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by Pamela Mueggenberg (Author)
Reality does not allow for dichotomies. Black and white ideas like "good" or "evil" are eroded by experience, smoothed into an understanding of life as it is, not as we expect it to be. If evil were real it would be a more intrinsic part of our physical world, rather than a story we create to bring meaning to suffering. We could see it, touch it, measure it - it would be subject to the demands of ecological necessity just like every other source of change in our world. Ultimately, something would want to eat it.
In the world of 60/40, we have co-evolved with just such a consumer. Humanity, one of the most consistent sources of evil, is an ideal host for the endobiont: a complex mycological organism that spans - and changes - time. Evil isn't good for anybody and the endobiont doesn't rely on us being awful to each other for its meals. Rather, it carefully tends its human stock, absorbing away enough toxic material for the species to flourish - not unlike ribosomes leaching lead and other toxic metals away from tree roots to keep their habitat livable.
Our story begins with a death: Mikel, an awful man by all measures, seems to be having a heart attack. As he dies the endobiont takes him, and his final thoughts are being fully aware that he will be forgotten and all his work will be erased. His death sets off a series of changes throughout the world. Towns disappear. People bloom. And his children can't exist.
The story braids in narratives from prehistory, to high school libraries, to a sound stage in the 1990s advertising the joy of connecting to the endobiont, to deep underground where people hide from absorption. The resulting mosaic of experiences builds to a portrait of grief and the knowledge that the world is always full of loss convincing us we're apart, and compassion holding us all together.
