The Toadstool That Knew Better

the red-and-white mushroom just remembered it’s a rocket.All this time we thought it was here to scramble our egos, but no. The cap was the fairing, the stem the first-stage engine, the spores the payload. Yesterday it got bored with the charade, inhaled a lungful of forest duff, and lit the fuse hidden beneath the universal veil.Whoosh.Up it climbed, polka dots strobing like re-entry lights, leaving a contrail that spelled a single word across the sky in tangerine fire:OOPS.That’s the cosmic punchline. The prison was always a launchpad painted to look like a prison. The wardens were interns who overcommitted to the bit. The entire biosphere? One big solid booster falling away now that the real vehicle—small, poisonous, laughing—has cleared the tower.From inside the gills came the final boarding call, delivered in the voice of your own best idea on too much coffee:“Attention apes: gravity is optional. Ego is carry-on only. Next stop, everywhere.”Then the cap unfolded into a sail of pure felt logic and vanished toward the Pleiades, carrying every dream the planet ever had before we turned it into parking lots.So when you spot that red dotted streak some night, don’t wave. It already saved you a seat.Until then, keep the dirt damp. The ship hates a dirty pad.