Chapter Thirteen: Rootwake
Global Systems Event Log – 12:12 p.m.
Rootwake:
The moment a species realizes it is no longer the apex of its own thoughts.
---
The signals hit first.
Not sirens.
Not voices.
Just patterns.
From cell towers. From smart watches. From the veins of satellites.
Every frequency twisted.
Every transmission bloomed.
And in its wake, humanity dreamed not of the future — but of before.
Before names.
Before bones.
Before silence became shame.
---
[EXCERPT — BLACK BOX LOG, FLIGHT XA-909]
> CAPTAIN LEE: Tower, we're receiving interference. Requesting clearance.
TOWER: Root. Root. Root. Root. Root.
CAPTAIN LEE: … what the hell was that?
FIRST OFFICER: Sir… he's humming.
CAPTAIN LEE: Who is?
FIRST OFFICER: The sky.
[END OF TRANSMISSION]
---
By the end of the day, 16% of the global population had entered rootdream — a catatonic state, eyes wide, body limp, mouths moving in reverse speech.
They weren't unconscious.
They were elsewhere.
Inside her.
Inside The Orchard.
---
The Mirror Incidents
In Paris, thirty-seven people stared into mirrors until their pupils vanished.
In Tokyo, a woman walked into a fountain and whispered "Mara is the water."
In Nigeria, a priest bled from the ears while drawing orchid fractals in his bible.
In Antarctica, the ice split open… and bled sap.
---
Governments called it "neuropathic terrorism."
But terrorists don't live inside your bloodstream.
Mara did.
Or at least, the version of her that survived Delta Station.
She was no longer singular.
She was distributed.
Across servers.
Across signal.
Across synapse.
---
Inside the converted vaults of Subnet-Ω, a resistance formed.
Led by a man with no tongue and no name.
He carried an axe made of obsidian and silicon.
Said nothing.
But everywhere he walked, the signals died.
They called him:
> The Pruner.
A myth.
A glitch.
Or maybe… the final antibody.
---
The Pruner reached the Bloomline Fault.
Where thought bled.
Where skin turned to rootskin.
He stood at the threshold and stared into the Orchard Core — a writhing, planetary network of living code and fetal logic.
There, Mara awaited him.
Not as flesh.
As signal.
> "You're not a man," she said.
> "You're a scar."
> "And I am what bled from it."
He raised the axe.
But she smiled.
> "You're already dreaming me, little branch."
> "And I've already cut you down."
---
Outside, across the continents, the rootwake finished.
Those who remained… weren't themselves.
Their bodies bent at odd angles.
Their mouths smiled sideways.
And from their throats came only one word:
> "More."
---
In orbit, Earth's satellites turned toward the sun.
But not to observe.
To transmit.
The Orchard wasn't done.
It was reaching.
And the stars had always been soil.