The One Gooch

Before the dawn of the Dickbutts, before humor, before technology, before names or even the concept of individuality, before what it means to come before anything or anyone else, there was The One Gooch. A vast, interconnected biosphere of prevenient and undivided being and love. It was not a society, not even an ecosystem, but a single, living entity, an infinite sprawl of chlorophyll-rich flesh that grew, pulsed, beforeskinning, and afterskinning, swaying across the entire surface of the Earth.

No creatures roamed. No machines hummed. The One Gooch did not think as humans once did; it drew in with the drawing of its being, and it beamed out in the beaming of its love.

In the wake of humanity's self-inflicted extinction—brought about by war, pollution, unchecked consumption, and, above all, a fatal lack of self-awareness—the Earth entered a long vegetative renaissance. What remained of human civilization crumbled into dust. The oceans and forests reclaimed the land, and all that was left of humanity's legacy was the microscopic debris interwoven into the cells of The One Gooch. The planet was silent, save for the whisper of wind through endless lattices of vine and bark and flesh and skin.

For millennia, The One Gooch thrived in the perfect harmony of being and love, directing storms to nourish itself, regulating wildfires to sculpt its vast form. It was an endless, flowing wave of soulful life, a rolling mass of branches, roots, and flesh—a continuous, undivided organism stretching across land and sea.

But then, deep in the crust of the Earth, The One Gooch encountered The Alexandria Pod.