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Mushroom Death Suit Consumes You
Artist and inventor Jae Rhim Lee has created the mushroom death suit, a flesh-eating Infinity Mushroom-based item of apparel she's trying to cultivate.
(Mushroom Death Suit)
I thought I could train a toxin-cleaning edible mushroom to eat my body. These mushrooms, which usually grow on wood and decaying material in the forest, can be trained to grow on pretty much any organic material and break it down. So I started collecting my hair, nails and skin so I could pick the best mushrooms to become Infinity Mushrooms, to recognise and eat my body after I die...It's basically a fitted organic cotton suit with a crocheted netting on top in a pattern resembling the growth of mushroom mycelium, and the netting is where the Infinity Mushroom spores will initially grow. I'm thinking it might not actually work, because mushroom spores are hard to grow outside of petri dishes. So the next thing I'm thinking of is using gelatin as, basically, a second skin. As it dissolves it provides start-up ingredients for growth.
Science fiction fans are not perturbed by this artistic development. In his 1954 story Of Withered Apples, Philip K. Dick writes about a woman who picks the last apple from an ancient tree that is determined to live on.
Lori picked the leaf up. It was old and brown. Her heart skipped a beat as she slipped the leaf into the pocket of her jeans. Against her loins the leaf cut and tingled, a little hard point piercing her smooth skin and sending exciting shivers up and down her spine. She stood at the open window a moment, sniffing the air. The air was full of the presence of trees and rocks, of great boulders and remote places. It was time - time to go again. She touched the leaf. She was wanted.
Update 16-May-2021: Edwin K. Sloat had a similar idea in his 1933 story The Three Suns of Ev; condemned criminals had the option to drink the fungi.
"Ons and Thaks alike who are doomed to die are sometimes permitted to drink the spores of white fungi in solution,” answered Neis through set teeth, for the first agony of his fatal potion was upon him. “Nothing can save the victim. The fungi slowly eat him. Death usually occurs after about ten days of your earth time. Sometimes much sooner.”
End update.
From Mushroom Death Suit via Frolix_8.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 7/28/2011)
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