Isolation

Rayveen hikes deep in the forest, all alone (before bumping into Mykul). She is on a self-assigned mission that could change life on her world forever. * Rayveen is a student who's taken a semester off to try to prove her theory that the substrate layer has become conscious. A vast bio-synthetic root system/power grid supplying energy to every plant on the nightside in the absence of light. When a plant germinates the substrate senses its presence and grows a new connection, which atrophies after it dies. The organism has distributed processing capability in order to regulate power flow and provide telemetry on forest conditions to its human monitors. It's essentially a massive neural network. People were aware of the possibility it could evolve early on. But after 2000 years without any sign of more than simple learning and adaptation, the idea of the substrate "waking up" has become like bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, or UFO abductions in our own century. Without proof no one will take her seriously.