stopped at the first borehole, Dylan looked at it, then looked at Teddy.
“Did you dig these?”
Teddy snorted.
The two boys squatted down and began to assemble their poles. An elastic cord ran through the sections, and pulled them together with a satisfying snap when they were lined up. Dylan was done first. He stood up and swung it back and forth experimentally. The slicing sound caused Teddy to look up from his own nearly completed pole.
“Dylan. Give me.” He held out his hand.
Ignoring him, Dylan squatted over a borehole and lined up his tent pole. It reached above his head and wobbled as he fed it down into the earth like a probe. For a moment it looked like it wasn’t going to be long enough but then it stopped sinking almost two thirds of the way up the last section. Teddy crowded behind Dylan and grabbed for the probe, but Dylan put up a skinny shoulder.
“Push on it.” Teddy’s eyes were glittering. Dylan obliged, making a fist around the probe with both hands and pushing it down. There was some resistance, and then a change in texture as the probe suddenly gave way. Dylan let go of the pole, but his hands hovered next to it. He looked back over his shoulder at Teddy.
“What?”
“It- shivered. I think.”
This time Dylan didn’t resist when Teddy pushed around him. Teddy squatted and grabbed the probe with both fists, one on top of the other, and jabbed it down into the earth. He felt it puncture the unseen barrier, then felt a shudder run up the instrument. Inhaling through his mouth, he jackhammered the probe several more times. With each jab, he savored the sensation of the resistance suddenly giving way, the new feel of pushing through whatever was beneath it, the slight suck on the probe as he pulled it back up.
Around the tenth jab, Teddy felt a small rumble beneath his feet. He turned and grinned at Dylan, whose eyes were wide. Teddy started stabbing into the ground again, but soon everything beneath the hole was minced. He stood up, bringing the tool out of the ground with him, and walked to the next hole. Squatting, he stabbed into the hidden, fungal flesh once again and produced another shiver in the probe. Instead of pulling it out, he let himself fall backwards into a sitting position. Dylan stared at the tent pole sticking out of the earth, as if someone had raised an antenna to broadcast a message.
“If this thing is a big as Handi says, you should be able to get a shiver through that hole-” Teddy pointed to a borehole several feet behind Dylan, “while I’m at this one. You’ll go at the same time as me.”
Dylan nodded but didn’t say anything. He picked up the pole Dylan had abandoned and positioned himself over the other borehole.
“Dylan! Hurry up. We’re stabbing it on one.” Teddy called out the numbers backwards, starting at three. When he reached one he plunged the pole as deep as he could into the hole. There was a violent shudder and then a sharp hiss. A faint odor filled the air around him, a little like freshly cut grass but more prickly in his nose. The smell pulled his head around to Dylan, who had fallen back onto his butt and was scrambling backwards from the hole. A dark green plume was rapidly dissipating in the air around him. At a glance, he saw that several other boreholes had thin, smoky plumes coming out of them.
“Did you feel that!” called Teddy, rubbing his eyes. He walked towards Dylan. “I think I hit like an eggsack or something.”
“I think it was attacking us.”
“Dylan. What’s wrong with you?” Teddy’s eyes felt dry. As he rubbed them, he became aware of a growing pain in his head, an ache just underneath the front top of his skull. Dylan started to mumble something, then stopped.
“Whatever,” Teddy told him. Then he dropped the tent poles and walked home.
The headache got worse as he walked so that he could barely keep his eyes open by the time he got home. In his room he found that if he pushed hard on either side of his skull the pain subsided slightly but his arms quickly got tired. He slumped on his bed with the light turned off, his back against one corner of the small room. The headache glowed like a sunset, pushing out everything else. With his eyes squeezed shut, Teddy dug his fingernails into the surface of the bare mattress until he fell asleep.
…
Dylan was not in line assembly class the next day. It wasn’t until lunch on Friday that Teddy found him, sitting in his usual spot, already finishing the last of his McDonalds. Teddy sat down across from him. Dylan greeted Teddy through a mouthful of food.
“You weren’t in school.”
“Yeah, my parents thought I had food poisoning.” Then, “Don’t worry, I didn’t tell them anything.”
Teddy stared at the table as he took a bite of his hamburger.
“You know, I saw some things after that fungus attacked us. Like, in my head, you know?”
“What does that mean?”
“Like, I saw some things. Really weird stuff.” Dylan was smiling now. “I didn’t tell my parents about it, but it was some pretty weird stuff.”
“I just got a fucking headache.”
“Yeah, I got that too, but only at first. Then it felt like a giant spoon was stirring up my brain. All of my ideas and stuff kept jumbling on top of each other, does that makes sense? Plus, I saw Ms. Snow-” he hesitated as though he were going to say more, but then closed his mouth, grinning.
“No shit?”
Dylan nodded.
“We’re going back there. Tomorrow, after school.”
The grin on Dylan’s face froze. “Ah.”
“Come on. You need to help me. Last time it only worked when we both did it at the same time.” When Dylan failed to respond, Teddy added, “And you can see Ms. Snow again, right?”
“Yeah,” Dylan said slowly. “Yeah, okay. But I can’t stay for too long, okay?”
Teddy shrugged.
…
The next day the boys found their probes laying in the red dirt where they had left them. Teddy kneeled down next to his probe and opened his book bag.
“What’s that?”
“Oven cleaner. I asked Handi which brand was the strongest. This should really get her burning, huh?” Teddy pulled the cap off the tall can with a pop, and began to spray the end of his probe. A strong smelling white foam clung to it, quivering with each movement of Teddy’s arm.
“I think I’ll just use my regular probe.”
“Dylan. Use it.”
The boys positioned themselves at their boreholes from earlier that week. Teddy fed in his probe until he felt it hit something. He kneeled close over the hole, ready to inhale anything that came out. He called out to Dylan, then stabbed his poisoned probe into whatever it was resting against. Two rapid punches, and then with the third he sunk the pole into the unseen flesh as deep as it would go. The ground rumbled, much stronger than before, and there was a hiss. A thick jet of green black dust erupted from the hole. Teddy sucked in a deep breath but started coughing violently before he could finish. His windpipe felt like it was burning.
Behind him, Dylan was sitting on the ground. He was coughing too. Teddy approached him.
“How long does it take? Before Ms. Snow and stuff?”
Dylan’s hacking prevented him from talking for several seconds. His black hair bounced with each cough. He finally managed, “That was way worse than last time.”
“Dylan! How long does it take?” Teddy pushed Dylan’s ribs with the front of his shoe. Dylan put out a hand to keep himself from toppling over but otherwise didn’t respond. He was staring at a patch of dirt between his splayed feet.
“Did you see that?” He asked, mouth hanging open. “The ground is breathing.” His voice was wheezy.
Teddy squeezed his skull. He looked at the patch of ground between Dylan’s feet, then back at Dylan himself. “What’s wrong with your eyes?” Dylan paused, processing the question, then his head darted to Teddy. “Your eyes.” Teddy continued. “They’re red and your pupils are all messed up.”
Dylan’s arms flew to his face, and he rubbed his eyes with quick, jerky movements. “They hurt real bad,” he confessed. “Am I going to die?”
Teddy felt a twinge at the corner of his mouth and he shrugged. “They look fucked up.”
They fell quiet then. Teddy decided to walk through the site, counting all the boreholes he could find. His headache was blooming like a rose, and it was hard to concentrate. He lost count when Dylan yelped and scrambled back frantically. Teddy cursed, and turned to glare at him.
“There was-” he pointed at an empty patch of ground and trailed off.
Teddy turned back to the hole at his feet. He tried to remember if he had been at eight or nine, but the burning in his head made it impossible to hold onto any thought. He stared at the small, black circle blankly.
He had just about convinced himself that Dylan had been right, that the ground really was breathing, when he heard a strange cry from behind him. Teddy turned once more to discover that the front of Dylan’s shirt was covered with vomit. Dylan was staring down at it, smiling.
“She kissed me!” He laughed, vomit dripping off his chin. Teddy glanced around, said nothing. His head felt like somebody had tried to shove burning stones into the tops of his eye sockets. Dylan laughed again. “Just like in the book!” He held his hands out in front of him and pantomimed something indistinct, though Teddy caught the word “titties.”
Teddy’s snapped his teeth shut and began grinding them. He sucked in breath hard through his nostrils. He hated Dylan for seeing things. For tricking him into coming back here. For being a fucking idiot, and a disgusting one at that. He hated his home and his school and all of his stupid classes. But most of all he hated the mushroom. Through the haze in his head, he managed to picture her once more- massive, pale, hiding down in the earth so no one could ever touch her. An impossibly wide underbelly of squishy white flesh, just waiting to be fucked to bits by the first person who could reach it. He hated that it stirred up Dylan’s mind to produce a breathing ground and naked liberal arts teachers while all he got was this blank, burning headache. He saw then that this was all he’d ever have. He’d learn more numbers, more tools, more patterns, but the only thing that would happen when they got stirred up was pain.
He thought about returning with dynamite and blowing the thing out of the earth. He thought about gasoline, bleach, battery acid. He thought about skewering Dylan through the stomach with one of the poles, or both of them. But his thoughts were interrupted by Dylan, who threw up into his lap a second time. With vomit still on his hands, he grabbed his head and started to cry.
Teddy squinted at him. It was almost impossible for him to keep his eyes open. He wanted to go and kick Dylan in the head, to stomp on him until there was nothing but red, red dirt. Instead, he stumbled uncertainly towards the fence. The world around him wobbled like hot air. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he could break what he wanted to break.
© 2026. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-SA 4.0.
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