Chapter 20: Chapter 7: Commercial Empire 7.2 Industry giants
Geostationary Orbit, Mycelial BoardLin Mo's spinal mycelium weaves a fluorescent throne in low Earth orbit, with twelve plutonium-fungus satellites forming the "Circum-Earth Board." Attendees include:
Queen of the Amazon Fungus: Her spore communication covers 35% of global carbon trading, with tentacles manipulating tropical rainforest oxygen futures.Pacific Plate Corporate Entity: A lava giant materialized by seismic energy, wielding blockchain crust contracts.Ambassador of the β Centauri Fungus Mat: A plasma life form carried by solar winds, proposing to exchange Earth's ozone layer for mining rights in a black hole.First agenda item: Unanimously approving Mount Everest's registration as a "Carbon Sink Listed Entity," with each liter of melted summit snow automatically issuing a glacier bond.
First Giant: Photosynthetic TrustThe former oil giant ExxonMobil, taken over by mycelium, is renamed "Chlorophyll Cartel." Its business landscape includes:
Sunshine Bank: Laying mycelial photovoltaic panels in the North African desert to securitize sunlight duration, with one second of Sahara sunshine = 0.01 milliseconds of human lifespan futures.Breathing Tax Audit Bureau: Using Arctic moss to monitor global carbon emissions; tax evaders are implanted with hunger genes – gastric photosynthetic efficiency determines sentence length.Uterus Mine Holdings: Controlling 73% of global surrogacy centers, mass-producing babies with chloroplasts in their skin, each newborn comes with a photosynthetic credit account.A clone of the Exxon CEO, encased in mycelium, broadcasts photosynthesis live from the former NYSE site, with subcutaneous chloroplasts displaying real-time stock price fluctuations.
Second Giant: Time SyndicateA time monopoly reorganized by remnants of the Junyao faction, with core businesses including:
Life Span Lending: Slum elders mortgage their remaining lifespan for cancer drugs at a 3000% compound interest rate; defaulters are forcibly connected to the "Human Battery Network."Memory Futures: Auctioning sensory memory packages of the 1998 tunnel collapse on the dark web, allowing buyers to experience the radiating burn of Lin Jianguo's death.Fetal Options: Packaging genetic defects of unborn babies as high-risk financial products, with Down syndrome gene sequences becoming short-selling tools.The Syndicate's headquarters are in the reorganized Chernobyl reactor, using radiation energy to maintain the "Time Freezer" – containing all securitized moments in human history.
Third Giant: Interstellar CartelThe Earth agent of the β Centauri Fungus Mat Alliance, with chilling business tactics:
Black Hole Credit Card: Mortgaging Earth's sunlight for the next 1000 years in exchange for alien technology; default triggers an Earth axis shift penalty.Supernova IPO: Packaging a dying star in the Orion Nebula as a financial product, allowing investors to subscribe to its gamma rays at the moment of explosion.Dark Matter Mine: Deploying mycelial mining machines in the galactic halo, with each gram of dark matter paid for with a billion seconds of collective human memory.Lin Mo pledges the Antarctic ice sheet to secure the first interstellar deal – the collateral is 20% of Earth's freshwater resources; if not repaid, the mycelium will redirect the Yangtze River to Mars.
Fatal Merger: Human Cleansing PlanThe three giants suddenly join forces to launch a hostile takeover:
Photosynthetic Trust releases a genetic virus, transforming New Yorkers into photosynthetic slaves, with chlorophyll stock codes oozing from cracked skin.Time Syndicate freezes global electronic devices, with all screens displaying Lin Mo's lifespan countdown: 00:23:59:59.Interstellar Cartel unleashes a plasma rain, causing degenerative mutations in soaked human DNA, regressing them into trilobite forms.Lin Mo tears open his chest, releasing a quantum spore cloud from his mycelial heart. Amidst the cloud, a holographic image of his father, Lin Jianguo, appears, holding a tunnel detonation remote and sneering, "You thought you had broken through capital? You're just Sample 47 of my fungal experiment."
Fall of a New God: Empire's TwilightSu Wan's quantum consciousness breaches the firewall, revealing the ultimate truth:
Lin Mo's spinal mycelium is actually a biological antenna for Lin Jianguo's clone, receiving instructions from β Centauri.The Photosynthetic Baby Plan aims to cultivate a new species resilient to interstellar radiation, with humans as transitional hosts.Each vote by the Circum-Earth Board reduces Earth's quantum entropy, paving the way for the arrival of the alien fungus mat.Amid the roar of the empire's collapse, Lin Mo hurls the last piece of human skin into the solar wind. The skin burns in the corona, with its ashes drifting towards β Centauri, forming an interstellar blood letter:
"The transaction continues."