Seaweed Rising by Rob Magnuson Smith

Author:Rob Magnuson Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781914518294
Publisher: Sandstone Press
Published: 2023-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

He lay motionless in bed, and across the chambers of his mind the dream took shape, delivering the phycology conference keynote with his own prologue to the next edition.

‘. . . and so the Great Seaweed Brain led their encroachment onto land. It recruited human agents, most of them unaware, to further its cause. These agents were dispatched to the inner workings of farming, law, poetry, aesthetics, banking, sociology, science, food, medicine – every aspect of industry and human culture.’

At the podium, Manfred looked up from his manuscript. All the notable scientists were gathered. They were rapt, speechless. ‘Should I continue?’

‘Yes.’ A woman near the front nodded vigorously. ‘You must!’

‘By the twentieth century, humans had dangerously increased the toxicity of the oceans. The diversity of algae was threatened, leading to a competition among seaweeds for dominance. Wireweed choked out riverine habitats. Sargassum controlled an entire sea and threatened to expand. The major species hastened to their final outposts and ramped up infiltration in biofuels, technology, drug manufacturing.

‘These forces are now increasing in strength. Perhaps they are even behind infertility. They continue to feed off the fertilisers we dump into our streams and oceans. They’ve entered our food stocks, our beef and pasta and ice cream. The Sargassum has grown so thick in the Caribbean, the locals are building booms to keep it away. Blue-green algae feed off the sewage of Mumbai and attract flamingos to feast. Up and down the north Atlantic, pink Palmaria palmate is being gobbled so quickly, soon they’ll be using mechanical dredgers and seabed rakes to remove the holdfasts, churn up the sand.

‘It doesn’t have to be this way. When humans become monoculture puppets of just one or two species, the rarest and most vulnerable are threatened. The so-called insignificant algae – how can we be sure they do not hold the key to some future disaster, some unforeseen disease? To perseverate in the face of destruction – that is our mission. We are all orphans in the grand scheme of things. We are all the future of seaweeds. In the next century, we need to establish diverse frontiers for humans and algae to thrive. Only then can we establish a staging ground for interstellar evolution.’

Scattered claps grew into roars of applause. Manfred beamed from behind the podium. He had communed with the Great Seaweed Brain. He had channelled its message to take algae out of the seas and into the heavens. Then he woke up.

He lay in bed staring at the ceiling. The dream had come unbidden. It seemed to contain everything he needed to face the future. He turned on his side and braved the walls, the crusty curtains, the framed sailboat picture.

Mid-March – he’d been in the clinic two months. Nora was coming, and how could he prepare? As Manfred got dressed, he felt both pale and plump. It was all the starchy foods and antidepressants. He made his way to the lounge, waited for her to come through the door and nodded off after breakfast.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.