Starcosmo

Chapter 11: Castiaux

Rural Washington State

Zero hour + 4 days

It was not all that unusual that James Joyce Castiaux's phone buzzed him awake at 4:05 am on an otherwise-ordinary Wednesday morning. Like many who worked in his circles, he had a true diversity of friends, many of whom kept odd hours.

What was a bit strange, in this case, was that his caller was prepared to give him something of incalculable value.

Give, not sell. It would have been only slightly less bizarre if he caller was selling, not giving, given Castiaux's reputation as the neighborhood mycologist (and, only slightly less well-know, the neighborhood entheonologist). People of all sorts were constantly offered him this or that cache of common blue Lactarius or not-so-common psilocybe cuensis for a good price. Castiaux, for his part, mostly turned these well-intentioned people away, often providing some suggestions for how best to make use of their find, culinarily or spiritually.

James reached across the bedside and retrieved his handheld. The message was marked urgent and read simply I found them.

It took Castiaux a moment of processing before the meaning sunk in and jolted him awake.

The message was from Travis Burdock, his friend and a habitually nocturnal mushroom-hunter. I found them. The forbidden mushrooms. The glowing ones. The mushrooms that, by all accounts, appeared just before the massive Thing In Space that had shattered the mundane drone of existence.

The mushrooms that the government was so desperate to keep out of the hands of the people. The ones they were burning on sight.

James swung out of bed and grabbed a bathrobe from the floor, pulling it on hastily, handheld in his free hand as he let himself out of the bedroom quietly. He checked the message again, and another one came in: At your place in 5 min.

Burdock was coming straight over. Good. For all James knew, he'd been mushroom hunting on James' own property; he did that often.  Behind the house was a deep woods and a ravine. That was fair game.

Castiaux balanced haste and quiet as he went downstairs. Guildenstern, the golden retriever, was alert and thumped sympathetically from his guard post at the bottom of the stairs. "It's okay, Guildie," JJ whispered. "Go back to sleep, boy."

But the dog seemed to sense the urgency in his voice, and rose quietly to his side, clicking across the floor next to him as he went into the lab and prepared it for the imminent arrival of the most precious mycological find, maybe ever.

JJ leaned against the table for a moment, letting the enormity of it weigh him down. I found them. The mother lode. The Holy Grail.

The mushrooms that looked beautiful, tasted wonderful and made you go crazy.

There were really no direct reports from people who had tried the mushrooms. Some people said the lack of first-hand accounts meant nobody had tried them; James was pretty sure it meant the evidence was being systematically suppressed.

But the online forums JJ belonged to were private and censorship-free, outside the purview of the Big Three content providers, and abuzz with apocryphal rumors and second-hand accounts from "a friend of a friend" -- the Holy Mushrooms gave you dementia, they were the most intense trip ever, they allowed you to communicate telepathically with the aliens.

It was all so much fever-dreaming. JJ was nonplussed by the wild stories, realizing that tumultuous times brought out the craziest of crazies. There were only two rumors that carried any air of reality, in James' mind: one about a little girl somewhere in the Midwest who'd disappeared under mysterious circumstances from the hospital after ingestion, and a retired hippy in Florida. That was all.