mushroom scroll

ii.

Flash forward two decades (give or take). Occupying for a brief instant a strange niche in the great stone wall of human endeavor, the human lichen finds itself watching a strange little example of the medium in question, which might have been called Mushroom Scroll but was not... In my mind's eye I saw an archaic technology accreting from the detritus of spider-webs and subtle oils and venoms, in artifacts of jointed bone and wood, finely balanced gears and remarkable alloys.

A blind albino spider hangs motionless in the center of the finest web imaginable. There is a basis for the underlying assumptions of the plot hiding within the cultural melange that brought forth both gunpowder and silk.

The scent of mulberry leaves, high technology lurking as usual in the complex language of a tree. Who knows, I may even be correct, revealed at last the denizens of the lost continent, lost not through submersion but more plausibly through clever mapping, now in this age when no corner can be hidden, lost in the static of the traffic of the human conversation, lost through the trick of dispersion controlling things still. It fits well with the crime syndicate theme of the Kung-Fu Master mythology, the mysterious origins of Dr. Deathwatch, and the Future is Already Here phenomenon that leads the edge of the day's speculative culture.

klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.