Roy Zhu
The brainless, seemingly unintelligent organism (Physarum polycephalum) has been harnessed to transfer specific colors between foods dyed with food coloring, move a small boat through a gel medium and even solve mazes. Over the past several years, [scientists] have used the slime mold to do something astoundingly complicated: design plans for national highway systems. And each time, within days, the mold created routes that are remarkably similar to actual systems designed by human engineers.
– The Smithsonian Magazine
Under a pale square of panoptic light, the researcher pipettes a single drop of it:
the acclaimed engineer on a pane of agar. Unthinking, hungry, clonal. Paragon
of manifest destiny. Our nation is outlined in the milky dish. Carbohydrates cluster
in the crude shape of cities. The all-knowing blob smothers each node. Networks
of golden arms trace the contours of our interstates. It is a miracle. A slime mold.
Our nation has for decades striven for this: unpaid pseudo-fungal designers. I shrink
to imagine the topography of this simulated country. The slime mold fills in dead
rivers, unburies old trails, hikes the sides of sacred mountains. Becomes, propels,
destroys. All is swallowed the same. It reveals the only answer. Past and future
unite, perfected. Down here, it moves with glacial weight. I think of my family, if
they’ve been absorbed. I watch as the organism plants its seeds into soil, mycelial
and hungry. No one escapes. I beg for mercy, for my lover, for time. It closes each
inefficiency. All will be retained, all will be incorporated. It whispers to me, let me
consume you as I have consumed your wasteful desires. Become one with the road.
The ichor tendrils of the slime mold catch my fleeing body and we touch each other.
I submit. My veins blissfully integrate, my neurons melt into one vast superhighway.
Before I am it, I fight for time to hold one final desire, the memory of a Toyota Prius
racing west on Interstate 90 to Amherst, music blaring out the windows. I am 18,
drinking in the stars and screaming a song about not being able to breathe. Frozen
in a single moment—the rush a second after evading traffic, the pitch of my voice
aligns with yours as we make the final run: my love is average, I obey an average law
As the miasma encircles my eyes and turns my veins to gold, I see my divine fingers
Reaching, intertwining at last with yours.
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Roy Zhu is a junior Creative Writing and Environmental Science major who grew up in Greater Boston! His favorite poet at the moment is Rumi and lately he has been listening to Victoria Monét, Rico Nasty, and Kali Uchis.
