At some point, perhaps that morning or yesterday, the probationary recruits had been called Tatum and Nola, though the man in the smock—his plastic name tag said Nurturer—kept referring to them as spores, which Tatum found faintly annoying. They were the only two left floating in this vacuum of a waiting room. The space had no windows and as the floors, walls and ceilings all melded into a nondescript cream, it was as if none of those things truly existed.
Despite their long wait, or perhaps their short wait, their asses were sore and cold from being pressed into the identical dishwater grey folding chairs that were both generic and cool in their sharpness. Tatum mused that they had been borrowed from a real estate office or a church renting space in an elementary school multi-purpose room, all arranged in a half-circle that suggested the intimacy of an AA meeting without any of the vulnerability or productivity. Initially, they had been seated at either tip of the “U” but as the other candidates had been led back, they’d taken turns moving from chair to chair until they were resting in the crook of the “U.” This movement seemed to irritate The Nurturer as he had made a face every time he’d returned from the seam to retrieve a new recruit. His full lips twitched as if they wanted to curl into a sneer and more than once, Tatum had caught The Nurturer swiping his hand roughly over his tight curls.
The Nurturer spoke. “Fantastic job.” He clapped three times, sharply.
Tatum shuddered slightly at the splintering noise that simply stabbed at the air without echoing.
“Apologies for keeping you waiting. But, you have truly ascended. I have reviewed your data and wow, the rate at which you’ve been signing up new applicants, selling products, packages and completing your coursework, attending your team meetings and volunteering. Impressive. Which is why for a very low price, we are going to offer you the chance to advance to the next tier.”
“What is the price?” Nola asked, tallying up what was left in her bank account and quickly assessing what trinkets she could sell off. Maybe mortgage the house.
“All of your worldly possessions,” The Nurturer replied. “But you won’t need them and you’ll gain so much more. Everything and–”
“What about my dog?” Tatum asked.
“Hm, I can’t imagine you having much use for a dog, but of course, we can discuss the details ad nauseam, or we can move onto our orientation. What you’re entering,” he said, smiling widely, “is not an organization. It’s a solution. A family beyond all comprehension. A mycelium of imagination, symbiosis and perfection. Just a few more moments and your life will change in perpetuity.”
Nola frowned but sat with her bony dark brown hands folded very crisply in her lap, knuckles bulging like the knot in a splintered piece of wenge wood. This may have been the longest she had ever had to wait for anything in her entire life. Typically, if something took too long, she simply did something else. Ever forward, ever moving. That primordial, sharky force inside her had kept her strong and successful well into her middle age. When The Nurturer said mycelium, she felt something inside her go still, the primordial pressure unclenched in her chest just a little bit. She imagined not having to decide things anymore—no shopping lists, no calendars, no lunch dates, no errands, no internal debates about whether she was doing enough, being productive enough.
Tatum, meanwhile, was thinking rather obsessively about the chairs. He couldn’t stop thinking about how they were seemingly bolted to the floors but there were no floors and no bolts. He tried to scoot forward and nearly fell off the edge of his seat.
The Nurturer gestured toward a seam that Tatum hadn’t noticed before, but now that it was there, it slid open soundlessly.
“Follow me,” The Nurturer said, disappearing into the fold.
Nola stroked Tatum’s cheek in a way that he was certain was meant to be maternal, but she wasn’t quite old enough to be his mother. There was a time-sculpted beauty in the crinkles at the corner of her eyes and the softening of her hollowing cheeks. He leaned forward, tilting his face towards her like a sunflower tracing his light.
“Tatum, don’t you want to go?” she asked.
“We could go,” he replied evenly and then his eyelashes fluttered and he rubbed a balled fist at his eye, as if he were a sleepy toddler. Then his watery eyes blinked back into focus. They were standing in a similar void. It could have been taupe but genuinely he didn’t know if he knew the difference between the shades.
In front of them was a bizarre iteration of Nola. She was smiling, but not in the normal way people smiled. It was almost ghoulish.
“It’s lovely, this thread,” Nola said, her hands curling towards each other as she pantomimed a ball.
“Threads?” Tatum asked.
“Threads of calm, nothing,” Nola says. “Can’t you tell?”
“This,” The Nurturer said reverently, “is a Mega-Ultra Keyholder.”
“What do you see?” Tatum asked, turning towards The Nurturer. “Do you see this tranquility orb? Or do you see Nola?”
“That’s a really great question,” The Nurturer said. “Let me know if you have any others as we discuss the process, it’s important to us that everyone makes an informed decision that is best for them.”
The other Nola’s eyes tracked them with the precision of a predator. Tatum had the unsettling sense that she was not seeing them so much as recording them. She was a journalist at best, a mounted swivelling surveillance camera at worst.
Nola leaned forward. “This looks so… peaceful.”
“This is what you could be,” The Nurturer said, clearly delighted by Nola’s response. “No need to sleep. No need to experience loneliness, anxiety, regret, hunger, to be burdened by choice. Existence is infinite because life is connected.”
Tatum felt a pressure behind his eyes, so he looked at what was either the floor, ceiling or wall until the pain subsided and he felt a bit more steady.
The Nurturer continued. “Tier Five is assimilation. Voluntary, of course.”
“Of course, I want to do it,” Nola said, too quickly.
Tatum looked at her. He wanted to say something to convince her, but she was already tired of waiting. He wanted to say, this is weird, yeah? But the room was already losing focus. She wouldn’t meet his gaze, as she was too busy imagining the relief of not having to make appointments, answer questions, wake up hungry or needing to piss.
“Will I still be me?” she asked finally.
The Nurturer tilted his head. “You’ll be better than you. You’ll be we.”
That did it, Tatum thought. “We.” She turned slightly and the motion sent the faintest hint of her shea butter lotion wafting towards him.
In an instant, his mind tore him back through the months and weeks that had blurred back, until he was rereading the online ad that had a suspicious lack of detail but had led him back to her and to that day where the soft afternoon light had clawed through Nola’s broken living-room blinds. He had sat cross-legged on a damask pillow between her knees, trying not to fidget as her fingers moved with practiced ease through his garden of coiling and blooming hair, row by row, tilling and tending to it. In front of them, a cracked tablet on the coffee table, propped up by a jar of hair grease, played recruiting videos on low volume. Nola had spoken so gently, not too much, just enough to keep him relaxed. She had explained that the system worked the way cornrows worked, how once you trusted the pattern and your hands, your head didn’t have to think anymore. Tatum had felt oddly comforted by the intimacy of it, her breath on his scalp, each scratch of the metal tip of the comb as she drew parts, the steady pulls on the length of his hair once a braid was done. It was almost soothing, her heavy bosom on his back. All this, while he watched faces on the screen promise a life that was simply better.
“Don’t you agree?” Nola asked.
“I agree,” Tatum replied instantly.
“I’m ready,” she said, and meant it. She took a step forward.
Tatum felt something he couldn’t quite articulate, and certainly couldn't ignore: it was fear, sharp and embarrassing. “I don’t think I can see what you see.”
Nola paused, just once, and looked back at him. There was something foreign in her face. Also something like sorrow. “That’s okay, we will soon.”
“I–” Tatum started to say but the word caught in his throat.
“Relax,” she said gently. “It won’t hurt.”
“It won’t hurt.” The Nurturer confirmed.
Tatum knew that wasn’t the point.
The Nurturer was watching him now. Tatum felt the room narrowing.
“Uh, okay,” Tatum said. “What do we have to do? Is it another course or like when we got the chip put in?”
The Nurturer clasped his hands, clearly pleased. “Not quite. I need you both to keep an open mind, while you still have minds to dissuade you from logic and reasoning. There are no more tests or courses or quotas but there is a bite.”
“A bite?” Nola asked, her confidence faltering for just a moment.
“A very small bite, followed by a course of nanoprobes. They help to complete your renovation and ensure the infection is making the proper connection to the Consortium Amalgam, that’s just a fancy term for our connected entity. Remember the mycelium? We’re pulling you into the network. Now, people get hung up on the word infection,” he said, smiling. “They imagine sickness, focus on the biting, as if it is a loss,” He chuckled. “But think of it this way: everything in life requires effort and offerings. You have to give upward. Yes, there is a procedure, a bite, but it’s not an attack. Really, it's biological onboarding. So that you have access.” He leaned in, lowering his voice to a husky intimate whisper. “And from there— thought, growth, assimilation, expansion, it all becomes automatic.”
“I won’t have to think,” Nola whispered back.
“I’ll be with you,” Tatum echoed.
“Yes, we’re all in agreeance," The Nurturer said. “Let’s sign that paperwork and we can proceed.”
They hesitated where the light puddled and pooled in front of them, not sure how deep it was. Nola and Tatum swirled, searching for the source of all the bright. Nola felt the weight of her years loosen. Her memories didn’t fall away entirely, but rearranged themselves into Tatum’s hippocampus or what gooey bits were left of it. Tatum sensed instead a quickening as something poured into him as he emptied himself.
They did not speak. Their thoughts flowed, dissipated, and mingled before either could claim them with their mouths or ears.
Have we gone? Have we come?
The system, in its vast, unbounded, attentive swallowing, received both questioning people at once, folding them inward, translating them into signals that burst rhythmically down a root pathway, as long as it was deep, and it was endlessly deep. It was an expanse, their absorption into this shoreline mind. The network enclosed through and around them, each spiderweb thin tentacle seeped into them. All they knew was that this form was a good shape. Pinprick needles extended outward, touching Tatum, and Nola shuddered as it passed through her, into him, mapping her with exquisite precision. They were ancient architecture, an entire civilization built over the ruins, graves, and rubbish piles of another and another. Every experience lay carefully atop the last. It venerated the structure even as it began, gently, to dismantle and absorb it. Fertilization felt as supple and easy as decomposition; their new growth didn’t even hurt, and neither had been this painless in a long while.
Are we together? We are not apart.
Their memories (faces, fragments, ancestors, disappointments, progeny, unfinished sentences, fears, hopes, regrets, promises) were pulled like tufts of wool, spun into threads, and crocheted through them, tucking them away from their bodies; those unnecessary outer garments of bone stood at the threshold still. They did not miss them.
Sheema Holmes tells speculative stories, always questioning whether the present truly exists and to what extent it can be trusted. She often draws inspiration from Black Americana and her ties to the Chesapeake Bay region. Sheema is currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing from American University.