Neon Diamonds

By J. Hammers

Researcher Mychel discovers a remarkable new fungus in a cave, but his enthusiasm for the discovery comes into question, along with his own sanity, as strange events start taking place and he begins to manifest "abilities".

• Language: English
• Publisher: J. Hammers
• Release date: Oct 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223593249

J. Hammers

Jacob Hammers is a librarian, educator, music producer, poet, general cynic and critic, as well as essayist and neo-hippie. He produces music under the stage name Lysometrics (formerly GlowWyrm).

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This is a work of fiction: no events, persons, places, concepts or ideologies are represented in any way that is to be taken as fact. The story, and any characters represented therein, are imagined for purposes of creative writing. The science behind mycology, discussed in Chapter 2, is factual science regarding mushrooms from a biological and ecological standpoint. All other references to fungi, mycelium, and other psychoactive chemicals are fictitious.

This work is intended to be a mind-bending superhero origin story, blended with horror and written for adults, and features depictions of graphic violence and a fictitious portrayal of law enforcement and governmental entities, drug references, crime and fictitious mystical experiences for plot development. It addresses the philosophical concepts of freedom of choice versus cultural, political and spiritual determinism, while examining the nature of sanity and psychosis. And, don't forget the super powers!

PROLOGUE:

I’ve heard it said before that when the age of man ends, cockroaches will inherit the earth. Well, contrary to that popular yet misguided opinion, any good mycologist would tell you that cockroaches will never have this planet. There is one thing, more abundant than any breathing creature that we have deemed sentient, or any crawling insect, or any form of life under the depths, that will stand the strains of time. And that is the mycelium. The fungi that we breathe in each day as microscopic spores imperceptible to the human eye, or that we use as medicines and supplements, and eat in stews, or stuff with seasonings. The mycelium which is, at all times, lurking in the shadows beneath the underbrush, all around us.

1.

I have been fascinated by mushrooms since I was young. I didn’t particularly like their taste as a kid, but for me, what made them so very special, was that they came in such a wide variety of different colors and shapes. Correspondingly, many of them, unlike any known plant, could even produce their own light through a unique process of bioluminescence. As I grew older and became a teenager, the interest then became that some mushrooms even produced potent states of altered consciousness. They had been used for shamanic and spiritual purposes for thousands of years, in an almost ubiquitous manner, spanning human culture and evolution across the globe.

Of course, I had to try them for that reason, considering myself an up-and-coming psychonaut and fringe intellectual, and had gotten my hands on five grams of these rather dark and old looking shrooms. I was fifteen years old at the time, and brought them home to my room that day after school. I also had some decent marijuana, a pint of poor-quality vodka that went down like a turpentine mouthwash, and proceeded to roll up two large joints out of the bag of weed. I downed all five grams of the mushrooms with five equivalent shots of vodka, and then pulled out ‘The Wheel of Time’ to await the oncoming effects.

At this point in life, though new to psilocybin mushrooms, I had already taken LSD and had a few experiences with MDMA, so I thought I knew what I was getting myself into. I didn’t realize how detrimental a chemical alcohol could be for a person, and that it could be volatile to combine it with psychedelics. I remember the text in the book beginning to blur, smear and swirl about the page, almost seeming to lift off the paper itself. I recollect thinking that I was surprised at the potency, thinking the experience would be less intense and visceral than acid, and next found myself outside on the lawn, speaking to my friend Karl on an old wireless house phone, about the belief that I had possibly lost my mind, and that all I could see was water and did not understand how my yard had flooded suddenly. Karl reassured me that I was fine, nothing was amiss, and that I was just being a bit paranoid.

The next thing I knew, my father was on the porch, yelling for me to get in the Goddamn house, and then dragged me into a bathroom in front of a mirror. He grabbed me by the face and made me stare at the depthless black saucers that had become my eyes, demanding to know what drugs I had taken. I told him I had eaten magic mushrooms and smoked some weed, in a semi-coherent babble. To my great surprise, he seemed rather relieved at the fact that it was mushrooms. I know now that they are safe and medicinal chemicals, when used appropriately and with purpose, as research has opened on psychedelics and clinical literature has finally been established. My dad, even then, must have been clued into that. He had been, of course, a hippy himself at one point in time, and had used mushrooms.

What lead to my father's seemingly keen discovery of me being on drugs, when I had always managed to keep it under the radar fairly well, was the fact that, while walking about in front of my house on the telephone, I had neglected to mention to Karl, and hadn’t realized myself, that I had stripped naked from the waist down to prevent getting wet from the flooding.

Well, the years passed, and of course I had more experiences with fungi, as well as other tryptamines, phenethylamines, and worse drugs that never benefited me in any way. I barely passed high school, as I was almost never in class, four-pointing my entire senior year with a seven-hour schedule through sheer want and will, which was the requirement for me to be able to graduate at all. I even managed to get into a good college, because of the dedication of my strange but loving and driven father.

I found myself in a whole new world, with unique and aspiring intellectuals of every form and color, partying our nights away like mad men and studying rigorously during the day for our courses, sometimes even into the night, and taking various drugs all the while and smoking cannabis like the world would run out of it. There was never really a fine line for me then, when it came to the consumption of substances, and the time and place for them. I performed wonderfully in my studies, despite this, and managed to obtain a bachelor’s degree in microbiology, before taking it all the way down the road to a Ph.D. in mycology. I cleaned up my act after that, predominantly, relegating any substance use to documented research and only consuming specific entheogens on infrequent and scientifically purposed occasions.

2.

Fungi are unlike anything else on this planet. They serve a function as the earth’s digestive system and tract, breaking down matter and recycling that matter so that the world isn’t covered in deceased animals and plants. In turn, the process provides the vital and essential nutrients to the soil that then brings about new life. The mycelium obtains nutrients from the environment in which it interconnects and co-inhabits, by secreting enzymes to break down organic matter and then rapidly absorb it. Plants also benefit from these nutrients and have co-evolved with the fungi, via the mycelium, since life on the planet began. Without fungi, the world would essentially be uninhabitable. Furthermore, in nature, they even act as antibiotic agents for plants and animals against disease and bacteria, ensuring that ecosystems and organisms thrive in a healthy and harmonious relationship that promulgates life on the planet.

Beyond this already incredible and symbiotic relationship with all life around them, fungi also represent the neural network, in essence, of all plant life on the planet. The mycelium, the vegetative part of the fungus, consists of a mass of branching, thread-like tendrils that mirror the three-dimensional appearance of neural pathways in our own brains. Plant life, though thought to lack the capacity for intelligence, reacts to external stimuli and makes choices to further its own existence, as do all forms of life considered to be intelligent. When the San Pedro cactus feels that it is threatened, it will increase the alkaloid content of its fruiting body, generating greater concentrations of mescaline in the plant, in what seems to evidence a hope that the threat