"What a horror..."— I hear a young female voice, and open my eyes. Right in front of me, in the dim light, stands a somewhat bulky female figure wearing a black hoodie and wide khaki-colored pants. It's hard to disagree with her. Right now, I look more like a giant blot, spreading thin splashes across the entire room.
"What are you doing here, pregnant woman? Have you lost your mind? Are you alone?" Agnia exclaims indignantly upon recognizing her informant.
"There was no other option. They moved your truck. They drove it to the old mine shaft. To the coal storage facility. And yesterday, the patrol confiscated everyone's phones. They're preparing something..."
The girl speaks abruptly but firmly. She seems confident. Agnia looks at me with concern. Her eyes convey the question: "Is this a setup?" But the sprawling fungal network already knows the answer.
"No one around. I didn't bring any tails."
"But why there?"— my partner wonders.— "What's the reasoning? The Aerospace Forces would rather hit the transport hub with equipment and ammunition than the warehouse. We're missing something..."
"It's if they were expecting a missile strike...— I reason aloud.— But they're waiting for something else. The approach of our troops. The encirclement will soon close. The town has long been hyped up in the information space as another impregnable fortress. Surrender is inevitable. What if, instead of evacuating civilians and withdrawing troops, they decided to sacrifice everyone? Blowing up warehouses. And coal dust would multiply the radiation contamination. It would cover both the city and the approaching units... And the world press would publish headlines like 'Unable to cope with the brave defenders of the city, the treacherous aggressor used nuclear weapons.'"
"Damn it all...— Agnia hisses.— We need to kill them all, those swineherds..."
"There are also decent men. Men who don't have to fight. There's just no other way," our informant cautiously objects.
"What do you mean? They all start by shooting at children from mortars or signing up as militants to terrorize civilians, and then, once they get their hands on some power, they all become cooks and drivers! I know!"
"I can't speak for everyone, but I know about mine...— the girl, unafraid, stares directly into the eyes of the snake-like creature towering over her.— He didn't want to kill anyone! And he wasn't a militant. Understand? Two months ago, they shoved him into a van on the street, and two weeks later, they threw him onto the front lines. And then... He disappeared without a trace. Just so they wouldn't have to pay compensation. But I don't need that money. I'd at least like to bury him properly... But there's nothing left."
Agnia doesn't know what to say. She snorts discontentedly.
"I'll check the backyard one more time..."
She crawls away, creaking the floorboards.
"So we've had our talk..."
"Don't be offended. She's just from the East. She has her own personal story too. Her brother was killed."
"I see...— the room's owner supports herself with one hand on the chair and the other on her stomach, considering whether to sit down.— Alright, I'll go... There are no patrols yet."
"It'll be safer to hide here than in the city."
"Why? Will yours enter soon?"
"No. Because we've already entered. The harvest will begin..."
The informant stares at me for a long time, and for some reason, her eyes increasingly fill with fear. Finally, I realize that I've been answering her for a long time without opening my mouth. With this deaf, guttural voice of mine. Is it really me? Or something inside me?
"You call it that?"
"We just eat..."
"Yeah... If only our idiots knew it would turn out like this, they'd have surrendered the capital three days ago... What was it all for?"
I remain silent. I have nothing to advise these people, who have voluntarily or involuntarily become hostages. And if not for my idealistic principles, they would have become an additional portion of food for the rhizome.
"My father is in the apartment... He's almost bedridden. After my mother passed away, he's entirely dependent on me. How can I leave him there?" the girl explains.
"Then go. Everyone does what they must. Just try to survive."
"I have someone to live for."
She walks toward the door, but turns back again right before leaving. She remains silent. She looks, as if saying goodbye, realizing that this might be the last time. Most likely, it is. Then she quietly disappears into the darkness outside.
From the creaking of the floorboards on the porch, I understand that Agnia is returning to the house.
"My friend just ran off," she throws at the departing girl.
"She's actually a fellow countrywoman..."
"Yeah, right... What does she have to do with me?"
I mentally agree. In general, yes. It's fair and logical. Even now, to a seemingly situational ally. In civil wars, as expected, the tangle of mutual differences, grievances, and resentments outweighs any kinship. Not even camaraderie. It's useless to condemn; one can only understand and forgive—or kill and eat.
Agnia crawls toward the table where she was laying out a solitaire, slowly flipping over the cards with long fingers.
"Peace..."—she reads the name on the picture card.—"Have you already thought about what you'll do after the war?"
"Well, when will it end?"
"Well, someday..."
"I don't know. But if I were you, I wouldn't wait for it too eagerly."
"Why not?"
"Because to eat, you'll have to work."
"That's possible... You just need to finish your studies. I studied marketing. Branding. SMM. Working with social media, generally..."
"That's obvious."
"Or maybe I'll start fortune-telling. With my looks, it's a direct path to the circus or 'Battle of the Psychics.' Or I'll make an app for my phone and give girls compatibility readings. Ascendant, descendant, retrograde Mercury, all that crap... Ten bucks per prediction. — Agnia flips over the next card and, smiling, shows it to me.— Look! 'The High Priestess.' That's destiny!"
"We have our own incidents here... We'd better deal with them."
"You're mocking me? By the way, this is also a science. A predictive system thousands of years old! So feel free to consult me."
"For ten bucks?"
"For you, free of charge!"
"Well, then, definitely... But later."
Meanwhile, rhizomes had already penetrated the soil two centimeters below the surface. They quietly infiltrated the coal storage area and found their target. Therefore, I listen to my partner half-heartedly, although she can't seem to stop...
"You never think about the future, but the cards will tell you everything. What will happen and how when it's all over..."
"So let's finish everything. Come here. Your biomass will come in handy now."
"Did you find a truck?"
"Yes. My fellow countrywoman didn't lie. At the warehouses. And everything is extremely well-stocked. Plastics. Explosives. Monkeys. Barrels of fuel. If it goes off, it'll flare up so brightly that radioactive ash will cover more than one village..."
"Move aside..."—Agnia plops down on the couch beside me.—"The couch troops are ready for battle."
The girl's sarcasm isn't very appropriate. The growing fungal network signals that it has occupied all key points of the city. Now we really can fight without getting up from our seats.
"I've left a biomarker for you. Try out your new tactic. I'll block the approaches and go from inside out. And you, accordingly, from outside in. I'll maintain control. You'll clear things up. Let's meet at the car. Do you understand?"
Instead of answering, the girl suddenly grabs my face with her hands and presses her lips against mine. I feel a rough forked tongue inside my mouth. For longer than necessary to take a DNA sample.
"And you're not scary at all..."—she whispers, but I hear it already from somewhere else. My body finally breaks apart into black threads. It seeps through cracks in the floor and walls. They flow away, carrying fragments of distributed consciousness with them.
It's still mine. It's still me. Only somehow from the outside. Outside myself, but inside something bigger. It seems Stanislav Grof described something similar. A transpersonal state. Going beyond the boundaries of one's personal existence and merging with another—external existence. With previous and subsequent generations. With other beings. With living and non-living nature. With the past. The future... This is experienced by mentally ill people. Drug addicts. Patients undergoing holotropic practices and LSD psychotherapy sessions. Dying elderly people. Children with a temperature of 39...
There are no more worries or regrets. There are no official boundaries or "red lines." Now I draw the red lines myself...