Apaniradihadi
By Melissa Ingaruca Moreno and Gaston Horacio Hermida
Psycilumis gave us access to the internet of Earth’s sensorial worlds through altered states of consciousness, it gave us the ability to connect with other species’ sensorial systems and to “borrow” their abilities.
We were of the idea that we only have one reality, one world. But life was a bit like when you look through soap bubbles floating in the air, each bubble creating a little distorted version of the world. Each one of us, humans and other species were living in a unique sensorial world, each of us with a unique way to experience and understand nature, but all of us navigating consciousness through our sensory tunnels. We, humans, were biologically limited by our senses to experience only a fraction of the world stimuli. Psycilumis gave us access to the internet of Earth’s sensorial worlds through altered states of consciousness, it gave us the ability to connect with other species’ sensorial systems and to “borrow” their abilities.
Fungi terraformed the Earth once, billions of years ago, and now it was on the path to transforming the very fabric of consciousness. Mycelium — which is the threadlike, vegetative part of a mushroom — had for a while been regarded as Earth’s natural internet, as it spreads through the soil underground and connects the roots of plants allowing for communication among them. Psycilumis worked a bit like mycelium, in a network-like manner. Psycilumis connected all existing sensorial worlds and forms of life consciousness. Mycelium, you could say, was like the internet physical infrastructure and Psycilumis worked much like wifi. Scientists estimate there are 2 to 5 million species in the fungi kingdom. We only knew about 200 thousand species, and of them, we roughly knew 180 psychoactive species (Psilocybin mushrooms), those that can trigger altered states of consciousness in humans. Only some of these psychoactive species contained Psycilumis.
In 2021, we discovered the first mushroom species to activate Psycilumis when interacting with human consciousness, the Pantonis Marvella, the key to a sensorial revolution. Species are connected by evolution, and as we branched out further and further away, we developed specific sensorial apparatus and different ways of organizing our brain. Psycilumis connected all those paths of sensorial worlds. But Psycilumis didn’t come with instructions, it was not like a map you can read, or a browser in which you could google your way through. There was a learning curve to navigating through the full spectrum of Earth-based sensorial worlds.
Although its origins remain unknown, Psycilumis made its reputation in Berlin illegal forest parties and clubs. During the first waves of coronavirus, nightlife around the planet was at a standstill. This was especially hard for Berlin, long considered the mecca of free, untamed techno and nightlife. In the beginning of the third wave in 2021, it was still illegal to have any kind of party in the city, but people had had enough of isolation, and Psycilumis was around. It was a happy coincidence.
Anonymous scientist (37), 2021:
Now you have to understand that we had a pretty stressful year ok? People are calling it the plant virus. There are a lot of stories around it, that people go crazy, get a stroke. So of course there is fear. But hey it is like LSD right? that got lots of negative publicity. Anyways nobody knows where it came from, you have to understand that because it first appeared in illegal contexts, well nobody will talk basically. There are rumours that it was brought from East Kalimantan (Indonesia). Some people are sure many indigenous communities have known about it for a long time and kept it to themselves, just let the rest have fun with ayahuasca maybe. But Psycilumis is really unstable in this original form. And the way it works… it’s like somebody installed wifi in your brain. It’s messy, you can’t really pick up any sign. The sign picks you. It has a randomness to it. But the sight and hearing sense were most commonly enhanced, maybe because these are senses most developed by humans. It seems that people found it easier to browse in that direction. But there are many attempts to stabilize and resynthesize it to target better the sensorial effect. Some people still prefer the raw version and somehow they just become better at surfing it. But the mushroom pretty much decides where to take you, or you decide in a subconsciousness level. We just don’t really know. Neuroscientists are looking into it. It is like a conversation happening between our brain and this mushroom and we are barely picking up some sentences.
Anonymous citizen (19), Berlin. 2021:
I hear about this thing on the market, quite new stuff. None of my friends knew about it. And the guy promises us there is nothing like it. So I go to this, well, you know, illegal party in an abandoned building in the Grunewald Forest. And it was pretty dark, but it was part of the experience my guy told me. So I’m scared and also so excited. It was a lot to take in… the ecstasy of gathering with people; hearing music out loud and then, I feel this dizziness and see dislocated images, the color is being sucked out of the world, and people have this ghostly glow. I can’t really see sharp but then there is this wow moment, I’m seeing glowing dancing bodies, neon-like lights everywhere! and I don’t stop to think about it…. but you know I was having an infrared vision experience. I could see the heat that radiates from everything, and a little fox comes along shining like a beacon. By the end of that summer when restrictions were lifted, you know clubs needed a comeback, but this was an experimental thing and some people had reported having panic attacks and so on. So you know Berghain was not gonna go for it, they had too much attention and expectation on them. So Psycilumis made its way in spontaneous word-to-mouth parties in abandoned houses. And I would say it really hit the ears of the city after this one electro tropical rave in Neukölln. They outdid themselves. They created these spaces with thermal contrast… it was just beautiful.
Anonymous citizen (25), Berlin. 2021:
A friend told me that when we talk about the electromagnetic spectrum, we use the prefixes “ultra” for stimuli that are above the range that we humans can detect, and “infra” for stimuli that are below. I mean it’s all so human-centric. This realization is so simple but so revealing and I just felt like a prick. So I said I’m just gonna try this to get some perspective. And so for me, Psycilumis triggered the UV-light vision, much borrowed from bees and birds. You know, bees use this UV vision to identify hotspots for nectar in plants. Nature is so smart. So I was thinking that, and it is as Psycilumis tunes your senses according to what you are thinking. Suddenly, I had a craving that I couldn’t understand. I can’t turn it off. I had to leave Hasenheide Park because at this point is so overwhelming. I go into the U Bahn and I see these trails of thin glowing lines, apparently dry rodent urine glows in blue-white, but it could also be human urine and you know the U8, probably it was both. So I walked out at Treptower park to get home and then it hit me. I saw nectar everywhere and just wanted to rub it against me, eat or smell it. I’m not even sure. All these pollen-rich plants were just amazing. And I thought after the effect is gone, that’s it right? no strings attached. But this craving was a lingering feeling after hours and it was still a bit on and off sometimes. Also, it got really specific, I think, because it was not random nectar anymore. I was specifically attracted to the nectar of… Well can’t remember the name but those were almost gone by now. They had a hard time surviving the increased dryness of Berlin…yeah but there you have it… I do feel I have gained a sense of humility. A lot of people saw it, the beauty of the world of pollinators and how we have destroyed these worlds in most of the city. But nobody is removing the colors that we see and we love right? and every time I was on UV-light vision I would not only know what’s missing, but I would also feel it.
Anonymous activist (30), Berlin. 2022:
It wasn’t enough, you know, people were doing it here and there, this planting of pollen-rich plants in roofs, communal gardens, streets, but it was not enough. We knew better, we were at a tipping point in the decline of bees. It was not just Berlin, it was the whole Germany, the decline of insects was massive. We wanted to pass legislation to completely cut pesticides use, and to create pollinator-friendly green corridors everywhere possible. We did all the right things, you know, citizen petitions, lobby with the parliament, marches, civil disobedience. But politicians you know, slow as slow can be. Even in the face of collapse. So we thought we are gonna make them need it badly, the nectar I mean. We biohacked psycilumis, can’t tell you what we did, but basically, we managed to target it to induce pollinator-like senses for a longer duration of time, and we made it addictive. I don’t regret it. We are in a fight right? Some of these politicians wouldn’t admit they had been hacked. Show weakness no?! They just acted out as if they suddenly cared, and so they passed the laws. But we knew who they were. It was a scandal when the media somehow found it, they called it bioterrorism. We called it “nature defending itself”. You might argue with our means, but we got things done.
Anonymous activist (41), Berlin. 2022:
The first time I tried Psycilumis, I realized how much of the world was invisible to me. We had been talking about climate change for years. But when I could feel our CO2 emissions, I was not informed by some new science paper, I was transfixed by the experience. This CO2 detection sense was a combination of sight and smell, the lines are so blurry for me to describe, maybe because we try to explain from our own sensorial niches. I first saw the rhythm of my breath and I wouldn’t see so clearly the boundaries of my body or the tree standing next to me, we were flows of CO2 dancing particles. We release it, plants take it. A balancing act over thousands of years of evolution… that we have broken. And as I explored the same streets I walk every day, I could notice sort of filamentous plumes arising from different sources, buildings, cars, people…forming irregular clouds of CO2 on land, and the sky was a spectacle whenever a plane went through. Many animal species, mosquitos, moths and flies are aware of changes in CO2 concentration. Yes, this is how blood-feeding mosquitoes find us! It’s fascinating really how these animals have specialised detection organs, closely integrated with the olfactory system, but not quite the same. The Lepidoptera moth has a labial palp pit organ and mosquitos have the Lutz’s organ on the maxillary palps. And in a general way you could say these species use this sense to adapt to their environment, we needed this sense so badly to adapt our collective behavior! We were organizing massive marches through Berlin and the whole of Germany, we saw this happening in other cities of the world too. Some people thought it was a good idea to camp near coal sites under the effects of Psycilumis. As we marched down and approached these coal plans, it was a burning-like smell, I mean a burning-like sensation in your insides, I still felt it in my nostrils days after. It was like suddenly the whole world had a CO2 signature, being either CO2 source or sink. Sometimes it takes to feel it rather than just know it! The power of the experience is beyond what I can tell you.
Scientist (58), Berlin Psycilumis Research Consortium, 2026:
Now, Ccajonapode mushroom was either the stuff of nightmares or dreams, I wasn’t sure. This species was discovered by a south-american research team somewhere in Madre de Dios (Peru) and baptized with the name of “Ccajonapode”, which means something like “trees that existed in the past”. There is a beauty to this name, it is kind of like the spirits of long-gone trees are still among us. Anyways, each new discovered fungi species held a new entry point to the full spectrum of sensorial worlds. It was like putting together a puzzle. In my team, we discovered a couple of new species that were synching people with many new acoustic worlds. But there was a limit to what the human physical body can channel. Of course, we realized this early on, there are stimuli that we can’t access because we lack the sensory organs to do so. But Ccajonapode mushroom helped to overcome this. When you consume it, Psycilumis develops a physical ramification in your nervous system, it basically grows on you, and it comes out of your skin like white filaments. Now if you are familiar with the world of fungi, this mechanism is quite similar to the so-called zombie mushrooms that take control over the behavior of small insects like ants and kill them eventually. So it was pretty disturbing. And we were studying this mushroom in our lab, with all the safety standards but of course, it made its way outside the labs. People tried it and the reports we got were, well, just amazing. The white filaments were like a natural extended nervous system for humans, and it was allowing a bunch of new sensorial experiences!
App developer (22), Berlin. 2027:
We were in the peak of a crisis of perception, what we didn’t see or feel did not exist. And when you are in Psycilumis the world opens up, and yes, you have this ego-dissolving experience and you are synced with other perceptual worlds, but and there is a big but, you also see all the invisible shit that we have put out there and is destroying nature. We, humans, have introduced novel stimuli everywhere, anthropogenic noise, artificial lights, chemical agents… So it was an encounter with this that changed me. A pretty bad trip with Ccajonapode. My sight shut down. I could somehow still see, but I did not remember what was to see, images didn’t mean anything. I felt these filaments growing on me and I knew I was meant to use them. So I closed my eyes and I felt in my gut that I knew how to navigate spatially but I just couldn’t. I felt so lost, not just disoriented, but fundamentally lost. I was totally “blinded” by the noise… It turns out, I was accessing this magnetoreception sense. You know migrating birds, like the european robins, have a built-in compass to detect Earth magnetic fields, but this sense is compromised by man-made electromagnetic noise coming from wireless communication devices for example. It is not just them, owls and bats are significantly impaired in their ability to hunt in noise. Their world of information is entirely or predominantly acoustic and the world was getting louder. And don’t even get me started on light, 90% of humanity lives under light-polluted skies and you surely have seen moths flapping around a bulb, mistaking it for the moon, they are just trapped in the orbit of these artificial lights and die! So for me, Psycilumis revealed pollutants that are hidden in plain sight! And since then you know I have been working in developing bio-apps for detecting mixed landscapes of sensorial pollution.
Urban planner (33), Berlin. 2028:
The problem was that the story we had been told, the story of “them or us”. City vs forest, conservation areas vs urban development. That was a story destined to fail. When I tried Psycilumis I had a breakthrough. It was so clear to me. Cities are meant to work for all of us. Design has to restore these broken relationships. And we are moving in that direction, at least I want to be part of that movement. We are doing great work using these animal-sense bio-apps to map out not only the sources of sensorial pollution but the life-enhancing conditions for the web of life, from plants to pollinators to birds and so on. There are a lot of broken links and we are working from materials to the landscape. I came to Berlin to work on these sensorial zonification projects, it was so exciting! We developed gradients of pollen-rich landscapes together with local neighborhood groups that were even willing to do hand-pollination themselves to help bees. We also worked creating bioluminescence-based experimental areas. This experience with fungal bioluminescence was my first approach to the world of fungi as living materials for cities. We incorporated glow-in-the-dark mushrooms into the landscape but also the way they work was an inspiration for synthetic biology applications to create glowing trees for street lighting. I continued to experiment and use mushrooms as building materials. I’m especially working with plastic-eating mushroom species that can digest and break down microplastic even from the air. So many innovations everywhere. Some colleagues are trying to understand the sensorial worlds of animals to get insights into animal construction techniques. This is an exciting breakthrough in the field of biomimicry too.
The understanding of Psycilumis was increasing over the years. By 2030, it had spread to almost all of the world. As we begin to access the full spectrum of the sensorial world, something in our identities started to shift. People started to perceive themselves as something else than only-human. They felt it, in those altered conscious states, but their body was not reflecting these feelings. So some people started to embrace physical change. At the same time, a wave of collective sadness had been triggered. We had learned that as species went extinct, their sensorial worlds were lost forever. For some people, it was like a piece of your own nervous system was removed. Pain and inspiration were part of the journey of exploring animal sensorial worlds. Deep ethical changes in law and urban lives were in motion, but so were the last attempts of profit-oriented industry to commodify even these sensorial experiences.
Crispr entrepreneur (35), Paris. 2030:
In the beginning, there were two paths for industry, you know the ones that invested a lot in the chemical-induced animal sense experience, so a lot of research in Psycilumis-mushrooms, neuroscience and cognition. But slow progress, of course, we are only redefining what mind means in a more distributed way. And then you had the more techno-driven sensorial augmentation. An explosion in the field of extended reality technologies. All those devices for people that did not want to mess up with their brains. It was a safer path some might say. But Tech-driven Sensorial augmentation had its limits right? And chemical-induced well … you know it is tricky to fully crack it, we have made pretty good advances in targeting the experience, the senses, but is not instant gratification you know, it has a learning curve, people struggle with it, to learn how to navigate it, regulate it, it has different ways around different minds and it was just not good for business. People want a pre-made package you know what I mean, the sensorial and physical enhancement, just one click away. We needed something else, specifically targeted for customers. Genetics was really the path. So CRISPR right?
Anonymus citizen (52), Buenos Aires, 2031:
We walked into a new chapter of cultural evolution without even knowing. I still feel we walked too fast. It was meant to be a tool for consciousness, for empathy. And hell it was! All of this movement of rights of nature, it really landed globally when we reached a tipping point for the loss of biodiversity. We have managed to keep warming to 2.1°C but you know a lot has been lost. Life has been lost in a wide sense. People opposing the rights of nature ..well they can only do so on the grounds of ‘‘speciesism,’’ another ideological prejudice akin to racism and sexism that hopefully is fully eradicated soon. And when people started to become “animal-augmented” I thought this is the evolution path I would like to walk into. You used to see these super techie android-like pictures of human self-directed evolution. But I think we hijacked that narrative. This is more organic. Which part of you is “animal-like” is less important these days. The important thing is we now can access a broader spectrum of earth consciousness. But then, you know we thought we have won this battle, and then the industry has also co-opted all the nice intentions, and companies offer you enhanced animal avatars like they offer running shoes. That is wrong on many levels. But we can’t help it. I guess some shade, a new version of spiritual consumerism still remains.
Anonymus citizen (28), Manaus. 2032:
I didn’t want to go into Crispr. So I took my chance with this Ccajonapode mushroom. The first time was crazy, I felt these itchy filaments growing on my temple and some parts of my arm. I have always been blind, so when eyes turn on to the world again, it was pretty shocking. I enjoyed it of course. But it can get too noisy for me, all those colors. Then I discovered the world of echolocation, a much more quiet world for me. And these white filaments could emit ripples of sound, and echoes full of information came back to me. I could sense spatiality. It was the best day of my life. I needed to be in a more quiet environment though, but that was fine for me. Sometimes, I feel a bit like a refugee though. I thought a lot about owls and bats which are significantly impaired in their ability to hunt in noise. They are refugees in a world that was their home for way longer than for us. And it is just not fair. Their world of information is entirely acoustic and I choose to also live in that world. It helps, I think, that more humans like me live in these super low-noise zones. I feel we are guardians of these habitats.
Anonymus citizen (42), Berlin. 2032:
I mean you saw it coming since the early days. Those tatoo-artists did beautiful jobs, I was into that. And I guess what happens is that you slowly interiorize it. It is funny though because the way it happens in nature is that when you are born into one species branch, you are given a sensorial package, with many years on the making by evolutionary forces let’s say, and then from there you figure out who you are in the world. But with Psycilumis we were given a glimpse of other perceptual worlds, without the bodies. Now that creates a big cognitive dissonance. At some point, you feel your body is not matching the sensorial world you want to live in, or the capability of jumping between them. We wished our bodies could also be so fluid as our consciousness is. So people started to modify their bodies to make certain sensorial experiences more permanent. And then, bam!, somebody thinks it is a good idea to go into Crisper, to genetically modify us. Now, I think that is crazy. But then again I’m too old now perhaps. I saw in the news that in Indonesia, a group of people started to create underwater communities to restore Coral reefs that you know we almost lost all of them already. So these people are having a UV-light cone detection permanently installed in their eyes and also some glandules so that they can breathe underwater. Why would you do that? I thought, but they showed how it looks to them, this fluorescent world below water, those coral reefs looked like alien plants. Then I think I got it. I mean you see my house and it may look pretty crazy to some people. But now we are free to choose which sensorial worlds to inhabit and that is pretty revolutionary!
Apaniradihadi is a word that means in one Amazon Indigenous language “a rain-wet leaf that gleams in the sunlight”
Melissa Ingaruca Moreno (original idea and writing) is a social-ecological urbanist, climate change action planner and activist and storyteller with special interest in critical futurism. She is originally from Peru and currently based on Berlin.
Gaston Horacio Hermida (original idea and graphics) is an architect involved in landscape urbanism projects, with strong interest in how new behaviours are developed through urban design around the world. He was born in Argentina, and currently working in Berlin.
