Prepare to meet members of an extreme cult that took root 鈥� literally 鈥� in a forest on a Japanese island in the 2080s. An unknown number of people traded their status as individual humans to merge biologically with the fungal network in forest soil.
The cult grew out of a Buddhist sect that modernised the traditional belief that there is no spiritual or moral boundary between selves. The concept was adapted by Zen ecologists who championed the idea of the holobiome, viewing an organism as a super-entity comprised of the host body and all its symbiotic microbes. The No Boundary sect saw no essential difference between humans and other living organisms. It was effectively the radical rebirth of the 鈥渂ack to nature鈥� movement of the 19th and 20th centuries, boosted by new technology.
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With advances in synthetic biology, the sect engineered a merging of living human tissue with the mycorrhizal network, the underground fungal web in soil. The new entities 鈥� for they could no longer be called human 鈥� communicate with a form of intelligence that is entirely novel: by becoming chimeric with fungal biology, they also prolonged their lives for decades, perhaps indefinitely. This aspect appealed to life-extension enthusiasts.
Communication with the fungal network was achieved when biological computers were designed that were able to mesh with microbes more naturally than conventional machines.
From the 2030s onwards, computers made from living cells found an important niche when inserted into restored ecosystems: they could measure parameters such as parasite density, and make adjustments to the system in reaction to environmental pollutants. Fungal computers comprised of mycorrhizal networks were trained in the same way neural networks are trained for artificial intelligence; they provided information about the status of natural environments and affected changes in trees far away.
These living computers played an important part in the restoration of Earth鈥檚 ecosystems following the devastation of the previous centuries. One side effect was that they encouraged people to engineer closer symbiotic unions with other organisms.
The safety of fungal-human chimeras was assured by first gene editing a suitable mycorrhizal species and testing its growth in tissue cultures, then in mouse models in the 2070s. The mice鈥檚 vital signs changed as the fungus grew through their systems 鈥� their lungs and heart initially continued to supply oxygen, but before long the fungus took over this function. At that point, their ability to vocalise was lost.
The brain activity of a chimeric fungus-mouse changed to resemble that of a mammalian brain on psychedelic drugs. In particular, the default mode network 鈥� the set of brain regions that give people a sense of self and ego 鈥� was disrupted. Mice and people who submitted to the chimeric process lost their ego as they merged with the fungi. In dissolving the boundary between species, the subjects lost their self, and the No Boundary sect elevated them to the highest level of their priesthood.
Until around the 2020s, the mycorrhizal network had been largely ignored by crop breeders, but its vital importance in plant growth and carbon storage gradually became appreciated. As farming methods changed to optimise the network, the use of artificial fertiliser was massively reduced. This removed the harmful effects that nitrates had on soil microbes and river ecosystems, as well as the carbon emissions made during fertiliser production.
The No Boundary cult grew out of a desire to erase divisions, and in some sense to atone for the crimes of humanity against nature. Some fungi are effectively immortal, and since there were predicted longevity benefits to the procedure, the first to merge with fungi were older members of the sect who felt they had less to lose. Some welcomed the renunciation of their human status. Still, the procedure was a one-way trip, and it was attractive only for a minority. The base was on Yakushima, an island in the south of Japan with an ancient, largely intact forest ecosystem.
Communication with the chimeras dwindled as the fungi began to dominate after several years of integration, so we don鈥檛 know what the experience was like. Before they lost the power of speech in the mid-2080s, the last words of cultists attempted to convey the vastness of the new world they were glimpsing, and awe at the transition. Many decades later, remote brain scans of people who had undergone the process suggested regions associated with memory formation, love and imagination were highly active.
听
Invention
Human-fungal chimeras
Time stamp
2080s
Tag line
Live forever 鈥� but as a fungus!
Future Chronicles explores听an听imagined history听of听inventions and听developments yet to come.听Rowan Hooper is the听podcast editor at 麻豆传媒 and author of How to Spend a Trillion Dollars: The 10 global problems we听can actually fix. You can follow him on X @rowhoop
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