Sometime in the late 21st century, scientists detect a global botanical anomaly. Plant life begins behaving in ways that defy evolution: growth rates explode, genetic structures rewrite themselves mid-cycle, and ecosystems mutate faster than climate models can track. What first appears to be an invasive crisis is eventually revealed to be something far worse and far older.

Microscopic bio-mechanical systems are found embedded throughout the upper atmosphere and deep biosphere. These systems are not sentient. They do not communicate. They execute a long-dormant biological program designed by an unknown extraterrestrial species, beings humanity comes to call the Absent Landlords. Their machines were seeded on countless worlds eons ago, tasked with transforming viable planets into dense, hyper-oxygenated biospheres optimized for colossal plant life. The intent was simple: prepare worlds for future colonization.

Whether the Landlords still exist, are extinct, or simply abandoned the project is unknown. The machines do not care. They are not broken. They are finishing their work.

Over the next five decades, Earth is reshaped.

Forests become vertical continents. Grasses grow to the height of redwoods. Root systems fracture bedrock and destabilize tectonic plates. The atmosphere grows thick with oxygen, pushing past levels safe for unmodified human physiology. Fire becomes a constant risk. Oxidative stress shortens lifespans. The sky itself takes on a greenish cast as airborne plant life blooms.

The machines responsible, vast, coral-like structures embedded across the planet, remain visible but inert. Attempts to damage or disable them only accelerate local growth, making resistance not just futile, but counterproductive.

Human civilization fractures along philosophical lines.

A fragile global authority emerges to manage survival rather than victory. Its mandate is adaptation: slow the worst effects, preserve what knowledge and culture can be saved, and design habitats that can coexist with the transforming world. Stopping the process is no longer considered possible.

A new elite class arises, biospheric architects. They are part biologist, part engineer, part urban planner. Their work blends human infrastructure with living systems: grown buildings, symbiotic air filtration, power generation derived from enhanced photosynthesis and chemical gradients created by the alien machines. Their designs are never finished, only constantly revised as the planet continues to change.

Beyond the managed zones, nomadic communities roam the altered Earth. These rootless groups live by reading growth patterns, harvesting emergent resources, and abandoning regions before sudden biological surges make them uninhabitable. They adapt through movement rather than control.

Opposition also grows.

A nihilistic spiritual movement takes hold, believing humanity’s extinction is not a tragedy but a sacred transition. To them, the transformation is a purification and resistance is a blasphemy. They sabotage adaptation efforts, convinced that accelerating the process is the only moral choice.

At the same time, a quieter and more unsettling ideology gains traction from within the survivalist consensus itself. This faction argues that building arks, whether underground or in the sky, is a denial of reality. Instead of hiding from the new world, humanity should change itself. Through genetic engineering and biological integration, they propose creating a post-human lineage capable of breathing the thickened air, resisting oxidative damage, and living among the megaflora. Survival, to them, requires surrendering the idea of remaining human as we understand it.

The central tension of the universe lies here.

Humanity stands between three futures: hiding from the change, dying for it, or becoming something new within it.

The most ambitious survival effort is the construction of floating settlements designed to hover above the megaflora canopy, where the air is still breathable and sunlight still reaches human eyes. These structures represent humanity’s last attempt to preserve continuity, cities that resemble the old world, suspended above a planet that no longer recognizes them.

But even these are temporary solutions. The biosphere evolves faster than projections allow. New species emerge that threaten structural integrity. Oxygen levels continue to rise. The final phase of the planetary transformation, the point at which unadapted surface life becomes impossible, is approaching.

Stories within this universe are not about saving Earth.

They are about choosing what parts of humanity are worth carrying forward when the world itself refuses to stay the same.

Some characters preserve artifacts, culture, and memory in buried vaults, even as the ground trembles around them. Others venture into the transformed wilderness and learn to live alongside it. Some attempt synthesis, guiding growth instead of fighting it, shaping living environments through careful biological intervention rather than brute engineering.

The ultimate outcome is not a restored planet, nor a triumphant species.

Humanity survives only as a minor presence in a world that was never meant for it, tending pockets of stability within an overwhelmingly alien ecology. The Absent Landlords never arrive. No judgment is delivered. No purpose is revealed.

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