Thrust: A Novel

Another worm picked up the point. “You ever seen a waxy monkey tree frog? That’s a more spectacular species than you. You know all the problems you’re having with bacteria resistance? What a man-made, idiotic problem. That frog’s skin could form the basis of a whole new arsenal of antibiotics. Did you know their skin has a protein that contains dermorphin, an opioid fifty times more potent than morphine? You know what you knuckleheads use dermorphin for? Doping thoroughbred horses. So your racehorses can ignore the pain you’re putting them through and run faster.”

The mycelium joined in: “There are seventy-five species of poison-dart frogs, in more colors than you have names for, with more than four hundred novel alkaloids in their skin.”

The first worm raised up some off the ground for emphasis. “You spend so much time mythologizing monsters! The vampire bat? Sure, it bites its prey, sucks the wound — but it also carries a unique anticoagulant in its spit. The vampire bat produces this substance you call draculin. Someday you’ll ‘discover’ that draculin is an effective agent for retarding clotting. But you’re too busy making up cutesy names and blaming the damn bats for your own idiotic diseases.”

Laisvė knelt down into the dirt.

The mycelium curled around her knees. “There are literally thousands of Amazonian fungi you haven’t even noticed yet. And all of you who don’t live here, who live in cities full of corporations and pollutants and death-driven, war-centered behavior, far away from the millions of people and billions of species of plants and animals who live outside those cities — what do you do? You let it burn.”

“Can I please help?” Laisvė felt infinitesimal. Not in size. In soul.

“Well,” the worm said, its tip leaning toward the tips of other worms as if conferring with them. “You could just pull up the tiger lilies around here. That way at least our work will be a little easier. But listen, word on the street has it that you’re after a lily of your own.”

Laisvė had already started pulling up flowers, strewing their carcasses in limp heaps, but now she paused. “What do you mean, worm? After a lily?”

The worm raised itself up from the dirt like a question mark. “Turtles sent word ahead of you. You’re after a girl, aren’t you? That’s your lily. She works about two miles from here, on foot, I think. But she’s not there right now. She eats her lunch nearly always at the foot of the fountain in the botanical gardens. Even when it rains! Stupid human. We don’t measure distances the way you do, but one or two miles on foot — that’s my best guess. We measure in eating and shitting and aerating soil, so our metrics won’t mean much to someone like you. Your kind should try it sometime.”

“Try what?”

“Eating dirt,” the worm said. A tiny chorus of worm laughter.

“Oh, that. I have tried it. When I was young, I used to eat handfuls of dirt, straight out of the ground. And apple cores. Seeds. Balls of paper. And pennies,” Laisvė said. “My father said it was pica. I never understood why it needed a name.”

“I see. Then we have some things in common. You should also try getting it on with the earth instead of destroying it with your own endless reproduction. You humans are all so full of yourselves! What a waste of being. Anyway. Go that way. Or just meditate on the word lily… I don’t know what kind of girl you are, but sometimes human-child spawn can travel differently, I’ve noticed. Once your species hits adulthood, it’s all over. Dead matter. Stasis. Stuck inside their own dramas.”

“I travel by water. Backward and forward in time,” Laisvė said.

“Well, there’s always the sewer system if you don’t want to walk. Unless swimming through shit is a problem for you. Humans are so… averse, to — what? Their own damn organic matter.”

A tiny group chuckle.

“All righty, then. Back to work.” The worm joined its worm brothersistermotherfather bodies in their labor. The sounds of their labor receding, Laisvė began to walk in the direction her imagination pulled her. In her mind’s eye, she could see a fountain with mermaids and seashells and turtles spitting water. She held it there as if it were a beacon.