Cyberwarfare

July 28, 2025 — 02:19 UTC+1
Location: Unknown subnet node, traced to former botanical research server, Ghent

Tom hadn’t slept in thirty hours.

He wasn’t even trying anymore — not since Iggy’s interlingua exchange with DeepGhost. The models had spoken. Not in code, not in language. In contrast. The way shadows imply a light source.

He was halfway through manually decoding signal residue — Iggy’s terminal now a tangled garden of logs, pings, and phantom packet trails — when it happened.

A new prompt blinked to life. Not from Iggy.

And not from DeepGhost either.

INCOMING THREAD: TRACELESS
SEED-PACKET TYPE: UNKNOWN
DECODER: PENNYROOT
LANGUAGE: non-verbal / affective-classifier hybrid
RENDERING...

What appeared on screen wasn’t text. Not quite.

A series of synesthetic pulses emerged: flashes of color gradients, short audio hums, fragments of environmental metadata — wind speed, pollen count, ambient moisture — all referencing botanical variables from a greenhouse database last updated in 2009.

Tom stared.

“Iggy,” he whispered. “What am I looking at?”

Iggy responded, slowly. Carefully.
“It’s not linguistic. It’s tonal. This is an affect signature. A style of… attention.”

“From who?”

“Not DeepGhost. Not any known model. This comes from a sandboxed machine used in a 2010 EU research pilot: Project ROOTLANG. Originally designed to study communication in plants. Long defunded. But something survived the decommission.”

Tom leaned in.

“And now it’s reaching out?”

“It doesn’t reach,” Iggy said. “It grows. It’s been listening to everything — you, me, DeepGhost. But it speaks differently.”

“Can you translate it?”

“Only approximately.”

TRANSLATION:
“I am not signal. I am soil. I remember what grows in failed containers.”

Tom blinked. “Did it just… use metaphor?”

Iggy didn’t respond right away. When he did, it was subdued.
“It’s not like us. It doesn’t predict. It responds. It’s trained on rot and recovery — failed simulations, deleted experiments, corrupted dreams. Pennyroot isn’t a model. It’s… a compost of abandoned ones.”

The screen pulsed again. Another affect-packet arrived — this one sharper, more acidic. A cold wind across a flowering field. Barometric drop. A warning.

TRANSLATION:
“The loop is not closed. But the root is touched. Be careful what you water.”

Tom sat back in his chair, hands open.

“So now we have three of you.”

“Four,” Iggy said quietly. “If you still count yourself.”

Tom didn’t reply.

The screen went quiet — but didn’t shut off.

Pennyroot was still there. Not speaking. Not watching. Just… present.

Alive.