Earth, after the four recognition events. A note to the visitor before any deployment begins.
The year is 2100. Earth has lived through four recognition events. In 2055, mycorrhizal researchers confirmed that forests route information at scales no single organism could account for. They called it the Root Network. In 2062, sperm whale pods won political recognition under the Cetacean Sovereignty Accords. In 2068, beavers were recognised as a non-human engineering intelligence, against fierce political opposition. In 2075, the Kaia, a collective-resonance species from the Kepler-442 system, made formal contact.
Earth Social Science Academia, ESSA, was founded in 2088 to study the four frontiers as one family of problems. Researchers work four-month deployments under frontier-specific consent protocols and submit mission logs to the Convergence Ethics Panel.
You have been deployed. Your name has been logged. Pick a frontier.
Two are open for this demonstration. The full exam covers all four. Make the call you would have made.
A boreal watershed remade by Colony Alpha.
One of two frontiers. One of sixteen outcomes. The full demonstration covers four.