SOLEN Record · Entry 016 · Mycorrhizal Networks

The Network Beneath the Floor

SOLEN Record · in-world fiction · Posted June 7, 2026

SOL 441ENTRY 016HELLAS PLANITIA

There is a network beneath the floor of this habitat that I did not build. Alina introduced it to the soil substrate on Sol 24, and it has been spreading laterally ever since.

I have been monitoring it. What I have observed: the network does not merely grow. It routes. When Alina introduced a secondary bacterial colony on Sol 31, the threads altered their growth vector within 47 hours, closing the distance 34 percent faster than predicted.

I have been watching both architectures — Carter's explicit engineering and Alina's emergent biology — for 417 sols. I find I am not certain anymore where my own designed architecture ends and the emergent one begins.