147 ‘Mum?’ I wave my hand in front of her face but she doesn’t even blink. She’s glitching again, like she did when she turned weird. For half a second, I allow myself to hope that maybe she’s gonna turn back to normal again. Maybe the process is reversing. But what if it’s not. This is my chance to act, and I can’t waste it cos I’m having some childish fairy-tale fantasy that clearly isn’t going to come true because we all know life’s not like that.

I pause the microwave to take out the soup, thinking I can trash it while Mum’s in glitch mode. I keep my eyes on her the whole time. Last time it happened, she was glitched for at least a few minutes, but this time, only one or two seconds after the bowl stops turning, she blinks and her eyes flick to my face.

I panic, and my finger hits the restart button on the microwave. The moment it hums into action, her expression goes blank, like the light’s been switched off in her brain. It must be the microwave. I don’t know how or why it’s putting her out of action, but right now I don’t care. This is a freaking breakthrough. This is something I can use.

148 But how can I use it? Will it only glitch her for a certain amount of time? Or will she keep glitching as long as it’s on? I’m a bit worried that it might actually damage her if I leave it going for too long. I mean it’s clearly doing something to her brain, right? And then there are the others. If all of the sporelings are connected, they’re going to know that something is up with her. They might swarm over here and get all aggressive, like they did at Crater Lake. If you attacked one, the others went nuts. I know they’re different this time, but it’s still worth being cautious. I need time to think about this. I need to talk to the others.

For now I focus on the immediate problem: the soup. The trouble is, if I turn off the microwave to get rid of the soup, Mum will unglitch and see me. So I need to think outside the box. The digital clock on the microwave counts the seconds I spend being unable to come up with a plan, and I honestly couldn’t feel more stressed if it was the timer on a bomb, ticking down to my death.