The doctor and the thermalshrooms
Her stomach let out another groan as a sharp pain raced through her gut. Dr. Anya Petrova could never get used to this descent. Her eyes glanced to the screen at the top of the pod, which was a cramped metal egg shuddering against the groaning reinforced wells of this geothermal well. They were just a mile down, and many more to do down miles of rock and magma which pressed against her from all sides.
They called it Wellspring Alpha, what was marketed as a major accomplishment in their clean energy transition. Yet all she could see was a wound bored into the planet’s flesh. She supposed that’s why she was called when that wound festered.
“Petrova, what’s your status?” the voice crackled in her ear from the headset wrapped around her neck.
It was the project head, Dr. Singh. She didn’t need video to know that he was both stressed and impatient.
“I’m still descending. Level 12,” she muttered, peering at the screen again. “I’m already seeing some contamination.”
She looked at the tablet in her hands as sensor readouts began filling her screen with data.
“It’s organic. Definitely fungal. Although that’s it. There’s no pattern match in the mycology databases and the profiles don’t match the extremophile baseline.”
“Just find the source. We have deadlines,” Singh grumbled. “I’m not interested in any more delays.”
The pod sank level after level, leaving the sterile facility above for the well’s strange alchemy of scalding water and choking pressure.
Something glimmered in her eye and she hit the emergency stop button. She had to investigate it.
There was a light coming from outside. It wasn’t a harsh fluroescent or a cool LED, but a gentle, pulsing glow emanating from a fissure in the rock. She brought her face right to the glass window. The fungus here was fascinating. It was woven into a web of intricate lattices, glowing as though infused with the Earth’s molten heart.
“Singh, are you seeing this?” she tapped the Record button on her smart glasses. “I’m at Level… 23 right now. It’s not just growing. It’s… organized.”
There was a silence on the line. She checked the connection. Maybe she was too far down.
“Dr. Sin…”
“Organized?!” he suddenly interrupted. “Petrova, are you saying…”’
“Look, I know this sounds unorthodox,” she continued. “But it looks like a network. There’s a clear pattern.”
There was another long pause. As Singh replied, she sensed his exasperation had a hint of curiosity. “Take samples, as much data as you can collect. But do it fast. I’ve got the Board breathing down my neck.”
She was glad to get out of the hole. The samples were rushed to her lab on the surface, an old building retrofitted for biology. Like her, it was a place with a thin line between chaos and scientific ecstasy.
It was there where she was able to learn more about this unique specimen. The glowing fungus wasn’t just metabolizing the heat: it contained a unique protein structure which acted as a natural energy regulator. It thrived in the geothermal well, probably growing further the more they used it. Dr. Singh wouldn’t like that, so they would have to turn this discovery from a problem into a savior.
“Dr. Lin, you’ve been working all night,” she said to her lead bioengineer. “Go take a break. Get a shower. Grab a nap.”
“I haven’t made any progress,” Dr. Lin reported remorsefully. Her exhaustion was clear. “CRISPR isn’t going to work. Their protein is too delicate.”
As Anya sat down to review her colleague’s notes, a memory was brought up. It wasn’t from studying textbooks in school nor working in sterile labs. Rather it was from an argument long ago with her brother, who was a theoretical physicist obsessed with synthetic biology.
“We don’t edit it!” she exclaimed suddenly, drawing the attention of the grad students doing their own work. “We teach it.”
When Dr. Lin returned later that day, Anya showed what she had created. It was a new kind of AI design program, one based on predictive modeling of protein interactions. They entered the glowing fungus’s protein structure, including the ideal parameters for energy regulation, and let the AI do what it does best — find patterns and extrapolate probably solutions.
The result of the program wasn’t a series of gene edits, but a series of computationally designed, synthetic proteins. The proteins were not meant to alter the fungus, just nudge it toward the final state, like an encouraging dance instructor.
The synthesizing process took several weeks, but she finally returned to the claustrophobic metal pod.
“Singh, we’re ready for deployment,” she said as the elevator took her deep into the well.
As she released the protein into the well at level 23, she knew she was not just a biologist anymore. She was now also a fungal choreographer.
As the bio-luminescence spread, she monitored the sensor readouts again. The well’s energy output began rising dramatically, but the variance was falling simultaneously. They were reaching a steady state.
“Dr. Singh, are you there?” she whispered in her earpiece with a tremor of excitement in her voice. “The system is finding balance. We’ve achieved symbiosis.”
“Good work Petrova, I can see the same thing up here,” Singh sounded better, warmer. “This stability is good. Now about these projections… do you think we’ll be able to hit the goals for next quarter.”
She muted the call for a few seconds. She just wanted to stare at the glow from the well in quiet. It felt serene, miles below the ground and all her responsibilities.
She tapped the com again. “Yes Dr. Singh, the projections are very promising.”
“The board needs more than promises Petrova. They want certainties.”
“I can’t predict the future. The world is an ever-changing place. It might surprise you.”
“I can’t afford any more surprises. Just keep an eye on those levels.”
Anya sighed as the transmission ended. Already her fascinating discovery had been replaced by a familiar tension. She couldn’t help but admit to herself that Singh was right, in a way. Results mattered. The bottom line was why they had brought her here in the first place.
Before she returned to the surface she took another moment to stare at the strange glow. She had connected to something more. It wasn’t a mere scientific breakthrough, but a sense that the Earth itself held solutions far more elegant than what humans could brute-force. Perhaps some battles couldn’t be won with spreadsheets alone.
Enhanced geothermal is a new way to draw renewable energy from deep in the earth. This is great for humans, but you do need to wonder what kinds of things lurk beneath the earth. It’s a place that we haven’t really explored and we continue to discover new lifeforms wherever we go.