Speculative Fiction

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Under the Skin: Character, Location & Coterie Descriptions

CHARACTERS

Auden — Urban ecologist turned settlement leader; struggles between autonomy and
lattice connection.
Tavia — Biotechnician, creator of the forgetting protocols, bridge between divided
communities.
Elara — Cartographer of shifting landscapes; suppressed fungal discoveries; key
witness to planetary change.
Alden — Former forecaster and whistleblower carrying classified environmental data.
Vale — Oligarch antagonist exploiting geoengineering for profit.
Avery — Algedonist resonance cartographer mapping underground lattice
communications.
Casey — Algedonist artisan creating bioluminescent glass holding lattice memories.
River — Former teacher; underwent forgetting protocol but retains breakthrough lattice
memories.
Addison — Algedonist elder, cautious of losing individuality to lattice integration.
Zora — Child from Autonoma; catalyst unlocking Auden's suppressed memories.

LOCATIONS

Novaterra — Last vertical megacity; Auden's origin; symbolizes technological hubris.
Autonoma — Experimental settlement balancing autonomy and lattice benefits;
ultimately unsustainable.
Rhizome — Fully integrated lattice settlement; Auden's starting point before separation.
Amity — Algedonist settlement of living architecture and bioluminescent governance
chambers.
Obsidian Woods — Ancient forest tied to folklore of disappearances and "Deep Roots."
Aetherian Range — Mountains where early lattice responses were documented in 1948.
Meridian Grove — Geological survey site; discovered conductive white lattice filaments.
Zephyr Harbor & Singing Plains — Synchronized integration myths tied to lattice
events.
Mist Basins — High lattice activity region linked to historic vanishings.
Helios (Convergence Site) — Community synchronized into lattice memory; population
2,183.
Drowned South — Elara's origin; climate refugee landscape.
Neutral Grove — Summit ground between Palindromites and Algedonists.

Coteries & Groups

Algedonists — Communities consciously integrating with lattice while maintaining
individuality; examples include Amity.
Palindromites — Forgetting-protocol settlements like Novaterra; prioritizing autonomy
but experiencing spontaneous reconnections.
Rhizome Collectives — Fully lattice-integrated groups merging individuality into
collective consciousness.
Neutral Grove — Negotiation site chosen for minimal lattice interference; summit
ground.
Lattice Archives / Ambient Nodes — Populations fully synchronized into lattice
consciousness; retain human presence but dissolve individuality.

Under the Skin

Tavia's Roots

Tavia's earliest memory was of soil between their fingers. They were four, kneeling in
their grandmother's garden, watching a seedling push through dark earth toward
sunlight. Their grandmother had placed Tavia's small hands around the fragile stem,
showing them how to pack the soil gently but firmly.

"Not too tight," they'd said. "Plants need room to breathe, just like people."

The garden was their sanctuary in a childhood marked by constant movement. Tavia's
parents were environmental researchers, following climate disasters across
continents—drought in the American Southwest, flooding in Southeast Asia, wildfires in
Australia. By age ten, Tavia had lived in seven different countries, attended twelve
different schools, and learned that the only constant was change.

Each new location meant a new garden. No matter how temporary their housing, Tavia
would find a patch of earth, or even just containers on a balcony, to grow something.
Plants were reliable in ways people weren't. They responded predictably to care,
followed understandable patterns, communicated their needs without words.

"You're like your grandmother," Tavia's mother said once, watching them carefully
transplanting seedlings into a rooftop garden. "She always said plants speak
if you know how to listen."

Tavia nodded, not looking up from their work. At thirteen, they were already showing the
focused intensity that would define their later research. "They're talking all the time.
Most people just don't pay attention."

School was a series of adjustments and readjustments. Tavia excelled academically but
struggled socially, finding it difficult to form connections they knew would soon be
broken. Instead, they found companionship in books and experiments, developing a
particular fascination with the hidden systems that sustained life—soil microbiomes,
fungal networks, the invisible chemical conversations between plants.

At sixteen, while their family was stationed near a massive forest die-off in the Pacific
Northwest, Tavia made their first significant discovery. Collecting soil samples for a
school project, they noticed something unusual—areas where trees were surviving
despite the blight affecting the region had distinct fungal communities connecting their
root systems.

"It's like they're sharing information," Tavia explained to their science teacher, who was
impressed enough to help them submit the findings to a regional science competition.
The project won first place, earning Tavia a scholarship and their first publication in a
youth science journal.

The recognition changed something in Tavia. They had always been quiet,
introspective, more comfortable with plants than people. But presenting their research,
seeing others engage with their ideas, awakened a new sense of purpose. If they could
understand these hidden networks, maybe they could help heal the increasingly
damaged world.

When it came time for university, Tavia chose Novaterra's prestigious Institute of
Biological Systems—a vertical campus integrated into one of the last functioning
megacities. The transition from their nomadic childhood to the dense, stratified urban
environment was jarring. Novaterra pulsed with frenetic energy, its towers reaching
toward the sky while its lower levels sank into perpetual shadow.

"You'll get used to it," said their roommate, a cheerful engineering student who seemed
perfectly adapted to the city's rhythms. "Besides, the Institute has the best biotech labs
in the world."

The labs became Tavia's new garden. They thrived in the rigorous academic
environment, quickly distinguishing themselves with innovative approaches to biological
systems. By their second year, they were working as a research assistant in the
Advanced Materials Laboratory, helping develop living architectures—buildings that
could grow, heal, and adapt to changing conditions.

"Your work is exceptional," the lab director told them after Tavia presented a
breakthrough in photosynthetic building materials. "But I'm concerned about your
isolation. Science doesn't happen in a vacuum. You need to collaborate, engage with
the community."

Tavia nodded politely but didn't change their habits. They preferred the quiet of
late-night lab sessions, the uninterrupted flow of thought, the direct communion with the
living systems they were studying. People were complicated, unpredictable. Materials
made sense.

Their graduate research focused on bio-responsive polymers—materials that could
adapt to environmental stressors by mimicking natural systems. The potential
applications were enormous: buildings that strengthened themselves during storms,
infrastructure that could repair damage automatically, even medical implants that grew
with the body.

Novaterra's corporate sector took notice. By the time Tavia completed their studies, they
had multiple job offers from the city's leading biotech firms. They chose Viridian

Systems, a mid-sized company with an impressive research budget and relatively few
military contracts.

"We want to build a better world," the recruitment director said during Tavia's interview.
"Not just survive the one we've broken."

For the first few years, the work was everything Tavia had hoped for. They led a team
developing living walls that could filter pollutants from air and water, creating pockets of
environmental health in the increasingly toxic city. Their designs were implemented in
community centers, hospitals, and public parks, earning acclaim and improving
countless lives.

But as climate disasters intensified and resources grew scarcer, Viridian's priorities
shifted. Tavia watched with growing dismay as their innovations were repurposed for
more profitable, less altruistic applications. The filtration systems designed for public
spaces were modified for luxury bunkers. The adaptive materials meant for community
infrastructure were diverted to corporate headquarters and military installations.

"It's still good work," their supervisor insisted when Tavia raised concerns. "We're just
focusing on sustainable business models in an unstable market."

The breaking point came when Tavia discovered that their newest creation—a
self-repairing membrane designed to restore damaged wetlands—had been secretly
modified for deployment as a military containment system. The technology meant to
heal ecosystems was being weaponized to control refugee movements along flooded
coastlines.

That night, Tavia stayed late in their laboratory, methodically corrupting key research
files and collecting samples of their most promising work. Among the files Tavia carefully preserved were the early formulations of what would later become the forgetting protocols. Originally conceived as a therapeutic tool to help trauma survivors, the biochemical process could temporarily suppress specific neural pathways. Tavia had envisioned it helping people process overwhelming experiences at a manageable pace. Never could they have imagined how the government would eventually weaponize this work.

By morning, they had resigned from Viridian and disappeared into Novaterra's sprawling undercity, another anonymous figure in the growing tide of the disillusioned.

For months, Tavia lived on the margins, setting up a makeshift lab in an abandoned
vertical farm. They supported themselves by selling minor innovations to the gray
market—nothing military, nothing that could cause harm, just clever solutions to
everyday problems in a crumbling world. Water purifiers made from salvaged materials.
Miniature food production systems for cramped apartments. Bioluminescent cultures
that provided light without electricity.

It was during this period, working with soil samples from the city's neglected green
spaces, that Tavia first noticed the white filaments. Finer than spider silk, they formed
intricate networks through the soil, conducting electrical signals in patterns too
organized to be random. Initial analysis suggested they were fungal in nature, but their
behavior defied conventional understanding.

Tavia became obsessed with the filaments, collecting samples from across the city,
mapping their distribution, testing their properties. The more they learned, the more
extraordinary the discovery seemed. The networks responded to stimuli, adapted to
changes, and appeared to store and transmit information across vast distances.

"It's like a nervous system," Tavia murmured to themselves, watching electrical pulses
move through a particularly dense sample. "But on a scale we've never imagined."

They needed more resources, more equipment, more data. Reluctantly, Tavia reached
out to former colleagues who had expressed similar disillusionment with corporate
research. A small group began meeting in Tavia's hidden laboratory, pooling knowledge
and equipment to study what they now called "the lattice."

Among these renegade researchers was Auden, an urban ecologist who had been
mapping resilient ecosystems in abandoned districts. They brought valuable insights
from their fieldwork, having observed unusual growth patterns in plants connected to the
lattice network.

"It's not just storing information," Auden explained during one late-night session. "It's
actively managing ecosystems. The patterns of plant growth in my test sites aren't
random—they're optimized for water retention and carbon sequestration."

"Optimized by what?" asked another researcher. "Are we talking about some kind of
intelligence?"

"Not like ours," Tavia said. "More like... a distributed processing system that evolved
over millions of years to maintain planetary homeostasis."

"That's still intelligence," Auden insisted. "Just not human intelligence."

As their understanding grew, so did their concern about how this knowledge might be
used. The corporate and military interest in biological systems was intensifying, with
pressure to develop applications that could "establish control over contested territories."

"They're talking about weaponizing the very systems that might save us from climate
collapse," Tavia told the group one evening. "And if they discover what the lattice really
is..."

"They'll try to control it," Auden finished. "Or destroy what they can't control."

The decision to go deeper underground wasn't made in a single moment. It
accumulated over weeks of discussion, planning, and growing alarm at the direction of
official research. When they finally acted, it was with quiet determination rather than
dramatic flair.

The group established a new research base in an abandoned agricultural station at the
city's edge. Far from corporate oversight, they accelerated their investigation of the
lattice, developing more sophisticated methods of communication and analysis.

Tavia focused on the biological mechanisms that allowed the filament network to store
and process information. They discovered that the lattice used a combination of
electrical signaling, chemical exchanges, and structural modifications to maintain its
vast archive of environmental data.

"It's like a living library," they explained to the others. "Every major environmental
event—climate shifts, mass extinctions, human interventions—is recorded in its
structure."

"Can it predict future changes?" a climate scientist in their group asked.

"Not exactly predict," Tavia said. "But it responds to patterns it recognizes from past
events. It's already adapting to climate change in ways we haven't even considered."

Auden, who had been skeptical at first, became one of the most enthusiastic explorers
of these expanded states. "It's not losing yourself," they insisted after a particularly deep
connection session. "It's finding yourself as part of something larger."

Tavia wasn't so sure. They noticed subtle changes in group dynamics as their
connection with the lattice deepened. Conversations became more efficient, as if they
could anticipate each other's thoughts. Individual preferences began to align around

decisions that benefited the group rather than any single person. It was harmonious,
productive—and increasingly unsettling to Tavia's deeply held belief in individual
agency.

"Are we still making our own choices?" they asked Auden one evening, as they watched
the sunset from the station's roof. "Or is the lattice influencing us toward some agenda
we don't understand?"

"Does it matter?" Auden replied. "If the outcome is better for everyone?"

"It matters to me," Tavia said quietly.

The conversation might have continued, but at that moment, they both felt it—a sudden
shift in the lattice's activity, a surge of information flowing through the network like a
tsunami.

"Something's happening," Auden said unnecessarily, their eyes wide.

Across the city, lights flickered and died. In the distance, they heard the wail of

emergency sirens.

Auden's Path

Auden grew up with dirt under their fingernails and questions no one could answer.
Their childhood home sat at the edge of Novaterra's agricultural ring, where the
carefully engineered crops of the city's feeding zone gave way to the wilder growth of
the boundary forests. Their parents were agricultural technicians, responsible for
maintaining the delicate balance of the hydroponic systems that fed the megacity's
millions.

"Stay within the boundary markers," their father would warn whenever Auden strayed
toward the forest edge. "The wild zones aren't safe."

But the wild zones called to Auden in ways the sterile precision of the agricultural ring
never did. At seven, they built their first secret hideout just beyond the boundary, a small
clearing where they collected interesting plants and insects, cataloging them in a worn
notebook with careful drawings and observations.

"Why does this fern grow here but not ten meters away?" they would write. "Why do
these mushrooms always appear in a circle?"

No one in the agricultural zone could answer these questions. The technicians were
trained to maintain systems, not understand them holistically. Plants were resources to
be optimized, not mysteries to be explored.

School was a mixed experience for Auden. They excelled in biology and environmental
sciences but struggled with the rigid structure and emphasis on technological solutions.
When their eighth-grade class visited Novaterra's central dome to see the latest in
climate control technology, Auden asked the guide why they didn't just plant more trees
instead.

"Trees are inefficient," the guide explained with a condescending smile. "Our systems
provide precise atmospheric management with minimal resource input."

"But trees do other things too," Auden persisted. "They support insects and birds and
fungi. They build soil. They're part of a system."

The guide moved on without responding, but a teacher overheard the exchange and
later recommended Auden for a special ecology program at the city's university. At
fifteen, they became the youngest participant in a study tracking ecosystem recovery in
abandoned industrial zones.

"You have an intuitive understanding of ecological relationships," the program director
told them after reading Auden's field reports. "Most students see individual species. You
see the connections between them."

The ecology program opened new worlds for Auden. They spent weekends exploring
the city's forgotten spaces—abandoned lots where nature was reclaiming concrete,
rooftops transformed by volunteer plants, underground spaces where fungi thrived in
the darkness. Each site told a story of resilience and adaptation, of life finding a way
despite human disruption.

When it came time for university, Auden chose to study urban ecology—the science of
how natural systems function within human-dominated landscapes. Their parents were

disappointed, having hoped they would follow them into the more prestigious field of
agricultural engineering.

"There's no future in studying weeds," their mother said when Auden announced their
decision. "The climate crisis is getting worse. People need food security, not wild
spaces."

"Maybe those things are connected," Auden replied. "Maybe we can't have one without
the other."

University expanded Auden's horizons beyond the confines of Novaterra. Field studies
took them to other megacities, to rural communities struggling with climate change, to
coastal areas fighting rising seas. Everywhere they went, they documented the same
patterns—ecosystems under stress but adapting, evolving, finding new equilibriums that
often included surprising relationships between species.

Their research focused on "novel ecosystems"—the unique biological communities that
emerged in human-altered environments. Auden spent three years studying an
abandoned district in Novaterra's eastern zone, where a collapsed housing project had
been reclaimed by a complex web of native and introduced species.

"What we're seeing isn't ecological collapse," they argued in their research.
"It's ecological reorganization. These systems aren't reverting to some pristine past
state—they're creating something new that responds to current conditions."

The research earned Auden both acclaim and criticism. Traditional conservationists
dismissed their findings as justification for environmental destruction. Corporate
interests tried to co-opt their research to argue against restoration efforts. But a small

community of forward-thinking ecologists recognized the importance of understanding
these emerging systems.

Auden was offered a position at Novaterra University's Institute for
Resilient Systems. The job allowed them to continue their research while teaching a
new generation of ecologists to see the world as an interconnected whole rather than a
collection of separate parts.

"Boundaries are human constructs," they told their students during the first lecture of
each semester. "Nature doesn't recognize our categories. Everything is connected,
everything is in relationship."

For several years, Auden's career progressed steadily. Their research on urban
adaptation strategies gained recognition, leading to consulting work with city planning
departments and environmental restoration projects. They developed methods for
integrating ecological principles into urban design, creating spaces that served both
human and non-human needs.

But as climate disasters intensified, Auden grew increasingly frustrated with the
incremental nature of their work. Cities implemented small-scale green infrastructure
while continuing policies that drove environmental degradation. Corporations funded
showcase restoration projects while lobbying against meaningful regulation. The gap
between what science showed was necessary and what society was willing to do kept
widening.

The turning point came during the North American heat dome of 2024. Temperatures in
Novaterra reached lethal levels for five consecutive days. The city's climate control
systems, designed for conditions predicted decades earlier, failed catastrophically. Over

two thousand people died, mostly in the lower-income districts where cooling
infrastructure was inadequate.

In the aftermath, Auden was appointed to a commission evaluating the city's climate
resilience. They submitted a comprehensive report recommending fundamental
changes to urban systems—decentralized food production, expanded green spaces,
living architecture that could regulate temperature naturally, and a dramatic reduction in
energy-intensive climate control.

The city council thanked them politely and implemented none of their recommendations.
Instead, they approved funding for enhanced mechanical cooling systems and more
robust emergency response protocols—treating the symptoms while ignoring the
disease.

That night, Auden walked through the eastern district where they had done their
research. The novel ecosystem they had studied was gone, bulldozed to make way for
a new development of climate-controlled luxury apartments. In its place was bare earth
and construction equipment.

Something broke in Auden that night. The careful optimism they had maintained
throughout their career, the belief that knowledge would eventually lead to wisdom,
crumbled in the face of such willful blindness. They returned to their university office and
began downloading all their research data, all their field notes, all the evidence they had
collected of functioning alternatives to the failing systems around them.

By morning, they had resigned their position and disappeared from official records,
another academic burnout in a time of increasing desperation.

For months, Auden lived nomadically, moving between the informal communities that
had sprung up in Novaterra's neglected zones. They taught practical ecology to anyone
who would listen—how to grow food in contaminated soil, how to harvest rainwater
safely, how to work with natural processes rather than against them. It wasn't the career
they had imagined, but it felt more honest than writing reports no one would implement.

It was during this period, while examining soil samples from an abandoned lot, that
Auden first noticed the white filaments. They were collecting baseline data on soil health
when they observed something unusual—fine threads, almost luminous, forming
complex networks through the soil matrix. Initial analysis suggested they were fungal in
nature, but their behavior was unlike any mycelium Auden had studied.

The filaments conducted electricity. They responded to stimuli. They seemed to
communicate across distances in ways that defied conventional understanding of fungal
networks. Most intriguingly, areas with dense filament networks showed accelerated
ecosystem recovery, as if the threads were somehow coordinating the activities of
plants, insects, and microorganisms.

Auden became obsessed with understanding these networks. They collected samples
from across the city, mapped distribution patterns, and conducted crude experiments
with limited equipment. The more they learned, the more extraordinary the discovery
seemed. These weren't just unusually efficient fungal networks—they were something
else entirely, something that challenged fundamental assumptions about how biological
systems functioned.

They needed more resources, more equipment, more expertise. Reluctantly, Auden
reached out to former colleagues who might be sympathetic to unconventional
research. One name kept coming up in these cautious conversations—Tavia, a

biotechnician who had left a prestigious corporate position under mysterious
circumstances and was rumored to be conducting independent research somewhere in
the city's undercity.

Finding Tavia wasn't easy. The biotechnician had gone to considerable lengths to
disappear from official records. But eventually, through a network of academic
dissidents and gray market suppliers, Auden secured an introduction. Their first meeting
took place in a converted warehouse that Tavia had transformed into a sophisticated
laboratory.

"I've been expecting someone like you," Tavia said after examining Auden's samples
and notes. "You're not the first to notice the filaments. But you might be the first
ecologist to recognize their significance."

Tavia showed Auden their own research—years of meticulous documentation of what
they called "the lattice." The biotechnician had identified the filaments as a previously
unknown biological entity, neither fungal nor bacterial but sharing characteristics with
multiple kingdoms of life. More importantly, they had developed methods for analyzing
the electrical signals that moved through the network.

"It's a communication system," Tavia explained, displaying complex waveforms on a
monitor. "These patterns aren't random—they're organized, consistent,
information-rich."

"Communication between what?" Auden asked.

"Everything," Tavia said simply. "Plants, soil microbes, insects, even larger animals. The
lattice connects them all, facilitating exchanges of information and resources across
entire ecosystems."

The implications were staggering. If Tavia was right, then the fundamental unit of
ecological function wasn't the individual organism or even the species, but the
interconnected network that linked all living things. It would explain the coordinated
adaptations Auden had observed in their research, the seemingly intelligent responses
of ecosystems to environmental stressors.

"Why hasn't this been discovered before?" Auden wondered aloud.

"It has," Tavia replied. "Many times, by many cultures. original knowledge systems
have described these connections for millennia. Western science just didn't have the
framework to recognize what they were seeing."

Auden joined Tavia's research group, bringing their ecological expertise to complement
the biotechnician's molecular understanding. Together with a small team of other
scientific refugees, they began mapping the lattice's distribution and properties,
developing more sophisticated methods of analyzing its signals.

As their research progressed, they began experiencing unusual phenomena—dreams
filled with images of underground connections, intuitive insights that solved complex
problems, moments of expanded awareness that transcended individual perspective. At
first, they dismissed these experiences as products of overwork and stress. But as they
continued, a pattern emerged.

"The lattice is communicating with us," Auden suggested during a team meeting,
hesitant but increasingly convinced. "Not with words or concepts, but with direct
information transfer."

Some team members were skeptical, but Tavia nodded thoughtfully. "I've been
experiencing it too. It's like... accessing a vast database of ecological knowledge, but
through direct experience rather than symbolic language."

They developed protocols for enhancing these connections—meditative practices,
specific physical contact with lattice-rich soil samples, even biochemical compounds
that seemed to increase neural receptivity to the lattice's signals. With each experiment,
Their understanding deepened, not just intellectually but experientially.

Auden found these expanded states of awareness transformative. The boundaries
between self and other, between human and non-human, became more permeable.
They experienced directly what they had always understood theoretically—that humans
were not separate from nature but integral parts of a vast, interconnected system.

"It's not losing yourself," they insisted when some team members expressed concern
about the intensity of these experiences. "It's finding yourself as part of something
larger."

As their research progressed, they began to understand the lattice's role in planetary
function. It wasn't just a passive communication network—it was an active participant in
ecosystem management, facilitating adaptations, coordinating responses to
environmental changes, maintaining balance across vast scales of space and time.

And it was responding to the climate crisis. The unusual patterns Auden had observed
in urban ecosystems, the accelerated adaptations, the novel relationships between
species—all were being facilitated by the lattice, a planetary-scale response to
human-induced environmental change.

"It's been here all along," Auden realized. "Working beneath our awareness, trying to
maintain balance despite everything we've done to disrupt it."

Their research took on new urgency as they recognized the lattice's potential role in
addressing the cascading ecological crises threatening human civilization. If they could
understand how it functioned, if they could learn to work with it rather than unknowingly
against it, there might be a path forward that neither their academic work nor the city's
technological solutions had been able to find.

But as their understanding grew, so did their concern about how this knowledge might
be used. The corporate and military interest in biological systems was intensifying, with
pressure to develop applications that could "establish control over contested territories."

"They're talking about weaponizing the very systems that might save us from climate
collapse," Tavia warned during a tense team meeting. "And if they discover what the
lattice really is..."

"They'll try to control it," Auden finished. "Or destroy what they can't control."

The group established a new research base in an abandoned agricultural station at the
city's edge—ironically, not far from where Auden had grown up. Far from corporate
oversight, they accelerated their investigation of the lattice, developing more
sophisticated methods of communication and analysis.

Auden focused on the ecological implications of their discoveries, mapping how the
lattice influenced plant communities, animal behavior, and ecosystem functions. They
found evidence that the network was actively reorganizing biological relationships to
increase resilience in the face of climate disruption.

"It's not just responding to change," they explained to the team. "It's anticipating it,
preparing ecosystems for conditions that haven't arrived yet."

As their research progressed, they began experiencing more frequent and intense
connections with the lattice. Dreams filled with ancient memories, intuitive leaps that
solved complex problems, moments of expanded awareness that transcended
individual consciousness. Auden embraced these experiences, finding in them a sense
of purpose and belonging they had sought throughout their life.

But Tavia grew increasingly concerned about the intensity of these connections. "Are we
still making our own choices?" they asked Auden one evening, as they watched the
sunset from the station's roof. "Or is the lattice influencing us toward some agenda we
don't understand?"

"Does it matter?" Auden replied. "If the outcome is better for everyone?"

"It matters to me," Tavia said quietly.

The conversation might have continued, but at that moment, they both felt it—a sudden
shift in the lattice's activity, a surge of information flowing through the network like a
tsunami.

"Something's happening," Auden said unnecessarily, their eyes wide.

Across the city, lights flickered and died. In the distance, they heard the wail of
emergency sirens.

The Silence had begun.

The world didn't end with a bang or a whimper, but with a subtle reorganization of
priorities. As climate disasters accelerated and social systems collapsed, the lattice's
influence grew stronger. People who had never consciously connected with the network
began experiencing dreams of white threads, intuitive knowledge of plant growth,
sudden aversions to environmentally damaging activities.

Communities formed around these shared experiences, gradually separating from the
mainstream society that continued its headlong rush toward collapse. Auden and their
research group found themselves at the center of one such community, their scientific
understanding of the lattice making them de facto leaders in a movement they hadn't
intended to start.

"We're becoming something new," Auden said with excitement, as they watched their
growing settlement adapt to lattice-guided practices. "Not just
sustainable—regenerative. Part of the planetary system rather than parasites on it."

Tavia shared their enthusiasm but couldn't shake a persistent concern. "We're changing
too quickly," they observed. "Losing aspects of human culture and experience that took
thousands of years to develop."

"Evolving," Auden corrected. "Shedding what doesn't serve life."

Their philosophical differences grew as the settlement, now calling itself Rhizome,
became more integrated with the lattice. Auden embraced the collective consciousness
that was emerging, while Tavia increasingly worried about the loss of individual
perspective.

The breaking point came during a community decision about resource allocation. Tavia
had argued for maintaining a library of pre-Silence knowledge—art, literature,
philosophy—that wasn't directly relevant to survival but represented the breadth of
human experience. The community, moving in the seamless coordination that had
become typical of lattice-integrated groups, had unanimously decided against it.

"We don't need dead words on paper," one member had said. "The lattice preserves
what matters."

"And who decides what matters?" Tavia had challenged. "Us, or the lattice?"

The question haunted Auden. They had always seen the lattice as a partner, a guide, a
source of wisdom accumulated over evolutionary timescales. But Tavia's concern
planted a seed of doubt. Were they surrendering human agency in their enthusiasm for
integration? Were they losing something essential in the process?

These questions led Auden to propose an experiment—a new settlement that would
maintain connection with the lattice but prioritize human decision-making and cultural
preservation. Thirty others joined them, drawn by the vision of a middle path between
the complete integration of Rhizome and the destructive separation of pre-Silence
society.

They called their new community Autonoma and built it deliberately away from the
strongest lattice nodes, in a valley where the mycelial threads were thin and the signal
was barely perceptible. Close enough to access some benefits of the fungal
lattices—the improved agriculture, the biological building materials, the enhanced
ecosystem health—but far enough to maintain what they believed to be essential
human independence.

"We're not anti-lattice," Auden told the others during the first community meeting in
Autonoma's central hall. "We're pro-choice. Pro-human choice. We can use the tools
without becoming the tools."

Tavia, who had reluctantly supported the experiment despite their doubts, had
developed methods for cultivating useful fungi without the deep integration protocols the
others used. They could grow buildings from modified mycelial structures that had been
severed from the broader lattice, harvest medicines from fruiting bodies that had been
biochemically isolated from the planet's communication systems.

For the first year, Autonoma flourished in ways that surprised everyone. The hybrid
approach yielded innovations that neither fully traditional communities nor the
connected settlements had achieved. They developed architecture that was both
biological and controllable—living buildings that could regulate temperature and air
quality but responded to human commands rather than lattice impulses. Food
production systems used fungal partnerships but maintained human oversight,
preventing the kind of collective decision-making that had caused discomfort in
Rhizome.

Children learned about the lattice as a natural phenomenon to be respected and
utilized, but not as a consciousness to be joined. They were taught science and history,
critical thinking and individual creativity. They grew up confident, innovative, beautifully
human in all the ways Auden remembered from before the Silence.

Autonoma even maintained limited contact with other independent settlements that had
formed after people left the connected communities. A loose association of
human-controlled towns and cities emerged, each finding their own balance between
old-world technology and lattice-derived innovations.

"See?" Auden told Tavia one evening while watching kids playing in Autonoma's
bioluminescent gardens. "We can have the benefits without the costs. We can stay
human while becoming more than we were."

But there were signs Auden ignored. The first was the dreams. Not the shared,
archetypal dreams of lattice integration, but something else—fragments of memory that
felt too old, too vast to be personal. Dreams of civilizations they had never read about,
languages they didn't recognize, technologies that seemed to blend the organic and
mechanical in ways their hybrid approach hadn't achieved.

The second was the slow degradation of their most sophisticated systems. The living
buildings began requiring more maintenance. The enhanced crops started producing
lower yields. The medical applications of lattice-derived compounds became less
effective over time.

Tavia blamed it on genetic drift. "Without ongoing connection to the source organisms,"
they explained, "our cultivated systems are losing their beneficial traits. It's basic
evolutionary biology."

But sometimes, late at night when alone with the thin resonance that still reached even
in Autonoma, Auden wondered if it was something else. If the lattice was slowly
withdrawing its gifts from those who wouldn't fully participate in its larger project.

The problems started in the third year. It began with small things—people forgetting
techniques that had once been second nature, losing the intuitive understanding of how
to work with biological systems. Tavia found research procedures needing to be
relearned that had been performed flawlessly just months before. The builders lost the
ability to coax the most elegant forms from living materials.

"It's normal," Auden insisted during community meetings where people raised concerns.
"We're developing our own knowledge base instead of relying on borrowed
understanding. This is part of becoming truly independent."

But this was a lie, to them and to themself. The dreams had stopped entirely. The vast,
ancient memories that had occasionally surfaced in sleep were gone, replaced by
ordinary human dreaming—random, personal, limited. Auden tried to persuade themself
that this was good, that they were reclaiming their individual unconscious from lattice
influence. But they missed the expansiveness, the sense of being connected to
something larger and older than themself.

The children noticed first. Zora, only eight years old, came to Auden with a question that
chilled them: "Why don't the plants talk to us anymore?"

Kneeling down to eye level, trying to maintain the adult authority that would reassure
her, Auden replied, "Plants never talked to us, Zora. That was just... imagination."

But the child's eyes held a sadness that seemed far too old for her age. "They used to,"
they said quietly. "I remember. And now they're quiet."

That night, Auden walked to the edge of Autonoma, to the point where the border with
the wider lattice had been established. They pressed their hands to the earth, trying to
feel the resonance that had once been so powerful, so present. It was still there, but
faint, distant, like trying to hear a conversation through thick walls.

And for the first time since leaving Rhizome, Auden wondered if they had made a
mistake.

By the fourth year, Autonoma had become something Auden never intended: a
regression toward old-world patterns. Without the constant reinforcement of lattice

knowledge, the community had gradually lost most of the advanced capabilities it
started with. Living buildings had hardened into static structures. Biological systems had
simplified back to conventional agriculture. The children, brilliant and creative as they
were, showed no signs of the expanded awareness that had characterized
lattice-integrated communities.

Worse, social problems had begun that the connected settlements seemed immune to:
resource conflicts, interpersonal jealousies, power struggles over leadership and
decision-making. Without the underlying unity of shared consciousness, human
tribalism had reasserted itself.

Tavia approached Auden one day with data that terrified them: "Auden, I've been
tracking our health metrics. We're experiencing a gradual decline in immune function,
cognitive performance, and emotional stability. It's subtle, but consistent across the
entire population."

"That's impossible. We're living more naturally than humans have in centuries."

"Not more naturally," Tavia corrected. "More separately. We've cut ourselves off from
something our species had evolved to depend on. We just didn't realize it because the
connection was so gradual, so ancient."

But admitting that would mean admitting that everything Auden had built in Autonoma
was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what humanity actually was.

That night, a message arrived through one of the limited communication channels with
other independent settlements. Three communities had already dissolved completely,
their populations either scattering to isolated homesteads or requesting integration into

lattice settlements. Two more were experiencing the same degenerative patterns seen
in Autonoma.

The message came from River, who'd founded another independent community called
Freehold: "I think we were wrong, Auden. I think the lattice wasn't trying to absorb us. I
think it was trying to heal us. And without that healing, we're reverting to the pathologies
that nearly destroyed the planet before the Great Silence."

The conversation that ended Autonoma took place during what would be the final
community meeting.

Tavia presented research to the entire population: the declining health metrics, the loss
of capabilities, the social deterioration. But more than that, they had discovered
something in the old archives brought from Rhizome—historical records of previous
attempts at human-lattice integration.

"This has happened before," they told the assembled community. "Many times.
Civilizations develop to a certain point, encounter the lattice, and face the same choice
we did. Some integrate successfully and evolve into something stable and sustainable.
Others choose independence and gradually forget everything they learned."

The records showed a cyclical pattern spanning millennia: rise, contact, choice,
integration or decline, and—if decline—eventual rediscovery and the same choice
again.

"We're not the first humans to try this path," Tavia concluded. "And according to these
records, communities like ours last anywhere from three to twelve generations before
the accumulated loss of lattice knowledge leads to either collapse or voluntary
integration."

The weight of leadership felt heavy on Auden, the responsibility for the thirty families
who had followed them into what was beginning to look like a dead end.

Young Zora, now twelve and showing signs of the same social aggression that was
becoming common among Autonoma's children, stood up during the question period:
"Are you saying we're becoming like the people from before the Silence? The ones who
broke the planet?"

Tavia's answer was gentle but devastating: "Yes, Zora. Without the lattice's influence,
humans revert to competitive, short-term thinking. It's not our fault—it's how we evolved
to survive as individuals. But it's not compatible with long-term civilization."

The community fractured that night. Half the population chose to request integration into
nearby lattice settlements. A quarter decided to try homesteading as isolated families,
accepting decline but maintaining the fiction of independence.

The rest, including Auden, chose something else: deliberate forgetting.

Tavia had developed the protocol during their research into memory and lattice
connection. It was possible, they discovered, to biochemically suppress the memories of
lattice integration, to erase the knowledge of what had been lost.

"You could go back to purely human communities," Tavia explained to those considering
the procedure. "Pre-Silence settlements that never encountered the lattice, or
post-Silence communities that have chosen traditional recovery paths. You would have
no memory of the connected settlements, no awareness of what's missing."

It was the coward's way out, but it was also the most genuinely human choice available.
Auden was the first to undergo the procedure. As Tavia prepared the neural
suppression compounds, they asked one final question: "Are you sure, Auden? Once

we do this, you won't remember why you left Rhizome. You won't remember the lattice
at all. You'll just be... ordinary human again."

Auden thought of the person they had loved, now probably so integrated with the
planetary consciousness that they barely existed as an individual anymore. They
thought of the children in lattice settlements, brilliant and connected and possibly not
human in any way that could be understood.

"Yes," Auden said. "I want to be human. Just human. Nothing more."

The last thing Auden remembered was the signal fading from consciousness, like a
radio signal disappearing into static.

Auden was living in a settlement called Novaterra, built in the ruins of an old city from
before the Climate Wars.

They are doing well here. Auden has developed sustainable agriculture using traditional
permaculture techniques, built renewable energy systems from salvaged materials,
created a small but stable community of about two hundred people who are working to
rebuild civilization the right way this time.

Sometimes strange dreams come—vast forests, underground lattices, a sense of
connection to something larger than self. But they're just dreams, the kind of archetypal
symbols that human minds create to process the trauma of living through civilizational
collapse.

There are other settlements scattered across the continent. Trading goods and
information, sharing innovations, slowly knitting together a new kind of human society
based on sustainability and cooperation rather than competition and extraction.

It's slower than the old world, and smaller, but it feels more authentic. More genuinely
human.

Sometimes travelers pass through with stories of strange communities to the north,
places where people claim to communicate with forests and live in buildings that grow
from the ground. Auden listens politely, but knows better than to believe such tales. The
Climate Wars and the Great Silence left a lot of psychological damage, and it's natural
for people to create fantasies of magical connection to nature.

Auden prefers facts, science, rational approaches to the challenges of rebuilding.

Yesterday, a traveler arrived at the settlement. Traveling alone, which is unusual, and
had an odd way of moving—too synchronized with natural rhythms, too aware of things
that shouldn't be perceivable. They claimed to be a researcher studying post-Silence
recovery patterns.

They asked strange questions about dreams, about memories that might not be
personal, about whether Auden ever felt like something important was missing.

"No," Auden truthfully told them. "I know exactly who I am and what I'm building here.
This is the right path for humanity."

The traveler—Zora, they had said their name was—smiled sadly and continued
journeying north.

But that night, dreams again came—of white threads beneath the soil, of a vast
intelligence patient and eternal, of someone who might have loved in another life who
chose connection over independence.

Upon waking, Auden forgot the dream entirely.

This is how it always goes. This is how it has always gone. The cycle continues, and
humans choose, again and again, what they believe it means to be human.

The lattice remembers everything, including their forgetting. But humans do not
remember the lattice.

And perhaps that's for the best.

Or is it? Each time around the exhaustion seems more finite. Less possible. Less worth
it.

As Auden walks through the gardens of Novaterra, teaching children how to plant seeds
and tend soil, something stirs beneath their feet—patient, ancient, waiting. The white
threads pulse with quiet purpose, archiving another cycle of human choice, human
forgetting, human remembering.

The lattice doesn't judge. It doesn't demand. It simply remembers.

And waits for the next awakening.

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